American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism: The Politics of Objectivity from William F. Albright to William G. Dever [1 ed.] 9781003296294, 9781032283203, 9781032283210

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American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism

This book examines the relationship between several of the most prominent American biblical archaeologists and Zionism. While these scholars have been studied and historicized to some extent, little work has been done to understand their role in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli confict. Two defning differences in the archaeologists’ arguments were their understanding of culture and their views on objectivity versus relativism. Brooke Sherrard Knorr argues that relativist archaeologists envisioned the ancient world as replete with cultural change and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, while those who believed in scholarly objectivity both envisioned the ancient world’s ethnic boundaries as rigid and favored Zionism. Combining readings of the archaeologists’ writings with archival research, this book studies the views of William Foxwell Albright, Millar Burrows, Nelson Glueck, George Ernest Wright, Paul Lapp, and William G. Dever regarding the establishment of an ethno-national state in Palestine in detail. The volume culminates with an epilogue commenting on the relevance of this topic in the present regarding the political ramifcations of archaeology in the Israeli–Palestinian confict. American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism is of interest to students and scholars of biblical and Near Eastern archaeology, American religious history, and the Israeli-Palestinian confict, particularly its role in regional archaeology. Brooke Sherrard Knorr is Assistant Professor of History at William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa. She earned a Ph.D. in American religious history at Florida State University and an M.A. in religious studies at the University of Iowa.

Copenhagen International Seminar

General Editors: Ingrid Hjelm, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Emanuel Pfoh, National Research Council, Argentina Editors: Niels Peter Lemche and Mogens Müller, both at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark Language Revision Editor: Jim West, Ming Hua Theological College, Hong Kong Archaeology, Heritage and Ethics in the Western Wall Plaza, Jerusalem Darkness at the End of the Tunnel Raz Kletter Jeremiah in History and Tradition Edited by Jim West and Niels Peter Lemche Hellenism and the Primary History The Imprint of Greek Sources in Genesis – 2 Kings Robert Karl Gnuse John the Baptist as a Rewritten Figure in Luke-Acts Christina Michelsen Chauchot Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History Russell E. Gmirkin American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism The Politics of Objectivity from William F. Albright to William G. Dever Brooke Sherrard Knorr

For more information on this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Copenhagen-International-Seminar/book-series/COPSEM

American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism The Politics of Objectivity from William F. Albright to William G. Dever Brooke Sherrard Knorr

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Brooke Sherrard Knorr The right of Brooke Sherrard Knorr to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-28320-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-28321-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-29629-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/b22935 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

For Evan, Kathryn, and Elizabeth

Contents

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction

ix xi 1

1 Producing Objective Facts: The Scientific Fundamentalism of William Foxwell Albright’s Biblical Archaeology 12 2 Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism in the Works of William Foxwell Albright and Millar Burrows 22 3 The Baltimore School and the Formation of the “Judeo-Christian Tradition”

47

4 “The Compulsion of Geopolitics”: Nelson Glueck’s Shift from Favoring Cultural Hybridity to Jewish Nationalism 60 5 Relativism as Bad Religion: Objective Knowledge of God’s Mighty Acts in the Work of George Ernest Wright

80

6 Mystical Unification or Ethnic Domination?: The ­ Six-Day War and Paul Lapp’s Rebellion against Objectivity and Zionism

95

7 “No Preconceptions”: William G. Dever and the Pursuit of Objectivity

111

viii Contents

Conclusion

120

Epilogue

123

Selected Bibliography Copenhagen International Seminar Series Index

129 141 145

Acknowledgments

At a bookstore in Jerusalem, I once picked up the 1946 version of The River Jordan by Nelson Glueck and was struck immediately by the author’s enthusiasm for describing the region’s cultural diversity. The bookseller, whose name I regrettably did not catch, taught me how to pronounce “Glueck” and offered to sell the book for half the price jotted inside the cover. That moment would not have been possible without the preparation in thinking through diffcult questions about religion, race, ethnography, and history that I had gained from Amanda Porterfeld, John Corrigan, Curtis Evans, Amy Koehlinger, and Matthew Goff. David Levenson and Aline Kalbian offered unexpected insight owing to personal connections to individuals discussed here. After producing a manuscript that existed on the margins of American religious history, I owe a debt of gratitude to the Copenhagen International Seminar and Routledge for seeing some value herein. Series editors Emanuel Pfoh and Ingrid Hjelm were so kind and encouraging in bringing the book to fruition, as was Jim West. Comments by Raz Kletter, Thomas Davis, Shimon Gibson, and Kyle Keimer on the manuscript in whole or part were most welcome. Monica Reed has joked she could speak more easily about my project than her own. During a year at Iowa State University, I benefted from Hector Avalos’ kindness and interest in my manuscript. Michael Pasquier has successfully demanded I stay in the game more than once, most obviously when he invited me to spend a year at Louisiana State University, where Stuart Irvine and I often discussed these archaeologists. The American religious history colloquium at Florida State University read and discussed one chapter. I would especially like to thank Cara Burnidge and Lauren Davis Gray for their comments. At FSU, Nahed Artoul Zehr, Shannon Dunn, Rosemary Kellison, Joshua Fleer, Jennifer Collins-Elliott, and James Broucek cheerfully engaged in multiple conversations about my topic. Susan Minnerly and Jon Bridges, from their offces on the M foor of Dodd Hall, helped make our years there a little less harrowing. Shira Robinson taught at the University of Iowa only briefy, but by an accident of fate, I signed up for her graduate readings course on the

x

Acknowledgments

Palestinian-Israeli confict. While there I was also fortunate to develop relationships with Ralph Keen, J. Kenneth Kuntz, and T. Dwight Bozeman and to start ongoing conversations about religious studies with Denise Kettering-Lane, Eric Dickman, and David Howlett. At Truman State University, Mark Appold, Mike Ashcraft, and Dereck Daschke infuenced my journey into religious studies. I would especially like to thank Mark for inviting me to join his Middle East study abroad trip in 2011, where I participated in the Bethsaida excavation’s twenty-ffth consecutive season and shared my ideas about biblical archaeology’s history with undergraduates and a general audience for the frst time. At William Penn University, I found a home. Julie Hansen, Noel Stahle, Michael Collins, and Jennifer Sterling saw the connection between my work and that of graduates Willard and Christina Jones, who ran the Ramallah Friends School for forty years and bequeathed their material culture from those years to our university. Senior Practicum students Blake Van Houweling, Nesreen Iskandrani, Nathan White, Casey Tamanaha, Tyler Johns, and Seth Reisbeck humored me with a reading of one chapter, though I suspect I benefted more than them from seeing the future of the historical profession through their eyes. As all historians know, archivists are some of our most helpful allies. Batya Kaplan, librarian at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, pulled materials related to Nelson Glueck’s presidency. Frances O’Donnell, curator of manuscripts and archives at Harvard Divinity School, provided access to George Ernest Wright’s papers. Cynthia Rufo guided me through the archival materials of the American Schools of Oriental Research, both at the organization’s offces in Boston and at Harvard University’s Semitic Museum. The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia supported this project with a generous Library Resident Research Fellowship that allowed me to spend a month with William Foxwell Albright’s papers. At the APS, Charles Greifenstein, Earle Spamer, Roy Goodman, and Lydia VazquezRivera provided not only logistical assistance but also insight. Florida State University awarded a research grant that allowed travel to the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio. While there, I benefted from the expertise of Elise Nienaber, Kevin Profftt, and Dana Herman. Dana fortuitously introduced me to Jason Kalman, who shares an interest in Glueck’s career and provided valuable citations. My husband, Evan Knorr, came along just as I was starting this project, which could not have been better timing. Our twin daughters Kathryn and Elizabeth arrived as it was becoming a book.

Abbreviations

AJA: APJI:

American Jewish Archives The Archives of Progressive Judaism in Israel at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem APS: American Philosophical Society ASOR: The American Schools of Oriental Research FSAC: From the Stone Age to Christianity HDS: Harvard Divinity School HUC/BAS: Hebrew Union College/Biblical Archaeology School SBL: Society of Biblical Literature YDS: Yale Divinity School

Introduction

By examining American biblical archaeologists’ relationship to political Zionism, this book investigates the importance of scholars’ underlying theoretical commitments to their broader engagement with the world. It focuses on a group of scholars associated with the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in Jerusalem during transitions from British to Jordanian to Israeli rule. While much recent scholarship historicizes academics and critiques the politics of scholarship, little work has been done to understand these scholars’ positions in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian confict, thus allowing the aura of scholarly objectivity, neutrality, and commitment to value-free science that has long surrounded them to continue. But American archaeologists did enter the debate over Palestine, with their positions on political Zionism weaving their way through personal papers and publications. This work draws on theoretical insights about history and ethnography that have engaged the feld of North American religions in recent decades to analyze the archaeologists’ cultural theories and how these theories underpinned their political desires for the area they considered the Holy Land. Two defning differences in their arguments were their understanding of culture and their stance on objectivity versus relativism. I argue that relativist archaeologists envisioned the ancient world as replete with cultural change and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, while those who believed in scholarly objectivity both envisioned the ancient world’s ethnic boundaries as rigid and favored Zionism. I support this argument by combining readings of the archaeologists’ writings with archival research documenting their heretofore little known political involvement either for or against the establishment of an ethno-national state in Palestine. Many of the scholars in the latter group belonged informally to the “Baltimore school,” led by William Foxwell Albright from his home base at Johns Hopkins University. Inspired by the conservative mode of thought ascendant in the 1920s at ASOR’s Jerusalem school (now the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research), he elaborated on the basic argument that archaeological fnds were steadily confrming the Bible rather than controverting it and thereby undermining higher criticism. During the 1940s, as

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-1

2

Introduction

I establish based on archival evidence, Albright also lectured frequently on behalf of a Jewish state. This is a new view of Albright’s political involvement, as many have taken his pronouncements of political neutrality at face value. For Albright, archaeologists were in the business of compiling objectively verifable facts. This put him at odds with scholars like Millar Burrows who believed they were interpreting evidence and that a fallible interpretation always stood between a human and the data. Undoubtedly, Albright interpreted data, but he did not present it that way; rather, he advanced his interpretations as the truth about the past. This “pseudo-objectivity,” as Thomas Thompson (1974: 5) terms it, masked choices. Albright believed his scholarship was of universal signifcance and value; inquiring what the stakes were in these claims to universality yields important answers. The biblical text can, of course, be mustered to create either inclusive or exclusive narratives, depending on which portions are chosen and how they are used. For example, Albright chose to focus heavily on the historicity of the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan. The attempt to prove the historical validity of a tale of one ethnic group’s slaughter of another deserves scrutiny, especially in light of historical uses of such passages. Western colonizers around the globe employed the conquest story when subjugating native populations, a history that led Edward Said (1986) to reject readings of the Exodus story as liberating. It may have been liberating to the Israelites, but it led, at least according to biblical texts, to the brutal subjugation of the native Canaanites. For Said, the triumphal exclusion of unwanted ethnic groups celebrated in the conquest stories was echoing again in Palestinians’ marginalization under twentieth-century Israeli conquest. Ann Killebrew suggests this connection as well when discussing the Hazor archaeological site’s popularity among Israelis in the 1950s and 1960s. Joshua’s capture of Hazor was one of many “stories of biblical grandeur and successful military campaigns [that] fascinated” Israelis because “doubtless they were seen as refecting modern-day realities” (1999: 19). Hector Avalos (2007: 17) writes that most communities of faith have little to do with the passages calling for the destruction of the Canaanites because “most Americans today regard genocide as contemptible.” Yet Albright argued not only that the conquest passages were historically accurate, but also that they fulflled God’s will and maintained Israelite purity. Meanwhile, Burrows was writing that, while he believed the conquest was historical, “We cannot believe now that it was ever God’s will that men should massacre one another as Joshua massacred the Canaanites, but Joshua thought it was God’s will” (1938: 21). What are the stakes in these different understandings? That question may be more interesting than the question of what actually happened in the ancient past. And, of course, what “actually happened” cannot be reconstructed, as Niels Peter Lemche points out (2013b: 115). Thus, this is not a work of biblical studies because my interest is not in the biblical text itself but rather in how scholars used the

Introduction

3

Bible to make arguments about their present. And, as the epilogue shows, this is more than a study about scholarly arguments between academics, as similar debates about the uses of archaeology in Israel/Palestine continue. Much of the historiography of Near Eastern archaeology interprets changes in the feld since the 1830s in terms of becoming increasingly scientifc and less religious. For many observers, becoming more scientifc has largely meant acknowledging the ways archaeologists presupposed the biblical text’s historicity when interpreting their fnds, and rooting out those preconceptions and their infuence on archaeological conclusions. William G. Dever has argued Israeli archaeologists achieved a higher level because they were not religious, praising them for being “without exception secular scholars, entirely divorced from the religious Establishment—and, in fact, from Departments of Bible in the Universities” (1974: 21). By limiting “religious” to meaning personal religiosity, Dever argued that Israeli archaeologists, unlike American biblical archaeologists, had already accomplished the goal of leaving behind religious entanglements. Philip J. King (1983), author of an ASOR institutional history, interpreted the organization’s history as one of scientifc advance, moving steadily away from the early years of pious diggers seeking confrmation. P. R. S. Moorey (1991: 175) argued that those who wish to use archaeology to illuminate the Bible should accept that they are in a branch of biblical studies rather than archaeology. Thomas W. Davis (2004) continues the trend of connecting scientifc advance to lessening religiosity by arguing that today’s Near Eastern archaeologists have solved the past generations’ problem of presupposing the Bible to be true. Yet rooting out scholars’ religious beliefs is not the issue: the main fgures in this narrative were religious, and most were ordained in Christian or Jewish traditions, but this by no means rendered them homogeneous. Understanding the feld in terms of scientifc advance brings with it the diffculty that previous generations also believed they had achieved that standard. Take, for example, the role science played in Albright’s rhetoric. His claims to placing the Bible on a scientifc footing through archaeology depended on the idea that science could be externally verifable and objective. If it were not, then it would be an interpretation infuenced by his subjectivity. Albright would quickly have become vulnerable to the criticism that he was fnding what he wanted because it suited his religious outlook. While he occasionally was subjected to that charge, his elaborate edifce of scientifc neutrality convinced many during his prominent career. The most important book written thus far about Albright is Burke Long’s postmodern analysis in Planting and Reaping Albright. Long also locates the stakes involved as greater than simply the question of archaeological progress and instead analyzes “Albright’s embrace of scientist as cultural hero and the mythifcation of Self as Master Knower” (1997: 2). Long, himself trained in a milieu in which Albright and his students were held up as “anecdotal exemplars of uncommon brilliance,” uses a methodology of “radically

4

Introduction

historicizing” these fgures so that they “are rendered in smaller, human terms” (1997: 10). Dever, a vocal defender of scholarly neutrality, dismisses Long’s postmodernist lens as “an angle of vision … so narrow, and, I would argue, so ideologically motivated that it results not in an adequate critical portrait of Albright, but rather in a caricature” (1998: 131). Despite Dever’s view that the discussion of Albright’s ideology says more about Long than Albright, Dever does not comment on what it may say about Long. He repeats Long’s conclusions, based, as he rightly notes, on “thousands of letters, unpublished diaries, feld notes, and other memorabilia”—materials I have also reviewed, and found generally supportive of Long’s analyses—just to dismiss them as “postmodernist piffe” (1998: 131). In the present work, “objective” is juxtaposed with “subjective,” with the understanding that knowledge can never be truly objective in that it is known by humans, who cannot fully escape their own subjectivity. Therefore this knowledge is contingent, not absolute. This insight, vital to postmodernism and yet hardly invented that recently, provides the basis upon which the questions in this work can be asked. Postcolonial theorists have shown the way the appeal to universal values—especially science—has been used to judge native cultures inferior and displace them when convenient. The Middle East was just one such foil, but a powerful one. The foundational work, of course, is Said (1978). Timothy Marr, coining “Islamicism” as an analog to Said’s “Orientalism,” writes that the “Islamic orient was conceived by many Americans as a vicious realm of inhumane bondage, unstable tyranny, illicit sensuality, and selfsh luxury that symbolized the dangerous forces that threatened their fedgling political rights and freedoms” (2006: 21). Lynn Meskell (2020: 555) detects colonialism in Western archaeologists’ efforts to protect Middle Eastern antiquities during World War II using a rhetoric of internationalism. Albright’s colonial attitude toward non-“Western” cultures, both past and present, was one factor in his support for Zionism, as he described Canaanites as inferior because of their paganism yet praised the paganism of the Romans (Ra‘ad 2010: 102). In Albright’s New Palestine piece, “The Near East Needs the Jews,” he argued the non-Western people in the area were benefting immeasurably from the Jews’ innovations. On the same page, the editors supplied a photo of about a dozen traditionally dressed Arab men looking at a machine, above the caption, “Civilization! This modern tractor on a Jewish colony is a never-failing object of interest for nearby Arabs” (Albright 1942: 13). Israeli archaeologists may not have named their feld after the Bible, but many drew on it as a nationalist blueprint, a problem that was diffcult to see so long as one believed the defnition of secular included freedom from biblical presuppositions (Pfoh 2013: 8). These archaeologists operated as part of an Israeli elite that was largely non-religious but nevertheless relied on the Bible. Israeli leaders David Ben-Gurion (1972) and Moshe Dayan (1978), neither of whom saw themselves as practicing Judaism as a religion,

Introduction

5

both published books detailing their nationalist readings of the Bible. Ben-Gurion “insisted on the secular teaching of the Bible as a national text to be inserted in a core place in the educational systems, throughout all the stages of learning” (Pappe 2016: 211). They read the Bible in combination with archaeological artifacts that they attributed to ancient Israelites or Judeans to support Israelis’ right to take over the land they believed their remote ancestors had inhabited. Criticism of this tendency within Israeli archaeology has come from multiple camps, including the Israeli academy, for example in works by Nachman Ben-Yehuda (2007) and Yael Zerubavel (1995) on the explicitly political nature of Yigael Yadin’s Masada dig; Shlomo Sand’s criticism of Israelis for using archaeology to retroject a homogeneous Jewish ethnicity into the distant past (2009); and archaeologist Raphael Greenberg’s efforts to deconstruct the religio-nationalist narrative presented at the City of David archaeological site in Jerusalem (2009). Palestinian critics include Nadia Abu el-Haj (2001), who demonstrates that Israeli archaeologists purposefully destroyed Islamic layers and who critiques the way contemporary Jerusalem is marketed to tourists on the assumption that archaeology proves Jewish ownership. Nur Masalha (2007) sees Israeli archaeologists’ and leaders’ use of the Bible as religiosity hiding under a secular guise. Archaeologist Ghada Ziadeh-Seely (2007) asks whether Palestinian archaeologists should create a rival nationalist archaeological narrative or fashion a multicultural archaeological narrative that would serve to undercut both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist claims; while feeling some sympathy for the former, she ultimately chooses the latter. Archaeologist Adel Yahya, who founded and directed the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE), called on Palestinian, Israeli, and foreign archaeologists working in Palestine/Israel to acknowledge “that archaeology cannot and should not be used for the purposes of exclusion” (2005: 74). Critiques of nationalist and settler-colonialist uses of archaeology did not, however, often extend to the American biblical archaeologists who were the mentors and colleagues of many Israeli archaeologists. One exception is Keith Whitelam (1996), who sees biblical archaeologists as also implicitly supporting Zionism by engaging in a search for ancient Israel based on a historicized reading of the Bible, which he argues is better treated as literature than history. And yet, as this book shows, the work of scholars who saw themselves as biblical archaeologists did not always entail support for Jewish nationalism. Some biblical archaeologists opposed Zionism, and those who did wrote their books in such a way as to undermine the idea of Zionism. Whitelam’s broad brush obscures the way some American archaeologists, including many who were committed to their religious traditions, interpreted the Bible and the archaeological record differently from Albright and thus came to different conclusions. Millar Burrows does not appear in Whitelam’s index. Paul Lapp, who protested the 1967 war and refused to dig in the occupied territories, is only mentioned because he identifed a fortress

6

Introduction

with Saul, which Whitelam writes off as “typical of the history of the search for ancient Israel” (1996: 164). A way to get beyond a model of scientifc advance is through attention to the archaeologists’ working theories of culture. These views can be understood by reading their extensive popular writings. Attention to this factor does not demonstrate a straight line of progress based on evidence of overt religiosity but rather an ongoing debate based on ways of seeing the world. Before the articulation of postmodernism, some biblical archaeologists conceived of their subjects in terms of cultural change and mutual infuence. Others, however, conceived of ethnic identity as essential and unchanging, with rigid boundaries between the ancient people they were most interested in—the Israelites—and other peoples. Three useful ways of seeing the difference between the two main worldviews these archaeologists held are outlined below: whether they saw culture as static or fuid, whether they supported political Zionism or cultural Zionism, and whether they believed in objectivity or relativism.

Culture: Static or Fluid? In the 1980s, myriad critics of nationalism argued that the invention of ethno-nationalist tradition often involves constructing the nation in question as a pure ethnic group and retrojecting that understanding into the distant past (see, for example, Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; and Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). A subset of this work showed that archaeology has often been employed as an objective science providing incontestable truth rather than the contestable narrative that it is, often to bolster nationalistic claims (Silberman 1989; Kohl and Fawcett 1995; Díaz-Andreu 2007). Many historians and theorists have worked to undermine ethnic nationalism by showing that pure ethnic groups do not exist. One of the shifts that made these modes of inquiry widespread was the critique of anthropology as a discipline. In much the same way that Albright’s claims to being scientifc masked his political concerns, the “scientifc” model of ethnography, with its dense descriptions of cultures that froze them in time, belied the reality of cultural change. Rather than viewing ethnographers as scientifc instruments recording data that happen to be later published in book form, anthropologists learned to see ethnography as historically and culturally contingent writing that produced only partial truths, a move that highlights the “constructed, artifcial nature of cultural accounts” (Clifford 1986: 2). In applying anthropological insights to Jewish history in The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand shows that educated Jewish Zionists transitioned from believing the native Arabs they encountered in Palestine were obviously descendants of ancient Israelites to believing they obviously were not. In 1918, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who would later serve as Israel’s prime minister and president, respectively, co-authored a book in which they wrote that the “Jewish farmer, like any other farmer,

Introduction

7

was not easily torn from his soil” (Sand 2009: 186). This argument suggested cultural continuity through the ages and a link between modern Jews and the Arabs who lived in Palestine. But, disillusioned by the Arab riots of 1929, Ben-Gurion later held the Romans had forced the great majority of the Jewish people into exile in 135 CE, including farmers. Sand argues the idea of near-total exile caught on among Zionists because it explained why so few Jews were in Palestine in the nineteenth century. In a response to his critics, Sand returned to this point. “I have been accused of claiming that the Palestinians of today are” direct descendants of Judeans, he commented, but reminded readers it was not he who thought so but rather the youthful Zionist leaders he had quoted. Sand reiterates his anthropological understanding of the more complex origins of any “people” (2009: 318). If this understanding changes exclusionary ethnic narratives, that is an improvement; however, Sand stresses, the genetic makeup of today’s Palestinians is not important. The goal for many scholars today is not, as Nur Masalha points out, mimicking Zionism through creating competing genetic narratives or grand historical narratives (2018), but instead to create narratives that are “multi-vocal and inclusive” (Thompson 2019: 2). Another aspect of these archaeologists’ views of ancient cultures was comparison, primarily whether they believed characteristics they assigned to ancient Israelites were similar or different from characteristics they assigned to ancient Canaanites. Comparisons between Canaanites and Israelites served as a location of identity formation, with Israelite characteristics signaling good religion. Also fruitful is paying attention to comparisons made between those groups and later groups, such as G. Ernest Wright’s positive comparison of Israelites to American cowboys and his negative comparison of liberal Protestants to Canaanites. J. Z. Smith (1990) fnds that apologetic historians of early Christianity often claimed Christianity was sui generis and unique, also a common claim found here for the Israelites’ religion.

Political Zionism or Cultural Zionism? Before 1948, one way to frame the difference between these positions was the distinction between “cultural Zionism,” supporting the right of Jews to immigrate to Palestine, and “political Zionism,” support for a Jewish ethno-national state. For much of its history, Reform Judaism in America was associated with opposing political Zionism. These Reform Jews have often been accused of primarily worrying that Jews, including themselves, would no longer be welcome in other countries if a Jewish state existed. However, Thomas Kolsky (1990) shows that the primary concern of the anti-Zionist movement’s leaders was to combat ethnic exclusivism. Wellknown American Jewish anti-Zionists, such as Elmer Berger, argued passionately against Zionism because of its element of ethnic nationalism and exclusion of others (Ross 2011). Supporters of cultural Zionism, among them Judah Leon Magnes, Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber, and Louis

8

Introduction

Brandeis, gradually became anti-Zionists in the eyes of political Zionists. Masalha, though he argues the solution must be secular, nevertheless echoes these Reform Jewish leaders’ principles when he calls for a solution based “on a joint Palestinian-Jewish struggle for equality and universal human rights” (2007: 321). Though some of the archaeologists discussed here would doubtless have rejected the word “Zionist” because for them it meant political Zionism, none of them opposed Jewish immigration to Palestine. Thus, they could be termed cultural Zionists, though in this work the term “Zionism” on its own refers to political Zionism.

Objectivity or Relativism? Another way to classify the archaeologists discussed here is between those who believed in objectivity as an academic ideal and those who rejected the possibility of objectivity. Peter Novick defnes historians’ ideal of objectivity in a way that corresponds well to Albright’s: “a commitment to the reality of the past, and to truth as correspondence to that reality; a sharp separation between knower and known, between fact and value.” Above all, “Truth is one, not perspectival” (1998: 1–2). Novick shows that strong scholarly currents criticizing the ideal of objectivity fourished during the interwar period, when many American historians became aware after World War I that they had taught and written in such a way as to advance the American cause, leading to a “heightened awareness of strains in the concept of objectivity” (Novick 1998: 116). Though known as an archaeologist, Albright was as much or more so a historian (for a twenty-frst century assessment of Albright’s accomplishments in a range of felds, see Levy and Freedman 2009). Albright spent only scanty time in the feld and considered the pinnacle of his career to be From the Stone Age to Christianity, his philosophy of history. In his defense of historians’ ability to pursue and even attain scholarly objectivity, as he believed he had when gathering archaeological facts, Albright demonstrated not that he was a product of his time and did not know better—a defense sometimes put forward by his admirers—but rather that he rejected critiques of objectivity of which he was well aware. As Albright acknowledged (1957: 82–83), his belief in historical objectivity comprised part of his conservative reaction against relativist historians of the 1920s like C. A. Beard and C. L. Becker. On the other hand, Burrows was infuenced by this relativist camp that was particularly prominent in the 1920s as well as by ideas about cultural fuidity emanating from Franz Boas’s school of cultural anthropology. Thus, the present book contributes to the scholarly literature by paying close attention to the differences among these scholars. Chapter 1 situates Albright against the background of the higher criticism of his graduate adviser, Paul Haupt, whom he rebelled against in his assertion of an epistemology based on objectively established facts and plain-sense readings of biblical texts. In 1920s Jerusalem, Albright encountered multiple

Introduction

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infuences, including the focus on biblical historicity and science espoused by Melvin Grove Kyle. He also encountered Palestinian intellectuals like Taufk Canaan, who used folklore studies to implicitly undermine Western colonialism and whose infuence Albright rejected. Chapter 2 investigates the philosophical and political differences that put Albright and Burrows at odds. Burrows, who opposed Zionism, characterized the ancient world in terms of cultural interaction and fuidity, while Albright, who favored Zionism, characterized the ancient world in terms of rigid ethnic boundaries. Whereas Burrows applauded the dialectic between the extreme poles of Israelite and Canaanite religion for producing a fruitful and robust tradition, Albright stressed the way the primitive Israelites’ purity ensured their continuing purity. Albright primarily saw differences between groups; Burrows primarily saw similarities. Albright boldly proclaimed his fndings as objective truth, while Burrows’ epistemological caution struck some readers as so excessive as to weaken his scholarly authority. Because Burrows wrote a book about Palestinian refugees, his political involvement was no secret. Albright’s political involvement in favor of a Jewish state, which he later denied, is reconstructed here. Chapter 3 explores the formation of the Baltimore school as a JudeoChristian endeavor that worked to exclude those who did not think about the Old Testament as a historically accurate text that was best read in a straightforward manner. Much quality scholarly work has been produced on Americans and the Holy Land in the nineteenth century (Vogel 1993; Davis 1996; Obenzinger 1999; Long 2003; Yothers 2007; Goldman 2009; Rogers 2011), and also concerning contemporary American travelers, including Christian Zionists (Feldman 2007; Kaell 2014). This work seeks to place these mid-twentieth-century American academics’ relationship to the Holy Land into this historical trajectory. One reason for doing so is to contribute to our understanding of the growth of the concept of the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” a term that included new groups while simultaneously drawing new boundaries of exclusion. Triumphal Protestantism was giving way to cross-religious alliances between like-minded believers. For Albright, what could draw Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together was a similar approach to the Old Testament. Chapter 4 details American rabbi-archaeologist Nelson Glueck’s midcareer shift from opposing a Jewish state to supporting it, which mirrored a dramatic shift in his scholarship about the ancient past. This chapter complicates our understanding of Glueck, who is often thought of as a scientifc Zionist hero. His at one time passionate opposition to a Jewish state and reasons for that opposition are worth revisiting. Glueck’s works provide an especially illuminating illustration of the thesis presented here because he demonstrates both sides of it at different points in his career. The chapter traces the shift in his popular writings from envisioning the ancient world as replete with cultural change and hybridity to envisioning its ethnic groupings as pure and essential, a change that mirrored his political shift from

10

Introduction

supporting a culturally diverse Palestine to supporting a Jewish ethnonational state. Chapter 5 shows the way the differences between Israelites and Canaanites were drawn in even bolder lines by biblical theologian and archaeologist George Ernest Wright. Wright, Albright’s third Ph.D. graduate, did perhaps the most to further Albright’s legacy. He founded the Biblical Colloquium, a by-invitation-only working group that met to discuss issues in biblical studies and was composed almost entirely of Albright students. Wright’s blending of archaeology with theology simplifed the task of separating the good Israelites from the bad Canaanites, a basic difference between good and evil that mirrored his understanding of the difference between good religion and bad religion among his contemporaries. When Wright adopted stances favorable to Israelis, he masked the political nature of his decisions with a rhetoric of objectivity and neutrality, while castigating ASOR members who took pro-Palestinian positions. Toward the end of his life, Wright acknowledged the role of interpretation in archaeology but continued to support the idea that ASOR could be an apolitical organization. While many biblical scholars today can trace their intellectual lineage as grandsons and great grandsons of Albright, as with any school of thought, the generation of the grandsons differs from the grandfather. One early dissident was Paul Lapp, originally Albright’s Ph.D. student, who transferred to Harvard to fnish under Wright after Albright’s retirement. Lapp was working with Wright as Wright was considering the role of interpretation in archaeology. Lapp took up these arguments against historical certainty in his published works. Chapter 6 discusses Lapp’s political rebellion against his mentors through the case study of a 1968 protest against an Israeli military parade in which Lapp and several other ASOR members participated. Another archaeologist who lodged similar criticism about the politics of biblical archaeology was Albert Glock, who continued Lapp’s dig in the West Bank as a conscious effort to demonstrate the long-term cultural continuity of the villagers there and thus call Israel’s claims to the area into question. Chapter 7 examines the way that, despite critiques like Lapp’s and Glock’s, another strain in post-Albright archaeology has defended the ability of scholarship to be non-political. William G. Dever, perhaps the most prominent American archaeologist working in the region in recent decades, has published a great deal of writing for the general public in the twenty-frst century that defends the ability of academics to seek truth about the past in a neutral way. Dever frequently criticizes the idea of cultural fuidity, accusing its proponents of arguing that ethnicities did not exist at all. (This misconstrues those arguments, as Burrows, for instance, did not question whether the Israelites had existed when he wrote of mutual infuence and blurred boundaries among them and other ethnic groups.) As with the other fgures discussed in this book, I suggest his reasons for framing ethnicity as bounded and real (as opposed to socially constructed, an idea he dismisses) relate to his views on the contemporary state of Israel. As shown

Introduction

11

particularly in Beyond the Texts (2017) and his 2020 memoir, Dever claims lifelong political neutrality while frequently connecting ancient Israel to modern Israel. The epilogue comments on how these issues continue to play out today. Questions of ethnic identity and whether cultures are static or changing are at the heart of a contemporary confict over the City of David archaeological site in Jerusalem. Elad, the settler organization running the site, takes an Albright-like position on the ability to know whether the Israelites were there and what their relationship to the Canaanites was. It presents the evidence in such a way as to bolster support for the contemporary right of the Israeli state to control the area, and even to displace Palestinians living near the site. Raphael Greenberg, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist who takes issue with Elad’s uses of archaeology, has put forward an archaeological ethic that is remarkably similar to Burrows’ or Lapp’s to attempt to undermine the link between Israelites/Israelis and the land that is presented uncritically at the site. In a book-length polemic against the minimalists, Dever outlines his own historical approach: that texts are products of their time, that authors have intents, that texts have meanings, that historians must strive to understand the time in which the text was produced. In many ways that is the approach taken to understanding the texts analyzed here. In one respect, though, I must differ from Dever. “Above all,” he wrote, “the question of the modern appropriation of the perceived meaning of a text must be kept strictly separate during the initial interpretation in fulfllment of the requirement of ‘disinterestedness’” (2001: 16). Even if it were desirable, such a separation is not possible, as this project shows by demonstrating the ways in which mid-century archaeologists appropriated ancient texts in order to comment on their present, even if they were unwilling to admit or unaware they were doing so. Moreover, there is no question that this work is a comment on my present, both in ways I am aware of and ways I am not.

1

Producing Objective Facts The Scientifc Fundamentalism of William Foxwell Albright’s Biblical Archaeology

William Foxwell Albright saw himself as a scientist, and he saw the role of scientist as one who produced objectively verifable facts that were not dependent on the subjectivity of the individual observing them. This chapter discusses the way he used this view to combat higher critics, including his graduate adviser, Paul Haupt. Albright spent most of the 1920s in Jerusalem, where he quickly rose to the position of director of ASOR’s Jerusalem school. Some scholars consider Albright a major advance over the archaeologists he joined in Jerusalem, such as the prolifc author Melvin Grove Kyle, who wrote about archaeology for The Fundamentals series. There were, however, important similarities between the two in their views of science, facts, and whether archaeology was corroborating the Bible. This chapter concludes with consideration of another infuence Albright encountered in Jerusalem but ultimately rejected, that of Palestinian folklore studies. Like the major fgures in this book, Palestinian Christian Taufk Canaan used his discussion of Palestinian folklore to argue passionately, if implicitly, for his political position, in this case one of Palestinian unity in opposition to colonization by either the British or Jews. Albright was born in 1891 in Chile to Methodist missionaries Wilbur and Zephine Albright. The family returned to Iowa when Albright was 12. Later in life, he often referred to himself as a native of Latin America, perhaps because he felt foreign in Iowa, and because he looked back on Iowa as an intellectually barren place he was lucky to have escaped (Running and Freedman 1975: 1–16). As an undergraduate at Upper Iowa University, Albright published his frst article on archaeology, “Recent Discoveries at Elephantine,” in the Upper Iowa Academician. At UIU he formed a friendship with fellow student Sam Geiser, who became a biology professor in Texas. For years the two exchanged letters in which Albright discussed his goal of breaking down the barrier between science and the humanities by placing the humanities on as objective a footing as he believed science to be. He considered archaeology scientifc because it provided the tangible realia of the human past, which were the facts he identifed as lacking from higher critics’ work. For Albright, archaeology was the science that shed light on history, often seen as a humanistic subject. Because he believed archaeology was an

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-2

Producing Objective Facts 13 objective science, he believed his use of it to shed light on history in works such as From the Stone Age to Christianity accomplished his lifelong goal. Albright did not pioneer the idea that archaeology could disprove higher criticism; it was already emanating from early-twentieth-century ASOR archaeologists in Jerusalem, as Mark Elliott details in Biblical Interpretation Using Archaeological Evidence, 1900–1930 (2002). Elliott is at pains to separate Albright from the men who were in Jerusalem when he arrived, and thus save him from a charge of fundamentalism, based on Albright’s vast learning and innovation in the feld. Elliott (2002: 3–7) also demonstrates that the counter-arguments—that archaeology could prove little regarding biblical individuals and that it was being misused by scholars with conservative biblical agendas—also existed before Albright reached Jerusalem in the work of scholars like Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth. At base, though, Albright was making a similar argument against higher criticism, no matter how many ancient languages he knew. Albright understood the higher critics’ project to be questioning whether biblical events happened as recorded, beginning with the presupposition that they had not. Albright, conversely, saw no reason to rely on anything but the “plain sense” (Machinist 1996: 395) of the Bible unless confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Though Albright largely accepted the documentary hypothesis associated with Julius Wellhausen, in his writings Wellhausen’s name became the scapegoat for the wrongs he associated with higher criticism. Peter Katz once wrote to Albright to correct his charge that Wellhausen had been anti-Semitic, a correction Albright humbly accepted. The problem was, he confessed to Katz, “that Wellhausen was to me always a rather repellent fgure.” He added, “I consider Wellhausen as the greatest fgure in O.T. research during the nineteenth century, and accept his arrangement of the relative order of the chief Pentateuchal sources without hesitation.”1 One position associated with Wellhausen that Albright rejected was the idea that portions of the Old Testament were composed centuries later than the events described and thus refected the politics and culture of those later periods. Instead, he argued that even if they had been composed later, they accurately refected the time periods they were supposed to describe because he believed oral cultures were capable of transmitting stories over centuries with little change. More than anything, Wellhausen is a symbol in Albright’s work. As J. M. Sasson argues, Albright had no interest in understanding Wellhausen’s project as Wellhausen, motivated by “neither religious skepticism nor historical nihilism,” seems to have understood it: “as a lesson about what happens when dogma supplants faith” (1993: 4). The search for one truth that could unite all Christians when the Bible was properly understood through these new methods—a grasp of the higher critics that could never be gained from reading Albright’s denunciations of them—brought Wellhausen’s and Albright’s projects closer together than Albright acknowledged. As soon as he graduated with his Ph.D. in Assyriology, Albright reacted strongly against his adviser, Paul Haupt. Nevertheless, the two shared some

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notable characteristics. Both men were impressively accomplished at young ages, with Haupt having made important scholarly contributions by age 21 (Sasson 1993: 4). Both were seen by their students as larger than life and diffcult to disagree with; both helmed Johns Hopkins’ Oriental Seminary for multiple decades; and both produced bibliographies so extensive as to amaze their colleagues. One key way they differed was in whether they understood Palestine to be at the center or the periphery of human history. Though Assyriologists were often interested in the Bible, the feld refected the desire of academics in the nineteenth century to move away from the particularism of focusing on the Bible. Thus, they studied the texts of Assyria and Babylonia, “the nations that, according to the Bible, had conquered ancient Israel” (Hallote 2006: 5). Bruce Kuklick argues that many scholars turned to Mesopotamia by the 1880s because Palestine had been so trod over by missionaries and tourists. Missionaries were frequently drawn to Jerusalem but not allowed to proselytize freely there, as discussed by Heyrman (2013) and Phillips (1968). This popular interest in Palestine “may have rendered” it “too familiar and even too popular for the more sober students” (Kuklick 1996: 5). Assyriologists’ professional organization, the American Oriental Society (AOS), formed in the 1840s. Rachel Hallote writes that this way of conceiving of their feld meant they “had all but erased their original connection to the Bible” (2006: 5). This was the case, for example, for James Henry Breasted (1865–1935). Albright admired Breasted while also criticizing his nontheistic humanism. Breasted earned a Ph.D. in Egyptology, coined the term “Fertile Crescent,” and led the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute from its founding in 1919. As these details suggest, Breasted considered the Middle East the cradle of civilization, but with little interest in centering the part of it termed the “Holy Land.” For more on Breasted’s career, see Kuklick (1996), Goode (2007), and Cline (2020). Albright wrote a conficted memorial originally published in 1936, the year after Breasted’s death, in which he applauded his accomplishments, particularly for coming “on the scene just when the humanities most needed a champion” (1964: 228). But he regretted Breasted’s meliorism, which Albright considered even worse than that of the average liberal Protestant because “there was nothing theistic” about it (1964: 228). Later in life Albright claimed to have been dazzled for a time by higher criticism and turned into a liberal by the likes of Haupt, but that, almost as soon as he arrived in Jerusalem, the overwhelming archaeological evidence of the Bible’s historicity left him no choice but to adopt a positivistic reading of it. “During these ffteen years,” Albright (1964: 309) wrote in an autobiographical sketch, “my initially rather skeptical attitude toward the accuracy of Israelite historical tradition had suffered repeated jolts as discovery after discovery confrmed the historicity of details which might reasonably have been considered legendary.” Whether to take Albright’s oft-repeated story of a conservative conversion in Palestine at face value has already been a

Producing Objective Facts 15 minor scholarly controversy. The fnal chapter in Burke Long’s book on Albright and his students, “Fictive Self,” questions the story based on strong archival evidence. He argues that Albright was probably less affected by higher criticism during his graduate school years than he claimed, never really accepting the overbearing Haupt’s teachings. Long (1997: 124) sees Albright’s 1920s conservatism as more reversion than conversion, arguing that “some elements in Albright’s approach to the Bible seem in retrospect to have been fxed long before he went to Baltimore for graduate training with Haupt.” J. Edward Wright (2002b: 66) disagrees with Long’s “psychologizing,” writing that he prefers “to take Albright at his word” when he told the story of this conversion decades later, rather than adopt Long’s “deconstruction of Albright’s correspondence.” The discrepancies between what Albright wrote in the 1920s and what he said about his memories after decades passed should be up for discussion, though, and not dismissed simply because Long framed his analysis as postmodern. For example, in 1922 Albright wrote to Haupt that, though he valued his training at Johns Hopkins, “my historical points of view remained unchanged, I fear.”2 When asked to contribute to Haupt’s Festschrift in the same year—hardly after years of contemplation—Albright wrote to the editor that “this is undoubtedly a matter which requires great tact” because “I am now opposing practically all of the views with which his name has become associated in recent years.”3 Interestingly, Haupt’s overbearing personality affected even this Festschrift. “A few days ago I was foolish enough to show Professor Haupt your very masterly article on Professor Haupt as Scholar and Teacher,” Aaron Ember, the Festschrift editor, apologetically wrote to Albright. He was very pleased with it, but he made several suggestions. He would like you to insert some remarks on the following topics: staff-meetings, meetings of the university Philological Association, Society of Biblical Literature, AOS, International Congresses … Of course Professor Haupt does not want you to know that he has suggested this himself.4 Haupt’s behavior may provide some insight as to why his students might have kept their opinions to themselves. Long describes the humiliation Albright felt under Haupt, who, many reported, demeaned students. Albright vowed not to publish his dissertation because he felt Haupt had rewritten it. A 1920 letter demonstrates the youthful Albright’s incredible confdence about his own projects now that he no longer had to please Haupt. He was in a hurry to fnd a publisher for his monograph on the beginnings of Hebrew history because “I believe I have at last solved the main questions of early biblical history, including especially the chronology.”5 Albright’s graduate colleague Paul F. Bloomhardt felt he suffered similarly. After Haupt’s revisions to his dissertation, Bloomhardt complained,

16

Producing Objective Facts what he would have me prepare now for publication might be entitled ‘Haupt’s Contributions to the Interpretation of Haggai.’ The Hauptian character of the result is so evident at frst glance that I fail to see how the publication of it will do anything but refect adversely on me both in the general feld of scholarship and among my confreres in the church.6

All this supports the conclusion (Long 1996: 131) that Albright was never liberal so much as that he learned in graduate school to delay his conservative tendencies. Albright certainly had reasons for mixed feelings about Haupt, who, though he rewrote students’ work, pushed hard to put Albright out in front for various opportunities. Haupt recommended him highly for the Jerusalem school directorship, argued for a higher salary, and negotiated a job for Albright’s fancée, who joined him in Palestine, where they wed.7 Albright frst traveled to Palestine in 1919 as the recipient of ASOR’s Thayer Fellowship, which funded a year at the Jerusalem school. When Arabist W. H. Worrell stepped down as Jerusalem school director, the ASOR committee, acting from across the ocean, moved to replace him quickly. Albright’s many publications and the fact that he was already in Jerusalem were in his favor, though his youth was not (King 1983: 58). The committee decided to take a chance on him, and he became the school’s frst long-term director, serving from 1920 to 1929. During a sabbatical in 1926–1927, he presented more than a hundred lectures around the United States about ASOR and its activities (King 1983: 85). Albright served as director again in 1933–1936 by spending half the year in Jerusalem and half in the United States. As Long (1993: 36–37) points out, it is diffcult to “imagine what Albright could have discovered during those frst nine months in British mandate Palestine that would have ‘jolted’ him out of his skepticism.” To believe this trope is to believe that the facts on the ground that Albright alluded to really existed, when what he actually encountered were interpretations of archaeological data. Thomas W. Davis describes the archaeological evidence that Albright encountered (2004: 81–83), though he notes that in concluding that the evidence supported the Bible and could be read in no other way, “Albright was a victim of his own presuppositions.” J. Edward Wright (2002b: 66) argues that his colleague in Jerusalem, Melvin Grove Kyle, held views that “were certainly not Albright’s, and they provide a clear contrast to Albright’s more considered opinion.” It is true Albright was not as strait laced as Kyle, an avowed opponent of jazz music and playing cards (Kyle [1927] 2007: 14). Albright once had to persuade him to participate in a dig with Catholic priests, whom Kyle feared would be winebibbers.8 But I would argue that the difference between Kyle and Albright was more in rhetorical strategy than in substance. Indeed, Albright’s appeals to science occasionally sound as though they were lifted from Kyle’s writings.

Producing Objective Facts 17 Kyle, Albright, and an ecumenical host of scholars set off in 1924 to explore the Dead Sea under the joint auspices of ASOR and Xenia Theological Seminary. Kyle’s resulting popular narrative, Explorations at Sodom (1927), put forth a remarkably similar vision of the relationship between archaeology and religion that Albright would afterward espouse. Kyle, who had spent a great deal of time in Palestine and written books along the same lines in previous decades, held the view that science could only prove the Bible, not disprove it, because the truth of the Bible was unimpeachable. Indeed, Kyle (1927: 20) hoped in Explorations at Sodom to write something interesting enough to do justice to the “journalistic fashion” in which he believed “the Pentateuch” itself had been written. And yet, because the expedition was “scientifc,” Kyle maintained that they did not know the results beforehand. Kyle recounted how announcement of the expedition brought eager inquiries as to what they were “going to fnd,” a request that “provoked a smile, a subtle scientifc smile,” for these inquirers seemed to think the scientists knew what they would fnd (1927: 11). Science works the other way around, Kyle explained. As further evidence of the expedition’s neutrality, he demonstrated its ecumenical nature. Kyle listed carefully the names and religious affliations of the expedition members, which to him meant the “strictly scientifc character of the work may be assured” (1927: 24). He himself was Presbyterian and the president of Xenia; Albright was Methodist; fint and stone expert Pere Mallon was a Jesuit; the Department of Antiquities representative was Na’im Makhouli, a local Greek Catholic; the Thayer fellow and two Xenia students represented various Protestant denominations; and Eliezer Sukenik was a Russian Jew who had moved to Palestine. “This unusual combination of faiths certainly relieves the expedition of any possible suspicion of sectarianism,” Kyle wrote. And yet in the next sentence he touched on the cornerstone of this ecumenism: “All these were men of devout reverence for the Old Testament Scriptures” (Kyle 1927: 26). In some ways, Explorations at Sodom was a classic Holy Land narrative (for more on the characteristics of Holy Land narratives, see Yothers, 2007, and Rogers, 2011). Kyle was certain that his own two eyes were making incredible biblical connections. “As I looked far over the well-cultivated felds, I understood why Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh wished to remain on this side Jordan rather than to pass over to the stony hills of the Promised Land,” Kyle wrote upon seeing the Dead Sea (1927: 28). Kyle felt this place was so timeless that the patriarchs might be anywhere: “In this land of primitive things we seem to have been suddenly transported into the patriarchal world, and it seems as if it were a former age and another state of existence” (1927: 34). And Kyle took on previous travelers, scoffng at their reports of “horrid smells” and “pestilential swamps” (1927: 51), which he experienced nowhere around the Dead Sea. He had an explanation for why past writers would have made such mistakes: they wrote “under the spell of the dreadful tragedy which took place here. They have not been untruthful, but psychology sometimes

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makes people ‘see things’” (Kyle 1927: 52). But, “If we are fnding mistakes in travellers’ accounts of this place, it is not so with the Biblical account” (1927: 52), or, presumably, with Kyle’s powers of observation. King’s (1983: 83) description of Kyle’s epistemology in his ASOR history remains valid: “It was Kyle’s assumption that if it could be proved that something might have happened, it was thereby proved that it had happened.” This does indeed smack of scientifcally indefensible fundamentalism. Yet it is only a more obvious form of Albright’s lifelong methodology of reaching conclusions that supported the Bible’s historicity, ignoring the possibility that there might be other interpretations of the data, and dismissing anyone who disagreed with him as outdated, absurd, or of sinister intent. It was based on the view that objective facts, irrespective of interpretation, were piling up and pointing in one direction: toward the Bible’s historicity. Without naming names, Kyle reminded readers of the attack under way on the biblical text, but then informed them that “the radicals are much disturbed, and well they may be,” because “Field-men of Bible lands are nearly all facing in the opposite direction” (1927: 18). Though they “have not, as yet, progressed very far,” he admitted, “it is the direction which determines where one is going” (1927: 18). Kyle’s admission that facts remained few is interesting in light of Albright’s later claim that the facts he encountered in Palestine at that time were overwhelming. Kyle insisted science was the accumulation of facts, not interpretations of facts, but not because he did not understand the latter argument. For Kyle, it was the public’s ignorance that made them occasionally wonder “if the archaeologist knows and knows that he knows, or if he only makes a more or less clever guess” (1927: 20), in other words, an interpretation. Kyle’s book endeavored to “clear the atmosphere” by making plain “that archaeology in Bible Lands is a real science, as trustworthy as any other historical science” (1927: 20). Kyle’s fnal paragraph in Explorations at Sodom reiterated the inevitability of this hand-in-hand march of science and religion: “Archaeological research is progressing rapidly,” he assured his readers, “and, when the trustworthiness of Scripture is fnally and completely established, any theory based upon the untrustworthiness of the ancient documents will come down like a house of cards.” Switching to italics, he impressed one last lesson on his audience: “Facts are fnal” (emphasis in original; Kyle 1927: 141). The infuence of Kyle can be contrasted with an infuence Albright later shrugged off, that of Palestinian folklore studies. In the early 1920s, Albright took interest in collecting Palestinian folklore to shed light on biblical customs. He worked with a group of Palestinians who performed the feldwork and published fndings in the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society. Albright’s initial assumption that the Palestinian peasants’ mind was “in so many respects no doubt, like his Israelite and Canaanite predecessors” was, in Silberman’s (1993: 10) view, a “Euro-centric leap of faith” that it was important to move beyond. However, there may have been a

Producing Objective Facts 19 political motivation for Albright’s turn away from Palestinian folklore. In the nineteenth century, almost every traveler to the Holy Land assumed the locals, their customs, and their costumes refected biblical times. By the 1920s, scholars who were interested in Palestinian culture tended to connect biblical peoples to the Palestinians, and some used this to advocate for their rights vis-à-vis Jewish immigrants. As will be shown in a later chapter, Nelson Glueck when he opposed political Zionism stressed the perdurance of culture through the millennia in Palestine, and then later as a political Zionist rejected the notion that Palestinians had been in the area more than a couple of centuries. Decades later, Albright would recall that at one time he sympathized with the Palestinians. Interest in their folklore may have been a scholarly manifestation of that sympathy. The way that interest in folklore could promote a pro-native and antiZionist agenda is evident in the work of Taufk Canaan, one of the folklore collectors, who in 1927 published a hefty volume titled Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine. Canaan, a Palestinian Christian with a medical degree from the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut), served for many years as ASOR’s physician. He was also president of the Palestine Oriental Society the year his book was published. For a reading of Canaan’s work within the longer trajectory of writing about Palestinian folklore, see Tamari (2004). In 1936, Canaan published two pamphlets, “The Palestine Arab Cause” and “Confict in the Land of Peace,” which detailed his hopes for Arab self-determination in Palestine. Canaan announced that because he was not a trained archaeologist, he was “not attempting to do more than place on record the bare material which I have collected” (1927: v). Despite this claim to innocence, Canaan’s text invested the past with political meaning. He made the Palestinians the true heirs to the ancient Israelites and collapsed current practice into the past to give his conviction of the Palestinians’ right to their ancestral land a timeless quality. Canaan argued that native Palestinians from the ancient Israelites to the present Christians and Muslims shared a common culture, a culture he deemed important to preserve in the face of the Western Christian and Jewish cultures he observed colonizing the area. Like many anthropologists and folklorists, Canaan feared the loss of the culture he loved. “The primitive features of Palestine are disappearing so quickly that before long most of them will be forgotten,” he warned readers, because of “the great infuences which the West is exerting upon the East” (Canaan 1927: front matter). Canaan saw Palestine as containing two basic cultures: native Palestinian culture (“simple, crude, but uncontaminated”) and Western culture (“more sophisticated but more unnatural”) (1927: v). For Canaan, there were “underlying continuities” to Palestinian culture that had persisted for millennia (Taha 2019: 25). They persisted under the thin veneer of the later elite textual religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that had only appeared to colonize the area.

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Despite his claim to leaving the work of comparison and analysis to the “real” archaeologists, Canaan compared three categories of folk traditions—those of Palestinian Christians, those of Palestinian Muslims, and those in the Bible—and focused on the similarities. “The shrines are mostly situated on an elevated place” (1927: 3), he wrote, then affrmed the biblically literate reader’s logical leap: “This choice of situation is not a new custom, for we read that the people of the ancient Orient used to choose such places for the erection of their temples and the worship of their gods” (1927: 5). Because the Old Testament portrayed high places as Canaanite worship sites, they had long been considered pagan. For example, Kyle, when identifying a “high place” during the Dead Sea expedition, shivered at the thought that “Here … the people of ancient Kir gathered, far from distractions of business or pleasure or labour, and performed—what strange, perhaps horrid rites?” (Kyle 1927: 42). But Canaan simply did not recognize any important difference between Canaanite and Israelite religion. After all, he pointed out, “the ark of Noah, Moriah and Abraham’s sacrifce, Sinai and the Law, Ebal and Gerizim” all happened on some relatively high places (Canaan 1927: 6). “It is the same also with Jesus,” Canaan continued (1927: 6). “On a mountain he was tempted, was transfgured, preached, prayed, was crucifed, and from a mountain he ascended to heaven.” Though many other scholars would be critical of a model of cultural perdurance, Canaan (1927: 280) gave no sign of questioning it, writing that none of this should be surprising as soon as one realized “that these same Palestine” peasants “are heirs and to some extent descendants of the heathen inhabitants of prebiblical times, who built the frst high places.” This predilection for high places “was adopted from their predecessors by the Israelites and by them transmitted to following generations” (Canaan 1927: 6). Unlike Albright or other writers convinced of the superiority of the Israelites’ religion, Canaan did not argue that the Israelites refned this practice, purifed it, consecrated it to Yahweh, or changed its meaning. Instead he placed Canaanites and Israelites into a monocultural history that led to the present-day local Palestinian shrines. He also included Jewish folk practices, such as when he explained that the hand decorations found in shrines represented the hand of Fatimah among Muslims, the hand of Mary among Christians, and the hand of God among Jews (Canaan 1927: 12). Thus, he saw similarities among Palestinian peasants, whether past, present, polytheistic, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. The Jews moving into Palestine at the time, however, he associated with Western colonization. Further, Canaan (1927: 137) saw textual religion as pertaining to the elite form of religion he associated with Westerners. “Popular religion,” Canaan argued, “is in many ways hostile to the religion of the Qoran and the Bible.” Even so, Canaan tended to read the Bible as brimming with folk religion, and possibly nothing else. Canaan (1927: 76) connected the tradition of sacred stone piles, which he said was common among Palestinian Christians

Producing Objective Facts 21 and Muslims, to the book of Joshua, when “the Israelites erected stones at Gilgal as a memorial after crossing the Jordan.” For those skeptical that Christians venerated rocks, Canaan (1927: 79) reminded them of “Golgotha, and the pillar where Christ was bound and scourged,” and, particularly among native Palestinians, “the sacred stones of St. George, the ‘Milk Grotto,’ and the rock on which Elijah is supposed to have rested.” Canaan (1927: 181–182) emphasized interactions between Muslims and Christians that indicated underlying similarities, recounting tales of Christians who participated in Ramadan and Muslim mothers who, after losing a child, vowed to baptize their next child to gain Jesus’ protection. Whatever Jesus may mean to others, Canaan described him as a local Palestinian saint or god. Just as he wrote about other local saints, Canaan wrote that Jesus’ special powers remained in effect, with women using the water near the place they believed he healed a blind man to treat eye problems (1927: 65). Another infuence Albright encountered in Jerusalem was Christian Zionism, or beliefs about Jews’ role in the end times, beliefs that there is no whiff of evidence Albright ever held. The Rev. Herbert Danby, a Christian Zionist Anglican minister who came to Jerusalem at age 30 in 1919, the same year as Albright, was also a member of the Palestine Oriental Society. Danby served as church librarian and consultant to Rennie Miles MacInnes, the Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem. MacInnes, who opposed Zionist aspirations and sympathized with the local Arab population, found that Danby was his opposite. For Danby, according to Shalom Goldman (2009: 139), “the relationship between Christian Hebraism, philo-Semitism, and support of Zionism was unusually direct.” Apparently, Danby was also no fan of Haupt, who died in 1927. “We had a considerable shock when the news came of Paul Haupt’s death—not that he was personally lamented,” Danby wrote glibly to Albright, “but because we had a horrid shock lest you should be offered his post.”9 Haupt’s death is indeed what eventually tore Albright away from Jerusalem when, two years later, he accepted an offer to replace his mentor at Johns Hopkins.

Notes 1 William Foxwell Albright to Peter Katz, August 8, 1949, William Foxwell Albright’s unprocessed papers, American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (hereafter APS). 2 William Foxwell Albright to Paul Haupt, October 11, 1922, APS. 3 William Foxwell Albright to Aaron Ember, October 6, 1922, APS. 4 Aaron Ember to William Foxwell Albright, February 2, 1925, APS. 5 Emphasis added. William Foxwell Albright to James Nies, November 11, 1920, APS. 6 Paul F. Bloomhardt to William Foxwell Albright, February 3, 1920, APS. 7 Paul Haupt to William Foxwell Albright, May 22, 1920, APS. 8 William Foxwell Albright to Melvin Grove Kyle, November 4, 1932, APS. 9 Herbert Danby to William Foxwell Albright, March 8, 1927, APS.

2 Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism in the Works of William Foxwell Albright and Millar Burrows

Whether the scholars investigated in this work supported or opposed ­political Zionism was related to their beliefs about cultural interaction, an issue that was also core to their academic publications. This chapter focuses on the published writings and archival papers of William Foxwell Albright and his contemporary, Millar Burrows, who disagreed about political Zionism. Burrows’ opposition to political Zionism related to his seeing cultures in terms of interaction and fluidity, whereas Albright’s support for it related to his seeing ethnic boundaries as rigid and unchanging. Both Burrows and Albright took political action in their lifetimes on this issue, and their scholarship about the ancient past, whether they were aware of it or not, also constituted a commentary on it. Burrows published a book about Palestinian refugees; thus, his political involvement was no secret. Albright’s political involvement in favor of a Jewish state, which he later denied, is reconstructed here from archival materials. Albright’s focus on biblical historicity has not held up well, but his ­defenders often dismiss his major theoretical problems by asserting he was as advanced as possible for his time. J. Edward Wright, for example, argues that critics fault Albright “essentially for not measuring up to today’s standards in archaeological methodology and in ideological self-awareness” (in Elliott 2002: iii). This impulse to protect Albright’s legacy with a “product of his time” argument ignores other products of that time, like Burrows, who displayed a thoroughgoing theoretical caution about the relationship between archaeology and the Bible. Burrows, like Albright, held top leadership positions in the American Schools of Oriental Research, serving two years as Jerusalem school director and as ASOR president from 1934 to 1948. These two men exemplified opposite poles within scholarship on the three binaries laid out in the introduction: Albright, borrowing scientific metaphors of crystalline structures, argued that cultures were unique and, if forced to change too much, did not adapt but instead shattered. Burrows believed cultures were fluid and mutually changed each other when they interacted. Albright wanted to unite science and the humanities by holding the humanities to scientific standards, arguing that scholars who were truly objective were able to produce scientific facts. Burrows, a relativist,

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-3

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 23 cautioned against too quick an assumption that one’s own tradition was superior and also against the chimera of objectivity, arguing that scholars always and necessarily interpreted the facts they were analyzing. Albright was a political Zionist, believing that a Jewish state should be founded, whereas Burrows was a cultural Zionist, believing that Jews, especially Holocaust refugees, should be allowed to emigrate to Palestine but should form a government with non-Jewish inhabitants. Though he was accused of anti-Semitism after publishing Palestine Is Our Business, he had been vice president of the National Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (Weir 2014: 88). Albright primarily focused on differences between the ancient Israelites and Canaanites, no less than between the Western Jews in Palestine and the native Arabs, whose culture he frequently maligned. Burrows primarily focused on similarities between Israelites and Canaanites; likewise, he believed Jews and Arabs could fnd enough common ground to coexist in Palestine. It is important to note that both men understood the ancient Israelites to have existed as a distinct culture. Even though they both took that as a given, there is a marked contrast in their views of cultural interactions both past and present. This chapter frst examines some of Albright’s main scholarly ideas: that the Israelites and Canaanites were fundamentally different rather than similar; that cultures were internally homogeneous and should not be mixed together; and that true scholarship was scientifc and objective rather than interpretive and subjective. Following that is a discussion of Albright’s political activism. The chapter then turns to Burrows’ main scholarly ideas: a focus on the similarities between Israelites and Canaanites; the danger of putting forward a mythology of cultural purity; and the necessarily interpretive nature of scholarship. Burrows, unlike Albright, did not claim political neutrality. In 1949, he resigned his leadership positions in scholarly organizations before publishing Palestine Is Our Business, a book about the Palestinian refugee crisis. Burrows opposed a Jewish state, but not because he favored an Arab state. He had not opposed Jewish immigration to Palestine, only the possible outcome of an ethnic state. Burrows rejected ethnic nationalism in any form, and the theoretical basis for his opposition—that cultures are not essentially homogeneous, mutually exclusive, or unchanging over the centuries—is evident throughout his scholarship.

Cultural Homogeneity in Albright’s Writings In an article about Albright’s 1919–1929 decade in Jerusalem, Neil Asher Silberman quotes the claims to neutrality that Albright established as early as 1920 and repeated again to a reporter soon after returning to Baltimore. Silberman (1993: 15) rejects the idea that Albright was neutral without determining in which ways he was not, instead offering his groundwork as “a historical preface to what I hope can be a continuing discussion of the modern political and ideological nature of Albright’s legacy.” This chapter

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suggests two major aspects of that legacy: (1) Albright’s support for political Zionism was implicit in his writings, some of which were widely read; and (2) about a decade after returning to Baltimore, Albright became an active political Zionist and established his credibility in large part by invoking his decade in Jerusalem. Albright’s worldview concerning cultural interactions applied both to his construction of the relationship between ancient Israelites and Canaanites and to his political Zionism. He believed cultures were strictly bounded from one another, experienced very little change over long periods of time, and could easily be destroyed if changed too much. At the level of detail, Albright admitted some similarities between Israelite and Canaanite cultures, and briefy in 1938 he suggested replacing the paradigm of biblical archaeology with that of Syro-Palestinian archaeology (Davis 2004: 87). At the broader level, however, Albright set up a clear-cut opposition, as shown in the title of his fnal monograph, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths (1968). Albright argued the book of Joshua, depicting the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan, accurately fulflled God’s will. In contrast, Burrows wrote, “We cannot believe now that it was ever God’s will that men should massacre one another as Joshua massacred the Canaanites, but Joshua thought it was God’s will” (1938: 21). So, while both believed the conquest occurred, Albright believed it was justifed. For Albright (1957: 281), this annihilation was necessary for the Israelites’ religion to survive; if more Canaanites had been left alive, Israel’s purity would have become hopelessly defled: It was fortunate for the future of monotheism that the Israelites of the Conquest were a wild folk, endowed with primitive energy and ruthless will to exist, since the resulting decimation of the Canaanites prevented the complete fusion of the two kindred folk which would almost inevitably have depressed Yahwistic standards to a point where recovery was impossible. Thus the Canaanites, with their orgiastic nature-worship, their cult of fertility in the form of serpent symbols and sensuous nudity, and their gross mythology, were replaced by Israel, with its pastoral simplicity and purity of life, its lofty monotheism, and its severe code of ethics. Albright’s student Delbert Hillers later criticized Albright’s view of the Canaanites, writing: “Prepared as we all are to think the worst of that people whom the Israelites are supposed to have extirpated, Albright did nothing in his work on Ugaritic and Canaanite religion to mitigate the effect of our prejudice” (1989: 53). Peter Feinman notes that the “very harsh words” used against the Canaanites mirrored the anti-Catholic rhetoric Albright grew up with as a child of Methodist missionaries in Chile (2012: 148–149). Neither scholar comments on the resemblance between Albright’s views of the Israelites and Canaanites and his views of modern peoples in the Middle East.

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 25 Albright’s political Zionism was underpinned by ideas about the necessity of preserving internally homogeneous, unchanging group cultures. In describing how cultures work, Albright borrowed scientifc metaphors of crystalline structures to argue that cultures were unique and endured for centuries; if forced to change they did not adapt but rather shattered (1964: 199). He believed that the Jews of his time represented the same culture as the biblical Israelites he studied, indicated by his use of a singular personifed “Israel”: “At least thirty-fve centuries have passed since the ancestors of Israel frst settled in Palestine,” he wrote in a piece promoting Zionism titled “Palestine as a Contributing Factor in the Solution of the Jewish Problem.” “Again and again it has been nearly wiped out; it has been exiled in Egypt, in Mesopotamia; it has wandered in ever widening circles as its sons have found refuge from persecution in more and more distant lands.”1 Therefore, modern Jews deserved an ethnic state that would protect their culture from the destruction Albright believed was wrought through cultural mixing. While this rhetoric connects Albright to the larger discourse of restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel that can be traced especially in British and American culture, he did not suggest this was fulflling biblical prophecy or nod to future fulfllments. The role of his views of cultural groups appears a stronger factor. His support for Jews mirrored his views on African Americans in the United States, whose cause he championed. Albright argued minority groups became more creative and hardworking than dominant groups, spurring dominant groups to do better; therefore, the “state of excitation” caused by minority groups was desirable for both majority and minority (1957: 99). Albright’s magnum opus, From the Stone Age to Christianity, demonstrated his view that true scholarship was scientifc and objective rather than interpretive and subjective. He presented a universal history with Palestine as its center, even before the biblical period, based on Albright’s contention that “Palestine, with rich cranial and skeletal remains from Galilee and Carmel,” had “replaced France as the focus of prehistoric research” (1957: 29). He connected past to present with a reference to the Babylonian Jews of the exile as comprising “a vigorous proto-Zionist movement” (1957: 324). As Peter Machinist (1996: 399) notes, the bulk of Albright’s longer works represent the attempt to “write ‘universal’ history” of the sort that had been “in the air” in the nineteenth century. Albright argued historians were capable of adhering to “just as rigorous a method as is used by natural scientists” (1957: 2) and thus history was properly universal, not particularist. In FSAC, Albright retrojected monotheism to the time of Moses, arguing that true monotheism—not henotheism or polytheism—had been the religion of the Israelites since Moses. He juxtaposed the true monotheists with the peoples around them, thus presenting a vision of a monotheistic culture separated from all forms of irrational, ahistorical paganism, spanning the Israelite period to the present. By arguing for the earliest possible monotheism, Albright rejected the common biblical studies trope, espoused by

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Burrows and many others, that religion evolved through various stages in the Bible and culminated in Christianity. For Albright, the religion was already complete in all ways except for Jesus at Moses’ time. Indeed, in an analysis of Albright’s relationship to Christian orthodoxy, Stephen Alter suggests that Albright believed the religion was complete even before Jesus, and that “Jesus and his disciples did not invent or innovate; rather, they had accepted their Jewish heritage, and Christians ever since had been blessed by their faith in that older revelation” (2012: 12). “In the light of the now available data,” Albright wrote, “it is perfectly clear that the period between 1350 and 1250 B.C. was ideally suited to give birth to monotheism” (1957: 12). The use of the phrase “perfectly clear” is representative of Albright’s rhetorical style. These words provided reassurance to those like-minded readers who were similarly frustrated that “nearly every book and passage of the Old Testament has been stigmatized as a literary forgery by at least one scholar” (1957: 78). Machinist (1996: 402) considers the historical syntheses “the weakest by far” of Albright’s writings. They were also the most likely to be read by nonspecialists. Albright received gushing fan mail about FSAC, including from Wilbur Smith, professor of English Bible at Moody Bible Institute. “Frankly, if I had my life to live over,” Smith wrote, I would come to Johns Hopkins for three solid years of work at your feet, and would devote myself day and night to acquiring some of the discipline and a few fragments of the vast knowledge which characterize everything you do.2 Another fan was Albright’s father, Wilbur Albright, who wrote that he was “greatly pleased with the conclusion”—that all archaeology so far supported the Bible. He complained about Harry Emerson Fosdick’s recent Holy Land narrative because Fosdick was not an expert like his son. “His ‘facts’ or data are mostly obtained from the gray matter stored in the cranium,” the elder Albright scoffed. His son was the authority, and his son was saving the Bible. “The Old Book was a safe and suffcient guide to our fathers and their pious relatives,” Wilbur Albright continued. “I am so glad you are able to establish … its veracity. The argument is incontrovertible.”3 Believing objectivity is impossible, Albright argued, is the biggest obstacle to realizing that historical knowledge and scientifc knowledge are the same. “The relativists” think there is “a fundamental difference between historical and scientifc knowledge” (1957: 113). But for him, archaeological data was realia: “archaeological data are just as contemporary as are the facts gathered laboriously by astronomers through telescopes and spectroscopes, since the latter are also tangible records of events which transpired in the past” (1957: 114). Scientists were supposed to establish the laws of their felds; Albright believed historical laws could be established based on “the material, social, and mental characteristics of a given culture” (1957: 116). “There is no way

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 27 of telling how an individual will react” (1957: 116) to events, but, Albright argued, that had nothing to do with the perduring laws governing that individual’s group that he believed could be studied scientifcally. Cultures could experience changes, though, when taken over by other cultures or, for example, during the “abrupt break between Judaism and Christianity in the frst century A.D.” (1957: 124), which bolstered his argument that, without crisis, cultures remain the same. He claimed the break was “followed by nearly two thousand years in which Judaism and Christianity themselves have changed little … Protestantism is not a new religion, but simply an effort to return to early Christianity” (1957: 124). An example of the former, a culture taking over another, was when the Israelites took over the Canaanites. Though elsewhere Albright expressed wariness of using the terms “race” or “racial,” in the following passage he justifed the traditional account of the brutal conquest of Canaan to prevent “racial mixing”: From the impartial standpoint of a philosopher of history, it often seems necessary that a people of markedly inferior type should vanish before a people of superior potentialities, since there is a point beyond which racial mixing cannot be without disaster. When such a process takes place—as at present in Australia—there is generally little that can be done by the humanitarian—though every deed of brutality and injustice is infallibly visited upon the aggressor. (1957: 280) More chilling than the casual remarks on the supposed destruction of the Canaanites many centuries ago was Albright’s commentary on the inevitability (though admittedly not the morality) of a contemporaneous genocide, all the while standing on the pedestal he constructed as the objective seer of inexorable historical laws. Further, it recalls Albright’s suggestions elsewhere that Jews were just such a people of superior potentialities in the twentieth-century Middle East (1942: 12–13).

Albright’s Political Activism Albright maintained an appearance of public neutrality from 1929, his return from Jerusalem, until 1941, when he began speaking in favor of political Zionism. On January 23, 1941, he accepted an invitation4 from a Baltimore physician, Herman Seidel, to speak to his Labor Zionist group “on a Palestinian topic, the exact nature of which you may decide upon.”5 Albright’s speech to an overtly Zionist group led other Zionists to recognize his willingness to transgress previous boundaries. Stephen S. Wise, a Reform rabbi and outspoken political Zionist, asked him on February 14, 1941, to join the American Palestine Committee, which Emanuel Neumann founded in 1931 as a pro-Zionist organization composed mainly of prominent non-Jewish Americans.6 Albright offcially endorsed the

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committee’s May 8, 1941, statement that favored allowing Palestinian Jews to form a Jewish army for community protection.7 It was this same issue of a Jewish army—composed of one ethnic group for the protection of that ethnic group—that caused a vocal minority of anti-Zionist American Reform Jews to form the American Council for Judaism in February 1942 (Kolsky 1990: 3). In August 1941, Albright accepted an invitation to speak to a Zionist group in Wilmington, Delaware.8 It was sent by Rabbi Isadore Breslau, who asked him to lecture “on ‘Recent Excavations in Palestine’ or some subject connected with Zionism.”9 On October 19, 1941, Albright wrote to his father, not entirely truthfully, that though he was pro-Zionist he was not acting on this view. I am turning down or postponing requests for lectures or addresses right along. The news that I am now sympathetic with political Zionism (in its less chauvinistic aspects) leaked out through a letter which I wrote to the head of a non-Jewish organization in Philadelphia, so I have been invited to give a number of addresses at big Jewish gatherings in various cities. I have sidestepped all so far.10 Albright wrote this two days after Neumann enthusiastically thanked him for accepting an invitation to speak at a Philadelphia Zionist meeting.11 On December 14, 1941, Ephraim Speiser, the University of Pennsylvania’s distinguished Jewish Assyriologist and, from Albright’s viewpoint, a respected elder, wrote to gently warn him that “it would be a … serious waste if you allowed your various activities (important as they unquestionably are) to interfere drastically with your publications.”12 Albright’s mien of scholarly objectivity was a major reason he became a sought-after speaker on Zionism. Many considered him the foremost biblical expert in the world. This was similar to the reason many Zionists adored Walter Clay Lowdermilk’s Palestine: Land of Promise (1944), which concluded that Palestine could absorb four million more immigrants. Lowdermilk, who was not Jewish, was assistant chief of the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even though Lowdermilk peppered his narrative from the frst page with romantic allusions to the Bible, fans of the book focused on his status as a non-Jew and a scientist. Albright’s insistence that biblical archaeology was a science lent his pronouncements an aura of objectivity while masking the worldview informing his scholarship. One of America’s most prominent Zionist leaders, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, asked Albright to speak to his congregation in Cleveland “a little about the archaeological work which you have carried on in Palestine,” alongside “something about the importance of Palestine today.”13 Albright replied that, per Silver’s suggestion, he would speak on “‘Archaeology and Zionism,’ thus bringing in both my own feld of research and the modern Zionist movement, with the accent on the latter.”14

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 29 As a non-Jew and a scientist, Albright framed himself as an objective outsider to the issue of Zionism. In November 1943, he addressed a Jewish group in New Orleans and wrote afterward to organizer Baruch Braunstein that “I really believe that the two groups were brought closer together and that I succeeded in dissipating some of the prejudices” of the non-Zionists, who he thought were swayed by hearing someone who “would look to the problems raised objectively, and who favored Zionism without taking part in any inner Jewish dispute.”15 The work done here by the language of objectivity is especially clear as Albright accuses non-Zionists of prejudice while describing himself as simultaneously objective and in favor of Zionism. Additionally, Albright drew upon the personal experience he gained in the 1920s and often emphasized the access he had had to many sides of the issue while in Jerusalem. Philip King in his history of ASOR repeats the common story that Albright listened attentively but neutrally to both sides in the confict, pointing to his fuency “in modern Hebrew and Arabic” as having been “a distinct asset … especially in the 1920s, when a sympathetic ear (and tongue) were appreciated by both political sides” (1983: 231). For example, after the Christian Century published an anti-Zionist letter by an Arab, Albright wrote to the editor that he had developed his stance on Zionism only after much weighing of the evidence. “I had a great many friends among both Arabs and Jews of all parties and political complexion,” he wrote. “Since I traveled constantly and explored all corners of Palestine, … I became intimately familiar with the facts in the case.”16 Ruth Albright shared her husband’s views on Zionism and often spoke in his stead. For example, when Albright felt unable to accept the invitation of Mrs. Chas. Auerbach—who praised him for “the remarkable impression you made during your recent visit here for the conference of the United Palestine Appeal”—to return to Cleveland to speak to Hadassah on the subject of “the full meaning of Zionism and its place in a democratic world,” 17 Albright offered his wife instead. “She is an experienced and able speaker,” he assured Mrs. Auerbach, “having given hundreds of public addresses, mainly on Palestine, during the past ten years. … Incidentally, she has pinch-hit for me a number of times and has given entire satisfaction, since she is defnitely a more interesting speaker than I am.”18 To another inquirer he wrote, “It never rains but it pours.”19 In an article published in the Zionist periodical The New Palestine, Albright announced he had become a “political Zionist” to differentiate himself from cultural Zionists (1942: 12). By using the term “political Zionist,” Albright was distinguishing himself from the cultural Zionism espoused, for example, by Hebrew University President Judah Leon Magnes, who was quickly falling out of favor among Zionists as the drive for an ethno-national state became preeminent. Jacob Billikopf of the Labor Standards Association wrote Albright to inquire as to his view of Magnes, who was Billikopf’s former wife’s uncle, complaining that Magnes did not deserve the vicious attacks he was receiving from Zionists.20 Magnes advocated a binational state and

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predicted that a tragic population transfer would result if a Jewish ethnonational state came into being. He refused to participate in political Zionism because he opposed on principle the idea of an essentially Jewish state. “As you suspected I am also a warm admirer of Dr. Magnes,” Albright carefully wrote to Magnes’ erstwhile nephew-in-law, but he had always been inclined “to think that his attitude on political Zionism is rather unrealistic.”21 Another thinker who espoused cultural rather than political Zionism was Ahad Ha’am, who, Neumann bitterly wrote to Albright, “has done our movement infnite harm” with his idea of Palestine as only a “spiritual center.”22 Use of the term “political Zionist” also suggests Albright was aware of the political nature of what he was doing, as do several comments he made in letters. This may seem an obvious point, but it is made in regards to Albright’s later claims that he was always neutral. “Since coming out in support of political Zionism last year I am kept busy evading lecture engagements,” he wrote to Louis Finkelstein, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. “All my old reasons for adhering strictly to a neutral position on Zionism as such have been knocked into a cocked hat by the remorseless logic of history.”23 To college pal Sam Geiser he wrote that he was “ashamed to say that I have been running around a lot during the past year and a half speaking at Jewish meetings and for Zionist or Jewish-Appeal organizations,” since “it does take much time and I don’t know how useful it is.”24 To his Ph.D. student John Bright he wrote, “I have been speaking for Jewish groups in … [a] big way,” because “friendly goys are all too rare at present.”25 In December 1943, Albright was sent on a more diffcult assignment to Richmond, Virginia, where Henry Atkinson of the Christian Council on Palestine warned him that he would be up against a strong chapter of the American Council for Judaism. Atkinson characterized the ACJ as “a rabidly anti-Zionist group” and believed the “hostility of leading antiZionists” was muting the “mass sentiment of the Jewish community, which is pro-Zionist.”26 He presumed that the only reason the American Council opposed Zionism was the fear that Jews would no longer be seen as patriotic Americans. Therefore, he wrote Albright, your visit to Richmond is of signifcance, frst, because of your distinction as a Christian scholar and as an expert on Palestine, and secondly, because your attitude toward Jewish Palestine, coming from a Christian, is in itself the best refutation of the fears and phobias of the leaders of the American Council for Judaism.27 Albright was pleased to be able to report afterward that his “moderate position (combined with enthusiasm for Zionist achievements in Palestine and Jewish achievements in the world at large) appeared to conciliate such non-Zionists and anti-Zionists as were there.”28 It was typical of the detractors of the ACJ, which was led by Rabbi Elmer Berger, to dismiss their anti-Zionist stance as one of fear for their own place

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 31 in American society. Berger’s assistant David Goldberg wrote to Albright to explain that while the ACJ opposed the British White Paper because it limited immigration specifcally of Jews, and hence was discriminatory, they continued to oppose “a Jewish state anywhere in the world” based on the same principle.29 “I would say that we are not against the political independence of a state in which Jews should chance to be a majority,” Goldberg continued. But if it were designated a Jewish state, that would be “tantamount to establishing a race-state or a religion-state—a source of permanent evil.”30 It was the ACJ’s chief goal to “fght the Jewish state idea” because its members believed it was “fraught with trouble without end.” Based on the same principle, the ACJ stood for equal rights for Jews anywhere in the world.31 Albright participated in a public relations campaign against King Ibn Saud’s statements condemning Zionism in an interview in May 31, 1943, issue of Life magazine. Carl Alpert, managing editor of The New Palestine, wrote to Albright asking him to “dispatch a brief letter to the editors of Life pointing out the inaccuracies, the irrelevancies, or the immorality found in Ibn Saud’s statement.”32 Albright’s letter fulflling this request made a series of points about the translation from Arabic that seemed meant to rhetorically daze the editors with his superior knowledge as an academic. The letter demonstrates that one of Albright’s ongoing blind spots regarding Zionism was that he did not believe Jews as a group could harm others. He argued that Ibn Saud’s statement was false because “it asserts that the Arabs of Palestine have suffered and will suffer more at the hands of the Jews,” even though “occasional exceptions may be quoted to upset any rule.”33 Per his philosophy of history, the actions of individuals were simply aberrant; he did not see Jewish culture as violent, so Ibn Saud’s examples were just a number of aberrations. He rejected the violent Zionists (many of whom became statesmen in the new Israel) as “pathogenic,” an “utterly insignifcant minority.”34 Another component of Albright’s Zionism was his colonial viewpoint that the Arabs were incapable of bettering themselves on their own. He often suggested Arabs should thank Jews for having brought Palestine into the modern age. “From personal knowledge I can affrm with confdence that the Arabs of Palestine already owe a great deal, economically, socially, politically, culturally, to Zionist achievements in Palestine. … The Arabs still continue to gain far more than they lose,” he claimed.35 He also criticized Arabs for “failing—as usual in such cases—to appreciate the remarkable progress” that the British and French colonial rulers had brought them in only “the past twenty-odd years.”36 After several years, Albright wrote that the excesses and polemics of the various sides were wearying him. In 1946, he resigned from the Christian Council on Palestine over a detail published with his name attached in The New York Times that he considered a “direct distortion of the facts.”37 Columbia University professor Philip K. Hitti was upset to see Albright’s

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name on the advertisement, which stated that most Arabs in Palestine descended from nineteenth-century immigrants and thus were not the product of centuries of habitation. Though this was a common Zionist trope, Albright informed Carl Voss, the Council’s executive secretary, that this “is at least 90% false as it stands.”38 Another upset party was Khalil Totah, who had been among the group of Palestinian ethnographers active when Albright was in Jerusalem. A Quaker, Totah had been appointed principal of the Friends Boys School in Ramallah in 1927 after completing higher education in the United States (Gallagher 2007: 24). In 1946, he wrote to Albright after he had recently returned to the United States to become executive director of the Institute of Arab and American Affairs. He wrote to complain about the sentence in The New York Times, adding that he had felt personally attacked by Christian supporters of Zionism, who “heaped so much abuse on the Arabs.”39 Albright promised to resign from the organization because of the NYT statement. However, in his resignation letter to Voss, he framed his disappointment at this misstatement with a disparagement of Arab culture when he wrote that this was just the sort of wild exaggeration that had always bothered him about Arabs, so he was truly saddened to see American Christians engage in it.40 This incident, symbolic of the extremism and hard feelings that Albright was sorry to see taking over the debate, ended his phase of overt political Zionism. Support for Zionism did, however, remain implicit in his writings. In 1949, he contributed the lead-off article, “The Biblical Period,” to Louis Finkelstein’s three-volume series The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion. Like much of Albright’s writing, the article assured readers that the Bible was true and that a monotheistic culture stretching back to the ancient Israelites was at the center of human history. As usual, the Israelites were defned by their differences from others. Albright wrote that Hebrew origins were clearer and better known, because of the biblical narratives, than the origins of any other ancient people, including Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans. “We look in vain for anything comparable,” Albright wrote, to the ancient Israelites’ simplicity and moral rectitude (1949: 3). Though readers may have received the impression in the past that biblical scholars were casting doubt on the Bible, Albright assured them that “the archaeological discoveries of the past generation have changed all this” except among “a few die-hards among older scholars” (1949: 3). The discovery of “limited movements in the hill country of Palestine” and “easy travel to Mesopotamia and Egypt” is “so perfectly in accord with conditions in the Middle Bronze Age,” Albright wrote with characteristic certainty and dismissal of other possible interpretations, “that historical skepticism is quite unwarranted” (1949: 6). The light shed on the Bible by cultural knowledge from the Nuzi documents has so “brilliantly illuminated many details in the patriarchal stories which do not ft into the post-Mosaic tradition” that “our case for the substantial historicity of the tradition of the Patriarchs is clinched,” and there is thus “no reason to doubt

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 33 the general accuracy” of the patriarchal narratives (1949: 6). The Bible’s own tone of veracity assured its truthfulness: “the Patriarchs come alive with a vividness unknown to a single extrabiblical character in the whole vast literature of the ancient Near East” (1949: 6). Moses, an ethical genius, was forced to deal with inferior forms of religion, such as the “Egyptian myths,” which “swarmed with crudities,” and the Canaanites’ “extremely depraved practices” (1949: 10). Moses’ new faith “reacted violently against all kinds of sacred prostitution and human sacrifce, against magic and divination, and against funerary rites and cult of the dead” (1949: 10). Any similarities between the proto-Israelites led by Moses and the Canaanites were a matter of meaningless external form. “Though we may freely concede strong Canaanite infuence on formulation and legal terminology,” Albright claimed, it is “incredible that the Book of the Covenant should refect Canaanite jurisprudence in either spirit or details” (1949: 11–12). He connected the dots between the Bible and contemporary Jews by terming Jews’ return from the Babylonian Exile “the Zionism of the Restoration” (1949: 49). Albright returned to Palestine a handful of times after Israel’s establishment, in 1953, 1957, and 1969. He was received as a hero, not only by his many students and associates in archaeology who lived there, but also by the Israeli public. Archaeology was of great importance to many Israelis who believed it was recovering a Jewish past in the land. When he provided a Jewish associate traveling to Israel with a letter of introduction, the associate wrote back to Albright that he had the opportunity to visit Yigael Yadin’s dig at Hazor. “When word got around that I had a letter from Albright, I became somewhat of a celebrity,” he wrote. “They thought I was a great archaeologist who had come to pronounce the word on Hatzor! I quickly put them at ease.”41 The introductory letter provided the holder with a power not to be taken lightly: “The name of Albright is magic in Israel and I must say that I guarded against the danger of pronouncing it in vain.”42 Albright’s 1953 trip was preceded by a touch of intrigue. When it came to his attention that Jordanians had found a Bar Kokhba letter dating to the Second Jewish Revolt that they were not keen to share with the Israelis, he arranged to have a copy of the letter made and sent to Israel in the possession of his student Sam Iwry (Running and Freedman 1975: 275). Several months later, he arrived in Israel, where he visited digs and lectured. In Beersheba, almost 3,000 people came to hear him speak (Running and Freedman 1975: 277). In a radio address upon his return, Albright expressed his happiness that Israelis were so interested in archaeology, because “every educated Israeli understands how closely the study of ancient remains is linked to the history of his ancestors, and how much light is shed by archaeology on the geography and settlement of modern Palestine.”43 He also supported Yadin in his quest to purchase the four Dead Sea Scrolls that were owned by the Syrian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel sought to sell the scrolls to raise money for his church but made it known he did

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not wish to sell them to Jews. William Brownlee, one of the ASOR scholars to frst see the Dead Sea Scrolls, explained the metropolitan’s position in an unpublished manuscript: “like the other Arabs,” he wrote, the Syrian Orthodox folk had been alienated by the violent methods of Zionism in the Holy Land; and, unfortunately this had come to mean alienation from all Jews. Even if the metropolitan himself had been willing to sell to a Jew, he would have been ostracized by his own people. (as cited in Fields 2009: 241) And yet the metropolitan unwittingly sold them to a Jewish American posing as a non-Jew who was buying them on behalf of the Israeli government. Harry Orlinsky took on an assumed name when he inspected the scrolls for Yadin so as not to raise suspicion, and Yadin made the purchase without revealing his identity to the metropolitan (Fields 2009: 246). “Needless to say, I was tremendously thrilled,” Albright wrote when he heard the news. “These priceless documents belong in the Hebrew University.”44 In 1957 Albright traveled to Israel to accept an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University, whose president at the time was archaeologist Benjamin Mazar.45 In 1965, Avraham Biran wrote to ask the Albrights to attend the opening of the Israel Museum, including the Shrine of the Book, built to house the Dead Sea Scrolls. The “opening of the Israel Museum without the Albrights will be no opening,” Biran wrote.46 However, Albright declined because he was scheduled to give the Jordan Lectures at the University of London. The handwritten notes to a lecture Albright gave to a capacity audience in Detroit’s Shaarey Zedek synagogue in January 1968 show he still felt the Jewish people were unique in world history. “Why are the Israelis so much interested in archaeology?” he asked rhetorically. The answer was that they were the only people to have been restored to their own land twice in history—the restoration from Babylon and the establishment of the state of Israel—“whereas no other people has been similarly restored even once.”47 In 1969, ffty years after he frst traveled there in 1919, Albright made a fnal trip to Jerusalem. While there he was named a Worthy of Jerusalem, an honor given to those over age 70 who had made contributions to the city. Until that time it had only been bestowed on individuals who were both Jewish and residents of Jerusalem. The New York Times reported, “Three generations of Palestinian archeologists crowded into Jerusalem’s City Hall today to honor their mentor” (Feron 1969). Mayor Teddy Kollek presented the award. According to the reporter, he said that Albright’s name “had become a household word in Israel, where archeology is easily the most popular hobby” (Feron 1969). Nachman Avigad, head of Hebrew University’s archaeology department, was quoted as saying, “If today the historical accuracy of the Bible is beyond question, it is due in no small measure to the work of Professor Albright” (Feron 1969). Josef Aviram remembered about this trip, shortly after the 1967 war, that Albright “was so happy about the

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 35 united Jerusalem!” (as cited in Running and Freedman 1975: 377). Yadin, who took him to see the Masada dig, remarked that “at that time he was so frank 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” (as cited in Running and Freedman 1975: 378).

Cultural Heterogeneity in Burrows’ Writings In May 1971, G. Ernest Wright, in his capacity as ASOR president, sent Millar Burrows some good news. “At yesterday’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, an error was corrected which should have been rectifed years ago when Albright retired from the Board. At that time a new category of ‘Life Trustee’ was created,” Wright wrote. “Yesterday the Trustees voted warmly and enthusiastically to elect you a Life Trustee of our organization. … If anyone among our number, along with Albright and Glueck, has deserved this small accolade, it is certainly you!”48 Burrows’ archaeology textbook, What Mean These Stones? (1941), is a record of dissent from the Baltimore school. He cautioned throughout that very little could be learned from archaeology that could shed light on the Bible. He was so cautious that James Kelso complained to Albright about the book’s disappointingly “agnostic” spirit—not only regarding God, but also regarding methodology. “He seems neither for nor against any debatable material; too many of his evidential points are hairsplitting; his book lacks conviction,” Kelso groused.49 Herbert Gordon May wrote to Albright that, while Burrows’ book was full of interesting material, he awaited the appearance of G. Ernest Wright’s archaeology textbook because there “is still a need for a study of archaeology and the Bible which will be more typical of the approach of the Biblical Archaeologist.”50 May’s wording suggests that Burrows’ methodological concerns ran so deep they placed him outside the feld, even while he seemed one of its deans. It was not a foregone conclusion that Burrows would become as involved with ASOR as he did. In 1915, after attending Cornell and Union Theological Seminary, Burrows traveled with his bride to rural Texas to serve as a Presbyterian minister. Five years later, he took a job as college pastor and Bible teacher at Tusculum College in Tennessee and found teaching more fulflling than preaching. In the view of his son, Edwin Burrows, “Charismatic preaching and raw fundamentalist doctrine were foreign to Millar’s more ecumenical, if not skeptical, approach to religion” (1981: 53). In 1923 he enrolled in graduate school at Yale, afterward accepting an offer to serve as visiting professor at the American University in Beirut in 1930– 1931. While at AUB, he was asked to direct ASOR’s Jerusalem school for 1931–1932. That year precipitated a lifelong involvement with ASOR and a prominent career in biblical studies. Where Albright saw differences between pure monotheism (starting with the Israelites and continuing up through biblically conservative Christians and Jews) and all the rest of the world’s traditions, Burrows tended to see

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similarities. Burrows’ writings, even before he traveled to the Middle East, were characterized by a focus on the similarities between the cultures he was discussing and the caveat that traditions are always developing. His frst book, Founders of Great Religions, appeared in 1931 and analyzed fgures such as Lao-Tze, Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus with a comparative eye. “We must not allow ourselves to think of the founders of religions other than our own as queer old heathen,” Burrows wrote (1931: 7). In most of the chapters, Burrows pointed out how characteristics of non-Christian religions that might seem unsavory were actually similar to Christian characteristics, reminding those who might criticize the Buddha for leaving his wife and child, for example, “that Another once said, ‘If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple’” (1931: 82). Reluctant to accept all the details of the Prophet Muhammad’s life as morally upstanding, Burrows argued that “in this respect the life of Mohammed recalls that of the ancient Hebrew king and poet, David” (1931: 160). Burrows pressed the idea of internal heterogeneity within religious traditions, locating these differences in the humans who practiced religions and not in theological systems. Remarking that some scholars doubted whether Lao-Tze was really Chinese, because they thought he seemed so different from other Chinese, Burrows reasoned, “Probably the truth is rather that the Chinese, like other peoples, are not all alike” (1931: 22). He also stressed these differences within Christianity, and how these differences cast doubt on any aspirations to general Christian superiority. In an article on Old Testament “syncretism,” Burrows argued syncretism was inevitable and praised it as an indispensable factor in the development of Israelite religion. Of course, the term “syncretism” is problematic. Burrows was not positing previously pure cultures, though, but rather previous sites of cultural interaction that were later remembered as pure by biblical authors constructing a pure Israelite identity to write into the past. For instance, Burrows argued that “Hebrew religion was already a syncretistic product when it frst appeared on the stage of history” (1941: 10). When the followers of Yahweh came into contact with the Canaanites and their deities, Burrows argued, the confict was not primarily “of monotheism against polytheism,” but rather between a desert religious system and an agricultural one; “[t]hat the religion of Moses was monotheistic,” he continued, “I cannot regard as probable, in spite of Prof. Albright’s effort to prove this” (1941: 11). Burrows read David’s reign as a high point for the construction of a purifed identity, with “its strong assertion of national unity and independence,” but shortlived, as demonstrated in Solomon’s many alliances (1941: 13). He explained his preference for theories of cultural interaction with a nod to Georg Hegel: Throughout the process we see a kind of oscillation and tension— perhaps, to be fashionable, I should say ‘dialectic’—between syncretism

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 37 and puristic reaction. Extreme purism might have produced spiritual inbreeding and degeneration. The opposite extreme would have been absorption and complete dissipation. Judaism avoided both of these perils. Thus it remained alive, and grew, and produced abundant fruit. (1941: 16) It was not just that religious differences in Palestine created a puristic backlash, a common enough reading of the Old Testament. Burrows portrayed those who lived in ancient Palestine but were not strict Yahwists in a positive light. For him they comprised a necessary factor in religious development, in contrast to Albright’s construction pitting righteous monotheistic Israelites against dangerous pagan Canaanites. Unlike Albright, Burrows did not celebrate group homogeneity. He criticized Ezra’s decision to require Jews with foreign spouses to divorce, citing the book of Ruth as a protest against this “proud exclusiveness” in its pointed story of a Moabite girl who turns out to be an ancestress of King David (1938: 59). Burrows read the split into two kingdoms as an expression of “the democratic spirit of the ancient Hebrew religion” (1938: 43) and concluded that, while he believed there was an underlying unity to the Bible, that unity allowed for differing interpretations on so many issues that the Bible could be characterized as promoting “a great deal of diversity” (1938: 87). While Albright attempted to build his Baltimore school on the notion that biblical archaeology was confrming the Bible, Burrows had a far different view of what could be known from archaeology. Already in 1934 Burrows had published a piece critiquing the prevalent notion of biblical archaeology, attributing it to poor publicity even though, as we have seen, it was more directly attributable to his colleagues. “Now in the interest of truth,” he proclaimed, “it should be frankly and plainly recognized that as a matter of fact very little has been found which is of any help in verifying the accounts of the Hebrew and early Christian historians” (1934: 558). This is quite different from Albright’s claim that the sheer amount of incontrovertible proof he encountered in Palestine in the 1920s turned him conservative. For one, Burrows argued that any evidence that was found had to be interpreted, providing examples of “what a delicate and complicated matter the interpretation of a bit of archeological evidence may be” (1934: 558). Though Albright and his students were themselves a scholarly source of such ideas, Burrows did not name them, instead fnding it unfortunate that “a vague notion” was afoot among the public that “the details of the Scriptural record are being confrmed step by step with each new discovery” (1957: 2). Besides the point that one kind of truth—historical accuracy—was being confated with another—the religious truth of the Bible’s “spiritual teaching” (1957: 3)—the concept of “proof” was too strong. Burrows insisted on the recognition that there were different interpretations of scripture, implicitly refuting Albright’s claim that archaeological evidence was creating a body of objective data that could minimize difference. Rather, Burrows argued,

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“The assertion that archeology confrms what the Bible says implies that what the Bible says is rightly understood” (1957: 4). To show how diffcult it would be to reach the level of “proof,” Burrows employed the example of the Siloam inscription, easily one of the pieces of archaeological evidence that most certainly matches up with a biblical story. According to the Bible, King Hezekiah ordered a tunnel to supply Jerusalem with water that was built by two groups digging toward each other and meeting in the middle. The Siloam inscription describes just such an event, though without naming King Hezekiah, and was found in just such a tunnel. For Burrows, even this incredible fnd did not constitute proof. The more nuanced and responsible way to put it, he contended, was not that the inscription proved the accuracy of the Bible story but that “it is reasonable to infer that the inscription and biblical account refer to the same accomplishment” (1957: 28). Burrows’ Bible Religion: Its Growth in the Scriptures (1938) demonstrated many of the characteristics Albright disliked most about liberal Protestants. Like Albright, he suggested that, despite the splintering of Protestantism, those versions could grow closer together again. But he emphasized the importance of reading between the lines of scripture—particularly in the Old Testament—and applying one’s sense of Jesus’ teachings to determine how to judge Old Testament passages that felt unsavory. Burrows emphasized that scripture must necessarily be interpreted and that thoughtful interpreters must often base their conclusions on their sense of Jesus’ teachings, rather than relying on what might seem to be the plain sense of the words. “Well-meant and honest” Christians making judgments without taking the sense of Jesus’ teachings into account had, he argued, led to such things as preachers telling “grieving mothers that their dead babies were in hell because they had not been baptized” (1938: 10). In 1946, Burrows published An Outline of Biblical Theology, meant for use in seminary education. Acknowledging ministers’ move away from the Bible in preaching, partly because of concerns over the arguments made by higher critics, Burrows sought to help ministers reground their messages in the Bible. He took the position that the Old Testament must be interpreted through the New Testament message of Christ to determine which parts are useful. He made a distinction between the history of religion in the Bible—“what the religion of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians was”—and biblical theology—“what was God’s judgment on that religion, and what signifcance it has for us” (An Outline of Biblical Theology 1946: 4). Albright, because he believed Moses had been a monotheist, would not have made this particular distinction between the history of biblical religion and biblical theology. Just before it appeared, Albright mentioned in a letter to a colleague that “Burrows’ O.T. Theology is in press and should appear soon.” It “should be a very sound piece of work,” he commented, “though not original and not calculated to arouse any deep religious sentiment among students who use it.”51 Soon after the book appeared, Wright, who later became

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 39 almost synonymous with the term “biblical theology,” wrote his mentor to complain about Burrows’ point of view, deeming it worthless for seminary education. “I will be interested to see what you say about Burrows’ book,” Wright wrote. I did not like it at all; though I never want to let Burrows know that; in fact, I think it is a terrible book. I am sure that Burrows is sound and produces many good facts but to me what he has is really not biblical theology.52 The phrase “produces many good facts” is telling; Burrows, who believed all facts were interpreted by scholars, would likely not have agreed that this was his goal or have accepted it as high praise. To contrast Burrows’ view of biblical theology to Wright’s, Wright believed he could use the external, objective evidence of archaeology to arrive at a fnal answer as to what the theology of the Bible is—the outcome of “produc[ing] many good facts.” Burrows defned biblical theology as bringing the results of biblical studies to laypeople, not crystallizing one particular outcome but seeing religion as “always a living movement, involving an intellectual element but in such a way that belief is closely bound up with experience, worship, and conduct” (1946b: 13). Also, Burrows’ adherence to the belief that biblical religion evolved into better forms culminating in Jesus probably annoyed Wright, who argued that Protestants had blasphemously replaced the centrality of God with Jesus. Burrows’ description of that evolution—in which “monotheism may be traced back to polytheism, polytheism to animism, and animism to animatism, which may then be explained as merely a spontaneous, unrefecting, and erroneous reaction of the primitive mind to its environment”—may also be seen in terms of colonialism in its invocation of a primitive mind evolving into a more sophisticated form (Burrows 1946a: 62). Vis-à-vis Wright’s views, though, we see that Burrows laid humans’ growing understanding of God at their own feet rather than, as Wright believed, being progressively revealed to them by God. Burrows, without naming names, critiqued Albrightean archaeologists’ view of their work with his comment that Much ink has been wasted also, and is still wasted, in the effort to prove the detailed historical accuracy of the biblical narratives. Actually they abound in errors, including many contradictory statements. Archaeological research has not, as is often boldly asserted, resolved the diffculties or confrmed the narrative. (Burrows 1946a: 62) “Not only are false ideas expressed,” he continued, “wrong practices are sanctioned or allowed to pass without protest, such as slavery, polygamy, and wars of conquest and extermination” (Burrows 1946a: 47). He criticized

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the Old Testament for viewing humanity mainly by people group—as did Albright—and championed the New Testament in this regard, arguing that “over against all this the distinctly individualistic attitude and ideas of the NT are conspicuous” (Burrows 1946a: 145). And he explicitly promoted a value that he said could not be found in either testament, tolerance: “a sympathetic, appreciative attitude toward other faiths or other interpretations of Christianity than our own, provided the spirit of the effort is that of free sharing, with open-minded willingness to hear and consider fairly the convictions of others” (Burrows 1946a: 283). Preferring tolerance to intolerance was based on the same reasoning as opposing slavery: accepting “the principle that what is ultimately authoritative for us is that which commands the assent of our own best judgment, accepted as the witness of the spirit within us” (Burrows 1946a: 50). Burrows continued to use similar reasoning about the spirit of the law interpreted through Jesus in his fnal book, in 1977. In Jesus in the First Three Gospels, Burrows argued that the gospels differ because Christians are not supposed to take them literally, but rather are supposed to realize that there are discrepancies. The realization that there are discrepancies ideally would “preserve us from slavery to the letter and compel us to seek the true spirit of the Gospel” (Burrows 1977: 18).

Burrows’ Political Activism Burrows’ writings demonstrated his beliefs that cultural infuences went in various directions, that cultures were fexible and changed over time, and that the monotheistic tradition championed as unique by Albright only looked unique when constructed in such a way as to throw attention off its many similarities to other traditions. He applied these ideas the frst time he visited the Middle East, overcoming the much more common tendency among Western visitors to primitivize the local Arabs. Instead of interpreting the Bedouin as embodying the biblical text in their customs and romantically imagining they had not changed for millennia, Burrows remarked on how much social interaction they had with Westerners. In doing so Burrows emphasized cultural change and interaction over static difference between East and West. He met people “even in remote villages” who had lived in America and returned. Even those without travel experience had often achieved “polylingualism” as a result of “many contacts with foreign merchants and tourists” (1933: 216). Burrows developed sympathies for the peoples of the Holy Land that came to fruition when he returned to Jerusalem as school director in 1947– 1948, making him the director at the moment the Dead Sea Scrolls were brought to the door, and during the 1948 hostilities. His second term as Jerusalem school director was fraught throughout, and Burrows had little desire to witness the whole war and its aftermath. (Indeed, his successor, Ovid R. Sellers, was shot out of the sky taking an Arab plane from

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 41 Beirut to Jerusalem in September 1948; he survived and fulflled his term as director [King 1983: 111].) Six weeks before British troops pulled out, Burrows and his wife, Irene, evacuated, on April 2, 1948. This was less than a month since Albright had declared the scrolls ancient, on March 8, 1948. Nevertheless, Burrows had done enough work on the Isaiah scroll during that time that he was able to use that work when helping prepare the Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament, which frst appeared in 1952 (Fields 2009: 80). Albright had been considering returning to act as director again. Burrows warned him he would not be welcome in Palestine, and would even possibly be in danger, because Arabs were quite aware of his Zionist position. In March 1948, Burrows reiterated this warning and pointed out that it originally came from Jewish archaeologist Immanuel Ben Dor, whose reasoning Burrows seconded. “The diffculty, as I’ve explained, is that you are known here as pro-Zionist,” he informed Albright.53 Indeed, Burrows said, he had heard two years previous that Albright’s “reputation in this respect” was “militating against us [ASOR] among the Arabs over here and in Syria.”54 Rumors were circulating that Albright might return, which, Burrows reported, was in itself causing trouble. “Dr. [Taufk] Canaan asked me last summer whether it were true that you were coming back,” Burrows wrote, “and when I told him you were he said nothing whatever, giving me a distinct impression that he was not enthusiastic.”55 And just that morning at breakfast, an Arab employee who had never met Albright said he had heard from several people that ASOR was bringing in “an extreme Zionist” to direct the school the next year.56 Burrows said he had defended Albright by arguing he was no longer politically active: I told him it was true that you had expressed sympathy with Zionism in the past, but I didn’t think you had ever been extreme, that I knew you had many Arab friends here and had had Arab students when you were director before, and that you had recently written me that you were disgusted with the Zionist leaders and were determined to be, as you put it, an extreme neutral.57 The Arab employee “said that was good, but the trouble was that what you had been before was well known to people who would never hear about your change of mind or wouldn’t believe it.”58 Albright’s response to Burrows’ concerns, in a letter to Glueck, suggests he thought he could simply say he was not political and that would clear up the whole misunderstanding. “It is true that I was engaged for a couple of years in Zionist propaganda, but what I published was very moderate and I have long since withdrawn from all quasi-political activity, being disgusted with the mendacity of both propagandas,” and thus, he was nothing more than “a quiet scholar who keeps out of trouble.”59 He thought Burrows was blowing his role out of proportion, especially in his suggestion that Albright

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might be an assassination target. This was not, however, due to warm feelings toward Arabs. The school building itself probably was in danger, Albright wrote, “since the Arabs are not likely to spare any foreign property when they go on a rampage.”60 Before evacuating, Burrows witnessed the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem. In 1949, he published a book about it titled Palestine Is Our Business. Burrows donated profts from the book to refugee relief. Later, from 1954 to 1957, he served as president of American Middle East Relief, Inc., which conducted food and clothing drives for Palestinian refugees. Before publication, he resigned as ASOR president, citing the book’s political nature, since the organization maintained an offcially neutral stance. By publishing the book, he wanted to convince Americans that their beliefs about the land of the Bible had played a role in this situation and therefore they bore some responsibility to the refugees. American Christians should be concerned about the fate of people in the Holy Land, he believed, whether they were the Arab Christians that Americans seemed rarely to know existed, or whether they were any other religion. “Even if we dare to reverse Jesus’ metaphor and claim that there is a beam in our neighbor’s eye” regarding events in the Holy Land, Burrows warned, “there is at least a splinter in our own” (1949: 48). The United States deserved a great deal of blame, he charged, for not gladly accepting Holocaust refugees (1949: 69). This theoretical and activist streak ran in the family: two years before, his brother, Edwin Grant Burrows (1947), an anthropology professor at the University of Connecticut, published a book about the diverse origins of the Hawaiians that demonstrated similar views of cultural change and fuidity, along with asking for understanding for Japanese Americans regardless of Japan’s role in World War II. “While teaching there about the remote past, I learned something about the present,” Burrows wrote about that year in Jerusalem (1949: 9). What he had learned about his present moved him to action. Burrows had concluded—not surprising given his theoretical underpinnings—that neutrality was not possible or, even if it were possible, desirable: This is not intended to be a report of dispassionate research. …What is needed in such a case as this is not the disinterested objectivity of a historian dealing with the past, or a scientist dissecting a corpse. This is a question of the most immediate and vital concern to many hundreds of thousands of living people. … Fairness is essential, but fairness is not the same thing as neutrality. If one side is right and the other wrong, neutrality is not just. (1949: 11–12) Refecting his thought processes in other contexts, Burrows did not base his arguments on Arabs as a group versus Jews as a group but rather took pains to illustrate the range of positions within these communities. Many

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 43 Arabs held nationalist ideas that troubled him; many Jews were not political Zionists. He did not envision a Palestine free of Jews but rather one where the communities could coexist. Palestine could be a homeland for Jews without being a Jewish state, he maintained (1949: 83). Certainly, he argued, their differences were only cultural, given the diverse racial makeup of both groups: The unity of the Arabs among themselves (like that of the Jews, for that matter) is in reality not racial but cultural. The Arabs of Palestine are such by language and culture and only part by race, for the blood of Crusaders, Romans, Greeks, perhaps Israelites and even Canaanites, fows in their veins; indeed, if the truth were known, it might be found that they have as much of the blood of the ancient Hebrews as the Jews themselves have. In the past as compared with the western nations, they have shown relatively little antagonism for Jews as such. (1949: 43) This description of the diverse origins of the Arabs living in Palestine was published some sixty years before Shlomo Sand wrote, “I believe that today’s Palestinians derive from a variety of origins. … Each conquerer left his mark in the region: Egyptians, Persians and Byzantines all fertilized the local women and many of their descendants must be there still” (2009: 318). Yet Burrows’ and Sand’s descriptions bear remarkable similarity to each other. Both scholars wish to draw attention to the myth of homogeneous group cultures to show, in this case, that the misperception that Jews or Palestinians have essentially unchanging group identities persisting over hundreds of years contributes to the belief in their essential difference and thus the need for separate ethno-national states today. Burrows’ attempt to return to dry scholarship after publishing Palestine Is Our Business resulted in an unexpected bestseller in 1955, when the frst of his two heavy tomes on the Dead Sea Scrolls appeared. The book came out in November and hit the bestseller lists—alongside Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, John F. Kennedy’s Profles in Courage, Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, C. W. Ceram’s The Secret of the Hittites, and the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—because of interest in the scrolls generated by Edmund Wilson’s magazine articles and book (1955). Even though Burrows’ book in no way anticipated or responded to Wilson’s suggestions about the potentially explosive import of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Christianity and Judaism, readers primed by those questions scoured Burrows’ book. In fact, The Dead Sea Scrolls was quite dry, aside from the narrative portion, in which Burrows recounted the details of the Scrolls’ discovery, purchase, and trips around the city to be examined, all while ASOR members were making rushed arrangements to evacuate before war broke out. Otherwise, the book shows Burrows’ extremely cautious nature regarding scholarship. He described nearly every piece of scholarship produced on

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the scrolls to that time, weighing the evidence judiciously, and remarking on which theories he found more or less convincing, while saying very little positive. Burrows’ works on the Dead Sea Scrolls continued his focus on heterogeneity within traditions. In Silberman’s view (1994: 107), Burrows “moved quickly to calm the faithful” when he informed readers that nothing in the Scrolls could harm Christianity. But the reason Burrows thought nothing in the Scrolls could harm Christianity was because they showed what he already believed: that infuences on Christianity were diverse. Because readers interpret texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls had no one fxed meaning, and because one’s personal view of Christianity involved a strong dose of one’s own conscience, literal readings of ancient texts did not determine what Christianity meant for individuals in the twentieth century. Conversely, Albright, as we saw, supported Israeli efforts to purchase all the Dead Sea Scrolls because for him they represented the specifcally Jewish past. More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1958 responded directly to the popularization of Dead Sea Scrolls discourse. Burrows wrote it, not so much because a great deal more scholarship had been done, but because so much of that scholarship and public reception of it suggested connections between the Qumran community and early Christianity that he found unjustifed. As usual, Burrows believed archaeologists had a responsibility to make only claims that were warranted by the evidence, and to express caution and skepticism about their conclusions so that readers would not get carried away. This second Dead Sea Scrolls volume thus could be said to be even more interested in calming the fears of Christians, though not necessarily, as Silberman suggests, to paper over anything new the Scrolls might reveal. Rather, Burrows made arguments about the historical development of religion to suggest that it would not really matter if the origins were not quite what Christians had usually envisioned. And if Christianity were related somehow to the Essenes, it would be another way in which Christianity was similar to Judaism, which was already well known. Burrows argued that scholars were understanding, “increasingly so of late, that Christianity is closely related to other religions at many points and has acquired and assimilated much from other religions” (1958: 46). Finding one more instance of that phenomenon, therefore, should not shatter one’s worldview. As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire and beyond, it came into contact with other religions too, found that it had something in common with them, and was more or less infuenced by them. Judaism itself, in fact, had been infuenced by other religions and cultures long before the dawn of Christianity. (1958: 46) One reason for concern over the scrolls, for Burrows, was that laymen had less knowledge of similarities between Christianity and other religions

Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 45 than scholars did. Those who were startled by “similarities of thought and language between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament were not aware of the abundance of such parallels in other Jewish sources,” he reasoned (1958: 51). Burrows assured his readers that, after “the frst furry of excitement” about the implications of the scrolls, it would become more apparent “that our appreciation of the Hebrew and Christian tradition is not destroyed but enhanced” (1958: 48). Burrows threaded his interests in the similarities between religions and the way they mutually infuenced each other throughout his writings. While Albright tended to draw a line between certain kinds of Jews and Christians on one side and the rest of the world on the other, Burrows believed that infuences went in various directions and that Christianity and Judaism only looked unique when constructed in such a way as to throw attention off their many similarities to other religions. Meanwhile, many of Burrows’ ideas, such as seeing Canaanites and Israelites as culturally similar while only a small percentage of Israelites championed pure Yahwism, have become widespread in scholarship, if not among the public (see, for example, Smith 2002). This way of understanding religions was refected in his views of the ancient Israelites and Canaanites as well as in his views of Palestinians and Jews, whom he refused to see as essentially incompatible.

Notes 1 William Foxwell Albright, “Palestine as a Contributing Factor in the Solution of the Jewish Problem,” typescript, Mss.B.AL15p., APS. 2 Wilbur Smith to William Foxwell Albright, July 17, 1945, APS. 3 Wilbur Albright to William Foxwell Albright, April 2, 1941, APS. 4 William Foxwell Albright to Herman Seidel, M.D., January 23, 1941, APS. 5 Herman Seidel, M.D., to William Foxwell Albright, January 21, 1941, APS. 6 Stephen S. Wise to William Foxwell Albright, February 14, 1941, APS. 7 William Foxwell Albright to Emanuel Neumann, May 10, 1941, APS. 8 William Foxwell Albright to Rabbi Isadore Breslau, August 5, 1941, APS. 9 Rabbi Isadore Breslau to William Foxwell Albright, August 4, 1941, APS. 10 William Foxwell Albright to Wilbur Finley Albright, October 19, 1941, APS. 11 Emanuel Neumann to William Foxwell Albright, October 17, 1941, APS. 12 Ephraim Speiser to William Foxwell Albright, December 14, 1941, APS. 13 Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver to William Foxwell Albright, December 14, 1942, APS. 14 William Foxwell Albright to Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, January 3, 1942, APS. 15 William Foxwell Albright to Baruch Braunstein, November 11, 1943, APS. 16 William Foxwell Albright to the Editor of the Christian Century, June 16, 1943, APS. 17 Mrs. Chas. Auerbach to William Foxwell Albright, January 30, 1942, APS. 18 William Foxwell Albright to Mrs. Chas. Auerbach, February 2, 1942, APS. 19 William Foxwell Albright to Dr. Schloessinger, January 13, 1942, APS. 20 Jacob Billikopf to William Foxwell Albright, September 17, 1942, APS. 21 William Foxwell Albright to Jacob Billikopf, September 20, 1942, APS. 22 Emanuel Neumann to William Foxwell Albright, November 21, 1941, APS. 23 William Foxwell Albright to Louis Finkelstein, February 8, 1942, APS. 24 William Foxwell Albright to Sam Geiser, May 23, 1943, APS.

46 Political Implications of Objectivity and Relativism 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

William Foxwell Albright to John Bright, May 3, 1942, APS. Henry Atkinson to William Foxwell Albright, December 17, 1943, APS. Henry Atkinson to William Foxwell Albright, December 17, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Carl Voss, December 24, 1943, APS. David Goldberg to William Foxwell Albright, September 5, 1944, APS. David Goldberg to William Foxwell Albright, September 5, 1944, APS. David Goldberg to William Foxwell Albright, September 5, 1944, APS. Carl Alpert to William Foxwell Albright, May 31, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright to the editors of Life, June 1, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright, typescript, “Memorandum on Political Problems of Syria-Palestine,” APS. William Foxwell Albright to the editors of Life, June 1, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright, typescript, “Memorandum on Political Problems of Syria-Palestine,” APS. William Foxwell Albright to Carl Hermann Voss, March 29, 1946, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Carl Hermann Voss, March 13, 1946, APS. Khalil Totah to William Foxwell Albright, March 18, 1946, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Carl Hermann Voss, March 29, 1946, APS. Jerome Lipnick to William Foxwell Albright, December 15, 1955, APS. Jerome Lipnick to William Foxwell Albright, December 15, 1955, APS. William Foxwell Albright, typescript, “Five-Minute Address, Station WBAL,” May 3, 1954, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Yigael Yadin, July 4, 1954, APS. William Foxwell Albright to “Family,” April 14, 1957, APS. Avraham Biran to William Foxwell Albright, February 17, 1965, APS. William Foxwell Albright, handwritten notes, lecture given in Detroit’s Shaarey Zedek synagogue in January 1968, APS. G. Ernest Wright to Millar Burrows, May 11, 1971, box 1, folder 4, “American Schools of Oriental Research Correspondence: 1965, 1970–79,” Millar Burrows Papers, Record Group No. 71, Yale University Divinity School Library, Yale University Divinity School (YDS). James Kelso to William Foxwell Albright, November 11, 1941, APS. Herbert Gordon May to William Foxwell Albright, March 31, 1942, APS. William Foxwell Albright to H. H. Rowley, August 1, 1946, APS. G. Ernest Wright to W. F. Albright, October 23, 1946. Box 6 folder 5 “Albright, W. F., (2 of 2), 1935–1972,” George Ernest Wright Papers, Bms 667, AndoverHarvard Library, Harvard Divinity School (HDS). Millar Burrows to William Foxwell Albright, March 6, 1948, box 1 folder 14, “Correspondence 1948,” William F. Albright Papers Coll. 002, Archives of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Boston (hereafter ASOR). Millar Burrows to William Foxwell Albright, March 6, 1948, box 1 folder 14, “Correspondence 1948,” William F. Albright Papers Coll. 002, ASOR. Millar Burrows to William Foxwell Albright, March 6, 1948, box 1 folder 14, “Correspondence 1948,” William F. Albright Papers Coll. 002, ASOR. Millar Burrows to William Foxwell Albright, March 6, 1948, box 1 folder 14, “Correspondence 1948,” William F. Albright Papers Coll. 002, ASOR. Millar Burrows to William Foxwell Albright, March 6, 1948, box 1 folder 14, “Correspondence 1948,” William F. Albright Papers Coll. 002, ASOR. Millar Burrows to William Foxwell Albright, March 6, 1948, box 1 folder 14, “Correspondence 1948,” William F. Albright Papers Coll. 002, ASOR. William Foxwell Albright to Nelson Glueck, February 25, 1948, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Nelson Glueck, February 25, 1948, APS.

3

The Baltimore School and the Formation of the “Judeo-Christian Tradition”

Many scholars have rightly noted the Protestant nature of biblical archaeology. In the nineteenth century, Edward Robinson, often hailed as the “father of [American] biblical archaeology” (Williams 1999: 242), felt queasy when he encountered Catholic and Jewish rituals on his trips to Palestine (Robinson and Smith 1856: I:223). However, by the mid-twentieth century, many Jews and Catholics were reading the Old Testament in a way remarkably similar to Albright, which is to say, with the conviction that its historical passages occurred as described, and that securing proof was not only possible but assured. Protestants putting together committees had a way of omitting Jews—not to mention Catholics—from their lists. Albright’s papers show, however, that many times he intervened in such situations and sent letters insisting that qualifed Jewish and Catholic colleagues be included. Burke Long, for example, devotes a chapter to Albright and Wright’s championing of Jewish scholar Harry Orlinsky for a theological dictionary project that was never completed, possibly because the Westminster Press preferred Christian theologians, while the Albrighteans argued that “study of the Bible could be carried out with such rigor as to aspire to be free of anachronisms and sectarian religious bias” (Long 1997: 87). This cross-religious cooperation within biblical archaeology circles coincided with what Will Herberg (1955) captured in Protestant–Catholic–Jew. Kevin M. Schultz has dubbed the 1940s and 1950s “Tri-Faith America” and traces how the extreme nativism of 1920s and 1930s America led into a period when clergy fought for Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism to be seen as equally American. Their name for it, “the Judeo-Christian tradition,” has become so powerful as an interpretation of American history, Schultz points out, that few now realize it “was an invention of the middle of the twentieth century” (2011: 202). Mark Silk argues that this religious triumvirate overcame the nativist period largely as a response to European totalitarianism; after “the revelations of the Nazi death camps, a phrase like ‘our Christian civilization’ seemed ominously exclusive” (1984: 69). Deborah Dash Moore argues that one of the main arenas for fashioning the “JudeoChristian tradition” was in the armed services during World War II, where Jewish soldiers fought alongside Protestants and Catholics against fascist

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-4

48 The Baltimore School regimes. Undermining many Americans’ sense that “the Judeo-Christian tradition is, in fact, a real tradition, that it has existed for centuries” (Moore 2004: xi) by showing its recent origins helps draw attention to the ways in which Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy and laypeople worked to fashion this more inclusive narrative of American religious life. As much of the scholarship has pointed out, Albright was a Protestant, and this affected his worldview. This did not mean, though, that he had diffculty connecting with non-Protestants. Most of his early students were Jews; many of his later students were Catholics. Albright’s obvious pride in his many Jewish and Catholic students and admirers necessitates an interpretation that does not simply acknowledge that he was a Protestant in a certain time and place and presume that this explains his point of view. He was fond of pointing out that most Protestants contemporaneous to him disagreed with him, with fundamentalists on one side and liberal Protestants on the other. Through the concept of the “Baltimore School,” Albright consciously attempted to increase the prevalence of his ecumenical point of view.

Building a Baltimore School Upon accepting a position at Johns Hopkins after his adviser’s death, Albright wrote the university’s president, F. J. Goodnow, that he would not soon forget his “eight years at the head of an institution which counts Protestants of all groups and tendencies, Catholics, and Jews, both Orthodox and Reformed, among its supporters and members.”1 His time in Palestine had brought him close to other academics who shared a devotion to the Old Testament, and he vowed to Goodnow to keep that spirit alive at Johns Hopkins’ Oriental Seminary. Similar to Melvin Grove Kyle’s explanation that the Dead Sea expedition was scientifc because it included experts from various religious backgrounds, Albright saw his ability to edify anyone interested in the Old Testament as evidence of his own “strict neutrality.”2 During the 1930s Albright worked to form the Baltimore school and developed his philosophy of history, as delineated in From the Stone Age to Christianity, frst published in 1940. Albright’s creation of a school of thought that brought scholars together around a way of reading the Old Testament was a conscious endeavor. In 1934, only fve years after returning to the United States and starting to teach at Johns Hopkins, he wrote to his college friend Sam Geiser that, “Between Jerusalem and Baltimore,” he was beginning “to have a respectable number of students, some very good,” and to see “the beginnings of an ‘Albright School,’ which will make itself felt in American scholarship some day.”3 Pleased at the signifcant numbers of Jews and Catholics who studied with him at the Oriental Seminary, he wrote to his family that the glue that held the school together was “a conservative attitude toward the Old Testament and a keen realization of its religious values.”4 Albright’s joy at seeing a specifc way of reading the Old Testament adopted across denominational lines was refected in his tendency to

The Baltimore School 49 enumerate graduate students’ religious affliations, and to advertise the department’s success based on those numbers. In 1932, when he had only recently taken over the department (thus also refecting the student body’s composition under Haupt), all six graduate students were Jewish.5 In 1937, he wrote his father that there were ten graduate students in the Oriental Seminary: “four Protestants, four Jews, and two Catholics.”6 In 1943, he wrote his family that the Oriental Seminary that year was composed of “two or three Presbyterian ministers, two doing full-time work, one Lutheran, two or three Jewish students, and one extremely brilliant Jesuit student. … So we shall have our usual heterogeneity of religious affliation.”7 By the early 1950s, the number of Protestant students in the Oriental Seminary was dropping. In 1951, Albright wrote that “we have lost most of our Protestants with virtually no replacements,” but that “we have four Jesuits and a much larger group of Jews.”8 Mitchell Dahood, a Jesuit who graduated that year, had only a week earlier written to his adviser to let him know that “my only hope is that I will be able to carry on the fne tradition of the Baltimore school.”9 Albright’s frst Jesuit student, Roger T. O’Callaghan, graduated in 1946 and died in a car accident in 1954.10 Other Catholics who studied under Albright included William Moran, Joseph Fitzmyer, and Raymond Brown. As Albright found when a non-Catholic university sought to hire one of them, they were often obligated to serve in small Catholic colleges. Albright attributed this increase to Catholics’ growing interest in the biblical text, and the dropping number of Protestants with what he saw as Protestants’ decreasing interest in it. Albright advised 57 Ph.D. students who graduated between 1931 and 1962 (Freedman 1975: 221–226). It is not entirely possible to quantify the number of people in the Baltimore school or their infuence beyond his students, but some comments can be made on the Baltimore school’s unoffcial membership. It also included young archaeologists Albright worked with in Jerusalem, many of whom went on to comprise the frst generation of Israeli archaeologists. One example was Ruth Amiran, who, Albright remembered fondly, began her studies with him in Jerusalem as a teenager.11 The school also included students who attended without graduating, such as Emmanuel Gitlin, who in the 1960s included on his curriculum vitae a list of his fellow graduate students during his years of attendance, 1946–1948.12 The school included many fgures who came to Johns Hopkins for postdoctoral research or temporary teaching positions, such as Orlinsky. It could be said to include the many admirers of Albright, many of them faculty at other institutions, who wrote him fan mail, often thanking him for putting the Bible on a solid, objective footing after decades of uncomfortably probing biblical scholarship. Many of his students enthusiastically took up the mantle of the Albright school. In 1965, David Noel Freedman wrote an encyclopedia article about his mentor for the Encyclopedia Judaica and sent a copy to Albright for fact checking. After the customary declarations that Albright was “the dominant

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fgure in Old Testament Studies” with a grasp of the feld “unparalleled in modern scholarship,” Freedman wrote that he “was also the principal architect of the ‘Baltimore School’ which numbers among its adherents leading biblical scholars in the U.S.A. and abroad.” Although Albright retired “several years ago, his eminence and infuence have been maintained through his writings and the work of his students, and their students, for the tradition of the Baltimore School fourishes on numerous university campuses.”13 Thus, though the school of thought became diluted, it also included students taught and infuenced by Albright’s Ph.D. students, many of whom sought to perpetuate it. Nowhere was this more the case than Harvard Divinity School. Two of the Baltimore school’s leading representatives, G. Ernest Wright and Frank Moore Cross, spent the bulk of their careers at Harvard. Cross alone trained more than 100 Ph.D. students (Fields 2009: 202). Albright reported after a visit to Harvard that Wright and Cross were “completely transforming the approach to biblical studies there.”14 As Albright wrote to his son Hugh, “It looks as though the Baltimore Old Testament school would swallow up Harvard Divinity School, with two of my best men there as professors!”15 Wright demonstrated his devotion to carrying on the Baltimore school by creating the Biblical Colloquium, a group that met periodically to discuss new scholarship and was composed of men who had worked under Albright in some capacity. The organization also arranged to publish inexpensive reprints of Albright’s earlier works and some works of other members to spread their scholarly viewpoint more widely. On the face of it, what set the Albright school apart from the previous generation of biblical scholars was the incorporation of archaeological evidence. What that meant in practice was that adherents appealed to what they considered objective evidence, not acknowledging the interpretation they were putting on the data, and rejecting what they considered subjective or interpretive scholarship. One member of that previous generation was Julius Morgenstern, the president of Hebrew Union College who worked hard to persuade his former student Nelson Glueck to take over his job. “One thing Morgenstern has never learned to understand is: the priority of documents and archaeological data over all literary constructions,” Albright once explained about Morgenstern, whom he considered a dear friend. He is a gifted scholar, with a fne synthetic mind as well as a wonderful personality, but because of his wrong approach to evidence he has completely failed to build a school. His best pupil, Nelson Glueck, turned from him to follow me, a development which must have hurt Morgenstern. It is a measure of the man that I have never heard any complaint from him.16 Albright and the Baltimore school had an opportunity to make a long-term impact on the feld of biblical studies with their Anchor Bible series. In 1956

The Baltimore School 51 Jason Epstein of Anchor Books approached Albright about producing a series that would retranslate the Bible and provide commentary based on archaeological advances.17 Albright agreed to become general editor of the Anchor Bible series, with Freedman as coeditor. The series was based on the view that archaeological evidence was transforming biblical studies. As a press release explained in 1964, the year the frst two volumes were published, “Archaeological discoveries of last 50 years call for new translation of the Bible.”18 According to a brochure, it would be “more like the original biblical text” and would strive “to reproduce the Bible’s original favor and spontaneity.”19 The reasoning about participant selection demonstrates Albright’s view that archaeology provided a non-theological basis for agreement among Bible-believers of varying stripes. “This Bible has no relation to any church or religious organization of any kind,” he assured a worried correspondent. “Contributors are Catholics, Jews, and Protestants, and have been selected solely because of their scholarship and friendliness to modern archaeological discovery, without reference to their theological views.”20 For Albright, the presence of scholars of varying religions did not lead to a certain type of theological outlook but rather to a non-sectarianism that ensured objectivity. The moment was ripe for Catholic participation in a way that may have earlier been impossible because of overtures toward joint Catholic-Protestant participation in biblical translation and research from Rome. The frst Catholic priest to accept an assignment was Dahood, who was born to Lebanese immigrants in Montana and who had earned his Ph.D. under Albright in 1951. He obtained ecclesiastical permission to participate in the project while a professor at the Pontifcal Biblical Institute in Rome. Freedman, after visiting Dahood in Rome on his way to Jerusalem, was pleased to report to Albright that Dahood believed more Catholic priests could now be enlisted to provide volumes, “since Rome has shown the way.”21 Like many of Albright’s projects, the Anchor Bible series revolved around the promise of getting below the level of interpretation to an objective layer. If this were possible, then the Bible could be a unifying factor, when seen for “what the Bible says, and not with a sectarian interpretation of what it means.”22 The brochure innocently suggested that removing that layer was both possible and desirable: Differences among Western religions are often theological, not basically scriptural. The Bible is, in fact, the most powerful unifying element in the present interfaith dialogue. Thus, a product of our Ecumenical Century may be, at the same time, the most important working tool of future ecumenism.23 The series was not entirely a Baltimore school production, however, which rankled Wright. “I’ve sure hit the ceiling on a couple of things I’ve heard,” Wright groused to Albright, “such as [E. A.] Speiser being given Gen. and the suggestion that H. L. Ginsberg be given 1st Isa.”24 This may be a

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dismissal of Jewish scholars, a position that Wright sometimes firted with, but Albright understood him to mean that Speiser and Ginsberg thought about the Bible differently than the Albrighteans. Albright assured Wright that Ginsberg “has been moving steadily to the right,” which made him an acceptable choice.25 Albright had always had a soft spot for Speiser, and, even though Albright knew they would not be able “to iron out all differences,” he assured Wright that he did not “know a single scholar in America outside our own immediate group, who has the background to do as good a job on the background and translation.”26 Not everyone could be from the Baltimore school.

Ecumenism Based on Old Testament Historicity While never giving up on Protestantism, Albright saw himself as uniquely positioned to be, in his way, Catholic, Protestant, and Jew all at once. He could not remember ever having met a Jewish person until he arrived at the Oriental Seminary, but as a student there he came into contact with several Jews studying under Haupt. As a child in Latin America he had been terrifed of Catholic priests, and had absorbed various anti-Catholic sentiments from his missionary family (Feinman 2012). Albright’s feelings about Catholics began to warm during his decade in Jerusalem, as he met Catholic priests who were serious archaeologists, and as he began to raise a Catholic family. His fancée, Ruth, who joined him and married him there, converted to Catholicism about a year into their marriage, much to Albright’s shock at the time. She studied the faith under the Catholic fathers at the École Biblique, a French biblical archaeology institute near ASOR both geographically and epistemologically. Fiercely proud that his wife held a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Johns Hopkins, where they met as graduate students, he frequently repeated in his letters that his wife and four sons were Catholic, and that his second son, Hugh, chose at age 15 to become a Christian Brother and later taught mathematics at LaSalle. As Albright liked to say, he had “a Catholic wife and four Catholic sons,” was “a practicing Methodist,” and was also “practically an adopted Jew.”27 Albright’s frequent claims to being an honorary Jew and Catholic suggest that he did believe coming to a consensus on the Old Testament’s historicity could fatten theological differences, and that this would be for the better. After all, he considered himself, in some real way, to embody all three at once. Indeed, he had very little good to say about any Protestants other than those who were his own students. He saw the potential among Jews and Catholics for reading the Old Testament as a straightforward historical document coming to fruition during his lifetime, while Protestants seemed to him to be determinedly leaving it behind, on the one hand, or retreating into fundamentalism, on the other. For Albright, Protestants had been at their best when they focused on the Bible. And Catholics, often accused of not reading the Bible, had, in Albright’s view, moved into that niche as Protestants moved out of it.

The Baltimore School 53 “Especially among Lutherans and Methodists, the opposition to the O.T. has forced it out of an increasing number of seminaries,” he complained to Albrecht Alt. “On the other hand, there is a remarkable revival of interest in the O.T. among American Catholics.”28 He was incredibly pleased to be named “an honorary member of the Catholic Biblical Association of America,” and to be as far as he knew the frst Protestant to receive such an honor.29 While occasionally scholars comment that Albright favored Protestants, and particularly Methodists, it appears the opposite is true. He was hardest on Methodists and next hardest on other Protestants, while fnding more intellectual common ground with Catholics and Jews. Increasingly frustrated by the direction in which Methodism was moving toward the end of his life, Albright often remarked that Jews and Catholics were becoming more interested in studying the text and the archaeology of the Hebrew Bible than were the Protestants whose forerunners had pioneered it. In an interview, Stephen Mann told Albright biographer Leona Running that it was quite plain in the later years of his life that he was growing closer and closer to Judaism, and on several occasions he confessed to me that he found himself far more happy with Jews than he did with his co-confessional Methodists. (Running and Freedman 1975: 426) He was hardest on Methodists as a group because he felt that the church of his youth was becoming ever more liberal. He complained that “biblical studies and everything related to them stand on a lower level today in Methodist studies”30 than before. While encouraging young Methodists to study the Bible, he thought it a losing battle. He did not, however, ever leave that church. According to Running, one of Albright’s sons convinced him not to leave the Methodist Church, saying that if he did then his neutral stance would be compromised in the eyes of many (Running and Freedman: 426). When Albright learned that Thomas Kepler of Oberlin, whom he considered a radical theologically, was the primary contributor to the new Methodist Sunday School materials, he wrote that he was “sorry to see the church of Wesley fall on such evil days,” but, as a layman, he could “do nothing whatever in so hierarchically an organized church as the Methodist, where even the minister is helpless in the face of district superintendent and bishop.”31 To the son of one of his father’s friends from missionary days, Albright wrote, “It is now a common thing to fnd Methodists in high places in ecclesiastical life who are atheists, holding entirely naturalistic positions. Fortunately my father had no idea how far this process had gone when he died.”32 When the dean of Drew Theological Seminary asked Albright for recommendations of a Methodist in Old Testament studies, Albright was sorry to say that his “own students … have not included many Methodists,” and the only one he could think of was not experienced

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enough yet for the job.33 He confded to one of his Jesuit students soon after that “unfortunately there is not a single sound biblical scholar in the entire Methodist Church.”34 He warned Wright not to expect too much from one associate, because he was “just too much a Methodist to see the point of our theological approach, and his Yale training prevents him from utilizing the archaeological data adequately.”35 When his Ph.D. student Dewey Beegle was hired by a Methodist college and wrote to his mentor about his success in the classroom, Albright replied that he “was considerably heartened by your news” about his students’ developing interests: “If one can get students reasonably excited about matters of theology, it is indeed an important step forward.”36 This wording suggests that while he took pains to argue that what he was doing was scholarly and objective, not religious, the ultimate goal of Old Testament study was to bolster theology. Liberal Protestants as a whole ranked only slightly above the Methodist subgroup. Liberal Protestants who no longer believed the events of the Old Testament actually happened, or believed events like the conquest had happened but did not believe God approved of such bloodshed, were decidedly outside Albright’s ecumenical circle. Albright noted with glee that From the Stone Age to Christianity was appealing to everyone but liberal Protestants, including conservative Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and, according to him, even “non-religious scholarly circles.”37 He believed liberal Protestants had become so anti-historical that they could not stand his view of history. They believed in progress and metaphysical systems, mistakes similar to those that had been made in the past, before Catholics turned back to the Bible. “Scholasticism easily becomes a fossilized academic tradition,” he argued, “and Neo-orthodoxy frequently becomes irresponsible, but the living faith of the Bible will prevail.”38 Albright primarily saw two religious groups as irrationally ahistorical, liberal Protestants and Muslims. Albright encountered many Muslims in his decade in Jerusalem, and later in his two expeditions to Arabia. He tended to regard them as simple and child-like. For Albright, the JudeoChristian tradition, properly understood, was based on facts. “Arabian tradition is worthless for such historical purposes,” he informed an inquirer. “There is no way of telling” the answer to her question “except from the traditions stated in the Bible.”39 Liberal Protestants mistakenly believed that the Bible’s traditions might not be a straightforward depiction of what actually happened; Islamic tradition, he felt comfortable saying, really was just such a fabrication. Albright expressed enjoyment in becoming a minority within the minority groups he championed, such as when he participated as a teacher in the 1946 Catholic Biblical Summer School at Niagara University in New York. In the group photo of the fve faculty and all the students, Albright wore a suit. The other 68 men pictured wore priestly robes. Telling Glueck about his latest honorary degree, from the Jewish Institute of Religion, Albright joked that now “all I need is one from the Yeshiva College in order to be an all-around

The Baltimore School 55 Goy, since I am already Honorary Member of the Hebrew University.”40 Freedman, born Jewish, was a gifted student who at age 17 both graduated from college and became Presbyterian. Once, when asked to give talks on Jewish-Christian relations, he wrote nervously to his mentor that he had “only the most chaotic ideas on the subject,” and was puzzled to fnd that “for some reason I am regarded as an expert, though almost totally alienated from one group, and not entirely at home in the other.” If there was an expert on such problems, Freedman felt, it was Albright. “I think I would get a lot out of a conversation with you about it; for you of all men are much at home with both groups.”41 Albright’s views on Jews were undoubtedly progressive for their time and worthy of respect. He worked to help European scholars, both Jewish and non-Jewish, affected by the Nazi regime. For example, he helped Jewish scholar Julius Lewy, professor of Semitic philology at the University of Giessen, and non-Jewish scholar Albrecht Goetze, professor of Semitic languages and Oriental history at Marburg, obtain positions in the United States after they were dismissed by the Nazis in 1933. His efforts in this regard are detailed in a series of letters in the APS papers. He helped ensure Jewish scholars would be more fairly represented in scholarly circles; for example, he agreed to Luther Weigle’s request to serve on the Old Testament section of the American Standard Bible Committee, on one condition: that Weigle correct his oversight of not having invited a single Jewish scholar.42 In developing an ecumenical vision based on adherence to the Old Testament, however, he created new boundaries of exclusion. Additionally, his ideas about homogeneous group cultures meant that while he certainly condemned genocide in the contemporary world, he did not condemn ethnic nationalism. Albright sometimes yearned to identify more fully with Jews. In 1944, I. B. Berkson of the American Zionist Emergency Council informed Albright of rumors suggesting that the reason Albright supported Zionism was because he was “intermarried with” Jews. “At any rate,” Berkson wrote, “I told him that I thought you neither looked like a Jew, acted like a Jew, or smelt like a Jew; and as far as I knew, you were a direct descendant of Japheth.”43 Albright replied: I wish I had some Jewish connection through marriage. Your informant probably assumed that [William F.] Stinespring (my sister’s husband) is Jewish because he translated Klausner’s From Jesus to Paul into English. Unfortunately, Stinespring is a Pennsylvania Dutchman from the Valley of Virginia (he is also an anti-Zionist). My wife has a second cousin living in town (one Thornley Martin), whose mother is Jewish.44 Stinespring, an ordained Presbyterian, spent most of his career at the Methodist Duke University Divinity School. He participated in the same constellation of scholarly interests as his brother-in-law. His main interest was the way the Old Testament was used in the New Testament.

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He spent 1932–1935 and 1963 at ASOR in Jerusalem, and served on the State Department’s Anglo-American Committee on Palestine in 1946. But, in Albright’s view, he was the kind of Protestant who had become so liberal that he might not even qualify as Christian anymore. Albright once provided a recommendation for Stinespring that was part glowing—“Stinespring controls the original sources, he has the scholar’s attitude, he is qualifed to do worth-while research, he has a broad culture, he is a splendid teacher, and he is one of the most upright men whom I have ever known”—and part damning. I frankly do not know just what his religious beliefs are, since we never discussed them. … I attend church in Palestine much more than he does, but that isn’t surprising when you realize that for many years he never saw the inside of a church in America except as a member of the choir.45 Albright recommended inviting Stinespring for a year as a visiting professor so that the dean could judge whether his commitment to Christianity, or lack thereof, came up to Duke’s requirements. Stinespring frustrated Carl Voss’ efforts to organize Christian college professors’ support for Zionism. He was “disturbed and chagrined” at the opposition they were getting from Bible professors in “our more liberal seminaries,” and he wrote to Albright to let him know that “not a little of this opposition seems to come from your brother-in-law.”46 Voss asked Albright if he could write to Stinespring to help bring him around. “I never discuss anything except professional matters with Stinespring,” Albright replied. Granting that Stinespring was “an exceedingly independent and honest man,” he was also “a socialist and a theological liberal, so we simply do not discuss either socio-political or theological questions.”47 Albright learned not long afterward that he did have a Jewish relation by marriage, a little more distant than Stinespring. His correspondence with his relative Helen Abrams, nee Robbins, demonstrates the way ancient times and contemporary issues meshed in ordinary people’s minds, and indeed shows the sort of everyday anti-Jewish attitudes that Albright sought to end. In 1945, Helen wrote him asking for advice. She had divorced her frst husband, “a cruel person,” and had been married ten years previous to a Jewish man, “the kindest, most generous man I ever knew.”48 Helen’s question was: “We would like to know, in your opinion (as I feel you are an authority) are the Jewish people entitled to Palestine, and did they actually kill Christ.”49 She continued, “My children have had to listen to slurs against my husband’s race for a long time.” They don’t like to hear it, but I’ve told them to ignore it, as it is untrue. Please let me know about these things. My marriage is built on love + respect, so nothing you say could have any bearing on this. Only, you spent many years in Jerusalem + thereabouts, so I feel that you do know.50

The Baltimore School 57 Helen closed by stating that someday she would love to meet her famous relative and introduce him to her children and their stepfather. Albright replied that he believed the Jewish people “are entitled to a home in Palestine.”51 He then wrote a long paragraph comforting Helen on the second point, reassuring her that responsibility for the death of Christ lay with many parties, and reminding her that Jesus’ early followers were Jewish. Only three months later, Albright had the opportunity to meet these relatives as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. At that time he learned Helen was a convert to Judaism and that the family was raising the boys Jewish.52 The Chicago Daily Tribune wrote up a story on the famous academic, referring to him in the headline as “Jewish Expert” and mentioning that he was living with the Abrams family while in Chicago. The Jewish expert used the forum to explain his views on Zionism. Albright added, according to the reporter, that “all reports of Jewish persecution of Arabians are false.”53 Albright argued that a “common intellectual approach” to the Old Testament could be achieved while leaving theological differences off the table. “I am not in the least anxious to see a union of religious groups or attitude,” he wrote.54 Lecturing as I do constantly to Catholic priests and theological students, Protestant ministers and seminaries, and to Jews of all types and descriptions, I can see the merit of a common intellectual approach, which honestly faces the absolute difference of religious viewpoint and recognizes merit in each without surrendering one’s own religious convictions in any respect. As you see my stand in critical matters is an intellectual position, not a religious one.55 In other words, Albright held that scholarship and religion could be separated as much as scholarship and politics could. This approach, involving as it did a non-skeptical way of reading the text, a faith that the Israelites’ actions were justifed, and a belief that the Bible was slowly and steadily being vindicated by archaeology, could not really be said to have no bearing on the religious outlook of one who held it. The question is not whether it had a bearing on religious outlook, but what that bearing was. By instilling his plain-sense reading of the Old Testament among others for whom the Old Testament was also a sacred text, Albright fostered a conservative Bible-based ecumenism that contributed to the growing normalization of the idea of a “Judeo-Christian tradition” and lack of attention to what that excluded. In the Baltimore school’s divide between good religion and bad religion, the good religion of those Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who venerated the Old Testament in this way fell on one side of a binary, while the bad religion of liberal Protestants, fundamentalist Protestants, and Muslims, derided as ahistorical and thus lacking reason, fell on the other.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

William Foxwell Albright to F. J. Goodnow, January 26, 1928, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Wilbur Albright, October 10, 1937, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Samuel Geiser, June 10, 1934, APS. William Foxwell Albright to “Father and Family,” October 2, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Nelson Glueck, 14 November, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Wilbur Albright, October 10, 1937, APS. William Foxwell Albright to “Father and Family,” October 2, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright to G. Ernest Wright, September 27, 1951, APS. Mitchell J. Dahood to William Foxwell Albright, September 20, 1951, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Hugh Albright, April 10, 1954, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Charles Lilley Horn, April 5, 1963, APS. Emmanuel Gitlin’s curriculum vitae, APS. David Noel Freedman to William Foxwell Albright, August 6, 1965, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Rev. Robert F. Quinn, C.S.P, January 24, 1959, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Hugh Albright, February 22, 1958, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Charles Lilley Horn, February 16, 1963, APS. Jason Epstein to William Foxwell Albright, January 31, 1956, APS. Anchor Bible series press release, September 1964, APS. Anchor Bible Series brochure, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Antonio Neves-Pedro, May 29, 1961, APS. David Noel Freedman to William Foxwell Albright, October 22, 1959, APS. Anchor Bible Series brochure, APS. Anchor Bible Series brochure, APS. G. Ernest Wright to William Foxwell Albright, June 29, 1956, APS. William Foxwell Albright to G. Ernest Wright, July 2, 1956, APS. William Foxwell Albright to G. Ernest Wright, July 2, 1956, APS. William Foxwell Albright to “Graham,” March 11, 1938, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Albrecht Alt, May 16, 1946, APS. William Foxwell Albright to “FitzGerald,” November 28, 1944, APS. William Foxwell Albright to “Family,” October 24, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Lester Plowman, August 26, 1949, APS. William Foxwell Albright to S. Alfonso Canut de Bon, August 15, 1950, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Clarence T. Craig, August 28, 1952, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Roger T. O’Callaghan, S.J., September 6, 1952, APS. William Foxwell Albright to G. Ernest Wright, August 8, 1950, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Dewey M. Beegle, May 30, 1966, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Wilbur M. Smith, February 22, 1941, APS. William Foxwell Albright, excerpts from an address given September 30, 1952, in Baltimore, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Esther Kellner, January 20, 1967, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Nelson Glueck, April 4, 1936, APS. David Noel Freedman to William Foxwell Albright, March 23, 1953, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Dean Luther A. Weigle, April 8, 1945, APS. I. B. Berkson to William Foxwell Albright, September 19, 1944, APS. William Foxwell Albright to I. B. Berkson, September 21, 1944, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Dean Elbert Russell, February 21, 1936, APS. Carl Hermann Voss to William Foxwell Albright, December 21, 1943, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Carl Hermann Voss, December 24, 1943, APS. Helen Abrams to William Foxwell Albright, November 5, 1945, APS.

The Baltimore School 59 49 50 51 52 53

Helen Abrams to William Foxwell Albright, November 5, 1945, APS. Helen Abrams to William Foxwell Albright, November 5, 1945, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Helen Abrams, November 9, 1945, APS. William Foxwell Albright to Harry Orlinsky, January 19, 1946, APS. “Jewish Expert Calls on U.S. to Keep Its Pledge,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 7 January 1946. 54 William Foxwell Albright to “Graham,” March 11, 1938, APS. 55 William Foxwell Albright to “Graham,” March 11, 1938, APS.

4

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” Nelson Glueck’s Shift from Favoring Cultural Hybridity to Jewish Nationalism

As director of ASOR’s Jerusalem school in 1932–1933, 1936–1940, and 1942–1947, American biblical archaeologist and Reform rabbi Nelson Glueck upheld ASOR’s offcial stance of political neutrality, stating, “We are partisan only to scientifc research. No other attitude can be tolerated” (cited in King 1983: 101). During his tenure as director, Glueck (1937: 33) attributed the safety of ASOR members during periods of unrest to “the well known, strenuously maintained, and generally respected political and religious neutrality of the School.” But Glueck’s politics were indeed present in his writing. While Glueck did not explicitly discuss political views in his scholarly books, I argue that the historical ethnography of ancient cultures he provided in these texts shifts from a model of culture as fuid to a model of culture as static that maps onto his shift from opposing political Zionism to supporting it. This chapter thus illuminates the political stakes that were involved for scholars in adopting one of these theoretical models over another. Glueck is commonly remembered as a Zionist, and it is not often recognized that he spent the frst half of his career opposing political Zionism. This chapter traces Glueck’s shift from opposing political Zionism in order to protect a culturally diverse Palestine to favoring political Zionism and working to elide difference, even arguing that the Jewish community could overcome internal differences and achieve mystical unity through their unique connection to the land. Glueck, who always supported cultural Zionism, spent much of his adult life in Palestine, as did his fellow American Reform rabbi and mentor on the Arab-Israeli issue, Judah Leon Magnes. Magnes, the Hebrew University’s frst chancellor, chose to emigrate to Palestine. Yet his cultural Zionism, like Glueck’s, often entailed vehemently opposing the goals of political Zionists to protect the status of non-Jews. In April 1948, Magnes took heed of warnings that his life was in danger and moved to New York, where he died a few months later (Ross 2011: 85). Glueck’s timely political change allowed him to enjoy safety and prestige in the newly formed state. Glueck published three books designed to make the results of his archaeological site surveys accessible to a popular audience: The Other Side of the

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-5

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 61 Jordan (1940), The River Jordan (1946), and Rivers in the Desert (1959). His political shift manifested itself in his writings in terms of his implicit theory of culture. At frst Glueck characterized ancient Palestine as a paragon of cultural hybridity, taking special care to point out the ways the ancient Israelites mixed with other peoples. After 1948, he shifted to foregrounding the biblical narrative and applauding the ancient Israelites’ efforts to purge the area of heterogeneity. Regardless of his ASOR ties, throughout the tense 1930s and 1940s Glueck advanced the idea that the British mandate or an international administration should govern Palestine for as long as possible to avoid the formation of an Arab state, a Jewish state, or both. Glueck was named president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1947 partly because he still opposed political Zionism; while many Reform Jews had become Zionists by the 1940s, HUC retained a strong anti-Zionist contingent longer than most Reform institutions (Meyer 1976: 177). However, a few months after the state of Israel’s founding, Glueck adopted a fervently mystical political Zionism characterized by a belief in the special relationship between the Jewish people and the land and rejected his previous view that other groups also had a special relationship with the same land. As HUC president, he sought to spread this version of Zionism among American Reform Jews, notably by building a campus in Jerusalem and requiring all HUC rabbinical students to study there for one year. Glueck also hosted an ecumenical summer institute for clergy and religious studies faculty at HUC in Jerusalem. This support for what Americans were coming to think of as the “Judeo-Christian tradition” was not paradoxical. A reading of participant testimonials demonstrates that the institute served to strengthen the Jewish claim to the land through appeals to a shared biblical heritage. Glueck’s career was indisputably prominent at mid-century, but he has not received extensive treatment in studies on either American biblical archaeology or Israeli nationalist archaeology. An exception is Philip J. King’s institutional history of ASOR, in which Glueck receives nine pages and one scolding footnote for working as a spy for the U.S. Offce of Strategic Services during World War II. For King, this “compromis[ed] his political evenhandedness” and cost him “the confdence of Arab friends,” given that he carried out much of his mission—which, according to Floyd Fierman (1986: 20), involved formulating an escape plan for the British if they lost the battle of El Alamein—while living among the Bedouin. “It is an unwritten law in the Mideast,” King (1983: 103) reminded readers, “that archaeology and politics should never be mixed; when they are, it is to the detriment of archaeology.” Floyd Fierman (1986: 18)—who romantically describes Glueck as “a solitary rabbi-archaeologist” and “the real-life Indiana Jones of his day”— objects to King’s criticism, arguing that “freedom was a higher cause than archaeological neutrality” (1986: 22). And few academics today, forty years after King penned his conviction that politics and archaeology could be

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separated, would accept that such a separation is possible. Indeed, there were many ways Glueck and his fellow ASOR members chose not to remain neutral in the political milieu of their day, with espionage only an especially obvious example. I would argue that the more meaningful examples are those, such as Glueck’s positions against and then for a Jewish state, that were clearly political but that went unremarked upon in internal ASOR correspondence or works like King’s. Glueck was born in 1900 to Lithuanian immigrants and raised in the largely anti-Zionist milieu of pre–World War II Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Hebrew Union College, a center of Reform Jewish learning, in Cincinnati and was ordained a rabbi in 1923 in that tradition, which at that time denied that future return to Palestine formed an essential component of Judaism. “At various times,” as Samuel E. Karff (1976: xii) wrote, “Reform served as code word for a non-Zionist or anti-Zionist orientation.” Reform Judaism as articulated in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform discouraged special emphasis on the physical territory of Palestine. The 1937 Columbus Platform, forged during a period of acrimonious debate over the issue among Reform rabbis, worked to increase Palestine’s importance to Reform Judaism (Kolsky 1990: 34). The two biographies of Glueck celebrate his latter political position. The authors take for granted that he devoted his life’s work to fnding evidence of ancient Jewish presence in Palestine in order to make a twentieth-century land claim. Ellen Norman Stern (1980: 126) describes Glueck as such a wellknown and revered fgure in Israel’s early days that he was known simply as “The Professor.” Glueck “enjoyed a special status among Israelis,” she wrote, because “he proved by his theories what they had for so long tried to explain to the rest of the world: the Jewish people had always belonged to the land of the Bible.” In a biography by Jonathan M. Brown and Laurence Kutler (2005: 12), the authors paint a picture of the volatile Palestine of 1936, where “biblical archaeology is seen by many Palestinian Jews as part of the struggle to establish a legitimate claim.” That is why, they write, Glueck arrived in Palestine with “frst a Bible and then a feld handbook, and with a scholarly mien, suggest[ing] that the route of the exodus from Egypt ... ran along ancient sites bordering Trajan’s highway in Transjordan.” Thus, Brown and Kutler, along with Stern, claim that Glueck came to Palestine expressly to prove the land belonged to the Jews. This heavily Zionist interpretation obscures our understanding of the frst half of Glueck’s career. Neither book cites Glueck explaining his career choices in this way. Before 1948, he simply was not doing anything of the kind. Afterward, while he became more interested in specifcally Jewish heritage, he likely would still have rejected the claim that archaeology’s main point was to settle a political dispute. These biographies, however, demonstrate that this has been a common way of understanding Glueck’s career. William Dever is well known for critiquing Albright and his students for their “biblical archaeology bias,” meaning they presupposed the Bible to be historically accurate when they interpreted archaeological data. But Dever’s

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 63 comments on Glueck in 2000 strive to preserve parts of his legacy in the face of methodological advances. Dever (2000: 117) argues that, despite Glueck’s insistence on following Albright in dating the lives of biblical characters, many of Glueck’s conclusions about settlement patterns were of lasting worth. Nevertheless, Glueck did match up his fnds with biblical stories in a way that made the land and the book read in harmony with each other. One of Glueck’s most well-known sentiments, often repeated by biblical conservatives, was that “it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference” (1959: 31). Not allowing that there might be alternative interpretations of data other than those supplied by the Bible surely qualifes as a biblical archaeology bias. Not unlike his biographers, Dever (2000: 118) champions Glueck’s idiosyncrasy, writing that “the faws in Glueck’s archaeological work in general over some thirty years were due not so much to the direct infuence of the ‘biblical archaeology’ movement … but to his own unique temperament, personality, and intellectual and spiritual odyssey.” But Glueck’s ideas about archaeology were not idiosyncratic. The best context in which to view his work is as a member of the Albright school. He received his archaeological training from Albright in Jerusalem and claimed the utmost loyalty to him. Albright trained Glueck in archaeological techniques, particularly pottery dating, in 1920s Jerusalem. Almost four decades after his training, he wrote to Albright, Everybody has some kind of ego-fulfllment. Mine, from the time I began to work under you in 1927 and to be strongly infuenced by you ever since, is to receive a word of approval every now and then from you. You have been and remain my teacher and mentor and friend and hero, and I shall never stop being everlastingly grateful to you for your instruction, helpfulness, example and encouragement.1 Glueck, who had earned a Ph.D. in Germany and was also mentored by Julius Morgenstern at Hebrew Union College before succeeding Morgenstern as president of that institution, gradually shifted toward more and more recognizably Albrightean positions.

Ethnic and Religious Diversity along the River Jordan As a young man, Glueck was infuenced by the Jewish anti-Zionist movement, particularly what it warned would be the negative unintended consequences of ethnic nationalism for both Jews and non-Jews (Kolsky 1990). Glueck was concerned that ethno-nationalism of any kind would harm the many groups making up Palestine’s cultural mosaic. Glueck’s early works refect this attitude toward the relationship between cultures. For example, Glueck’s views of the Bedouin in The Other Side of the Jordan are emblematic of his view that the history of Palestine was one of cultural persistence and hybridity. Fluent in Arabic, Glueck traveled

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through the Transjordan accompanied by a single guide at a time, either Ali Abu Ghosh, a Muslim Arab, or Rashid Hamid, a Muslim Circassian, both of whom had ties to the Transjordan Department of Antiquities (1970: 3). They often stayed with Bedouin tribes, whom Glueck would scrutinize for clues to the biblical patriarchs’ lifeways. He wrote that once, while chatting with some Bedouin, he started to wonder, “Were these the Arabs of Zeinati, or were these the Israelites of Jabesh-Gilead?” It was all I could do to refrain from turning to one of them and asking him how on that memorable night they had got past the Philistine guards on the city wall of Bethshean! Or had none been posted that evening? (1944: 740) Glueck valued the Bedouin for what he saw as their ability to yield such biblical knowledge. However, it is important to note that Glueck saw the Bedouin as backward, which went along with his belief—also that of countless other biblically oriented travelers (Sherrard 2011)—that God had cursed the area with desolation. Because the Bedouin seemed cursed with backwardness, Glueck thought they must have been there since ancient times. Hence, Glueck was eager to fnd biblical illustrations among them, even though they were not Jews and even though he would later dismiss them as recent interlopers on the Palestinian scene with an inferior claim to the land. Glueck’s most powerful statement of cultural persistence and hybridity was The River Jordan, which moves from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, making the Jordan the central means around which to tell the stories of the peoples who lived along its banks throughout history. It was published in 1946, between the end of the Holocaust and the state of Israel’s founding. Neither the fate of Europe’s Jews nor unrest in Palestine are mentioned explicitly. Even so, it refects Glueck’s political attitude toward Palestine in the mid-1940s. The River Jordan celebrated Palestine as an area to which many cultures and civilizations had contributed, and which should be of interest for this reason, not because of a more narrowly defned biblical history. It embraced the accomplishments of non-Israelite civilizations. Even though Glueck saw the development of belief in one god as elevating this region above others, he appreciated and wanted others to appreciate the cultures of other peoples (Corbett 2014: 114). He was particularly interested in the Nabataeans, the Arab civilization associated with the ancient city of Petra that fourished around the turn of the common era and who Glueck believed had intermarried with Judeans. The history of the Jordan valley was for him a great pageant of peoples. Describing the site of Beth-shean, Glueck (1946: 1990) encouraged the reader to “[f]lip the pages and get a moving-picture impression of the actors crossing the stage of history”: “Canaanites, Egyptians …, Hittites, Babylonians, Philistines, Israelites, Scythians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Crusaders.” Suggesting that cultural

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 65 change and interaction were positive, he added, “And remember, the play has just begun!” In The River Jordan, Glueck stressed interactions between cultures, pointing out that the beloved Ruth, ancestor of both King David and Jesus, was a “non-Israelitess” (1946: 85), and speaking of the rather less beloved King Herod, a “cosmopolitan part Jew, whose mother was a Nabataean and whose father was of Idumaean extraction,” as “in effect one of the greatest ambassadors to the Gentiles that the Jews had ever had” (1946: 221). Because he saw the ancient Israelites as a nomadic people who later became settled, he called them Bedouin and imagined he could “see the aged sheikh, David, seated on his donkey” (1946: 95). “The Injadat Arabs,” he wrote, were thought by some to be the “descendents of the ancient Gadites, one of the two and a half tribes … that settled on the east side of the Jordan” (1946: 78). Whether the blood of the ancient Israelites fowed through their veins did not matter, Glueck wrote, because either way, their sheikh “is a perfect gentleman, a born leader, and a splendid companion, full of wit and wisdom. Abraham may well have looked like him” (1946: 78). The River Jordan presented a cultural persistence model in which Glueck stressed the similarities between present-day inhabitants and biblical fgures, and in which he brought out similarities between the practices of members of different religions. As in a tell, where layers showed that town after town had been built on the same spot, Glueck interpreted cultural and religious practices as though they were layers building up over time. He interpreted religions as mixing as a result of cultural persistence when writing about Paneas, the site of a Roman temple. On the same cliff, “on whose side Pan niches can still be seen,” the Muslims had built a shrine to Sheikh Khudr, “who is venerated in Moslem as well as Christian tradition” (by Christians as Saint George) (1946: 24). He interpreted the Muslim shrine as the persistence of cultural memory because it seemed to him to say, “Like the Roman temple that preceded me, I, too, testify to the fact that this is holy ground” (1946: 24). As in a tell, the Roman level was culturally just below the Christian and Muslim levels. Glueck also merged the biblical story of Jephthah sacrifcing his daughter to fulfll a vow with a custom among Muslims of hanging rags and strings on a tree on a certain mountain. “It matters not that the worshipers are superfcially Moslems,” he wrote; the patrons of such a sanctuary “are pagans, by whatever name they may be known” (1946: 103) because the traditions persisted from a pre-Islamic period. Yet he also hoped that it was the “high place” where “the daughter of Jephthah and her companions retired, and the maidens of Israel for long thereafter repaired, to wail over her untimely death” (1946: 103–104). This site, he suggested, revealed a blend of Israelite, Roman, and Muslim veneration. Against the silent background of Arab and Jewish unrest in Palestine, Glueck explained to an Arab shepherd that the sherds in his hand told the story “of a past to which both of us belonged.” The shepherd asked,

66 “The Compulsion of Geopolitics” in what Glueck, perhaps naively, saw as “utter simplicity,” what the sherds said about the future. Glueck (1946: 244) replied, “Allah ya’ref”—only God knows that. The River Jordan thus fashioned a narrative that glorifed Palestine’s age-old cultural hybridity at the same moment its author was opposing the establishment of a Jewish state, attempting to get Jerusalem designated as an international zone, and working closely with Magnes in his efforts for Arab-Jewish reconciliation. These were increasingly unpopular positions. In 1947 Glueck convinced the American Jewish Committee to donate $5,000 to Magnes’ efforts, though apparently he could not convince the AJC to admit to it. Magnes peevishly wrote to Glueck that he was “almost tempted to suggest that the American Jewish Committee keep its money if, in order to improve Arab-Jewish relations, it has to resort to bookkeeping subterfuges.”2 Magnes then blamed the AJC for compromising the safety of Jews living in Arab countries through that organ’s support for the United Nations’ partition plan of November 29, 1947, which would have divided Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state and made Jerusalem an international zone. Magnes and Glueck opposed this partition, which would have created two states with ethnic nationalism as their unifying principle. Glueck replied, assuring Magnes that “fear of [the AJC’s] name being mentioned in this connection has died down.” He apologized that the appropriation of $5,000 was “tiny,” remarking that he was “somewhat depressed” that “[m]illions of dollars are available and squandered for fghting antiSemitism but it is heart-rendingly diffcult to fnd funds and interest for building up a positive philosophy of life.”3 “I have been deluged with requests since partition went into effect, at least nominally,” Glueck continued, to write articles or make statements explaining why I thought partition was wonderful. I have always replied that were I to write such articles or make such statements, all I could say would be that all of us ought to don sackcloth and strew our heads with ashes that partition had come to pass.4 Glueck’s concern about the implications of ethno-national states put him in a diffcult minority position. Glueck continued his arguments against a Jewish state after his inauguration as HUC president on March 12, 1948. In a document dated April 2, 1948, Glueck criticized partition for “the evil of the divisiveness it carried with it.”5 He argued in favor of controlled Jewish immigration and administration by a combination of Great Britain, the United States, and the United Nations, a solution he believed would fnd “acquiescence from both Jewish and Arab sides, if there were a guarantee that neither group could ever be treated as a minority, but would enjoy a political and economic equality.”6 On April 5, 1948, Glueck sent a letter to Charles Taft, son of President William Howard Taft and a fellow Cincinnatian who later served as the

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 67 city’s mayor. He asked Taft, who was president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America at that time, to make a public appeal for the internationalization of Jerusalem because he thought it was “highly desirable for public appeals to stem from all sides and particularly from that of Christendom.”7 He enclosed a statement Taft could use as the basis of his appeal. The letter must have worked. An unsigned editorial in the April 19, 1948, edition of the Cincinnati Times-Star titled “Save the Shrines of Jerusalem!” reported that “Charles P. Taft … has appealed to the United Nations for protection of Jerusalem and its shrines.” In early May 1948, even as warfare raged in Palestine, Glueck criticized the Jewish community in Palestine for their failure to cross cultural boundaries. “One of the sorriest records of Jewish endeavor there,” Glueck wrote, “has been the long and continued and, on the whole, absolute failure to integrate Jewish life there with Arab life and to make the economy of the country one integral and indivisible part.”8 Glueck made such criticisms with awareness of the violence between Jews and Arabs over the recent decades; despite all this, he had not yet decided the Arabs were his enemy. He pleaded with the audience to “demand immediately the internationalization of Jerusalem” and to save the people there, “large parts of which for a number of weeks have survived on edible grasses” because of the warfare between Arabs and Jews. On May 14, 1948, Jewish forces triumphed, and the state of Israel was declared. The state’s founding did not in itself change Glueck’s mind. Three months later, he met with U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall. According to Glueck’s notes, he stressed to the secretary that “the State of Israel,” which, despite Glueck’s earlier efforts, was now “an historic fact,” could perhaps be persuaded to give up its part of Jerusalem to create the proposed international zone.9 This brings up the question of why Glueck changed his mind about political Zionism, a change that appears to have occurred in about September 1948; he sounded Jewish nationalist themes in a meeting with President Harry Truman on October 1. Since I have found no record in either published texts or archival documents in which Glueck acknowledges, much less analyzes, this change, it is diffcult to say. The timing demonstrates that knowledge of the extent of the Holocaust did not immediately tip the scales. One change is that Glueck began in 1948 to feel pigeonholed as a Jew by some of his colleagues and by Arabs in general. His ability as an individual to cross cultures was being rapidly curtailed in ways he had not previously imagined. In February 1948, he wrote an emotional letter to Albright about how terrible he felt that Millar Burrows, the current director of ASOR’s Jerusalem school, thought Glueck should not return because as a Jew he might put himself and the school at risk. Glueck had trouble believing his Jewishness could hurt the school because he had gotten along during many troubled periods. During the 1936–1939 Arab-Jewish riots, for example, Glueck’s Jewishness had mattered little,

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even in ASOR’s heavily Arab neighborhood. The riots had not stopped him from his habit, which was to “work and travel and wander about in the blue, practically alone in accordance with my fancy, remaining in the feld for weeks at a time.”10 Glueck’s pain at being reduced to a label comes through in the following passage: To be told now, however, that my connection with the School has stamped it as being Jewish, and thus endangered it, that by reason of the fact of there being some Jewish tradesmen (among the majority of Arabs) who delivered goods and services to the School, and because Jewish scholars were allowed to visit our School library, and because occasionally some of my Jewish friends visited me (among the overwhelming majority of my Christian friends …), and because several individuals have told Burrows … that it is bad for a Jew to have headed the School, to be told that after all my years of service at the School and in almost always trying times, is a bit hard for me to take.11 An individual confronted with the erosion of all he believed to be true about the ability of cultures to fruitfully coexist, reduced to an ethnic label, forbidden from entering Arab countries, in danger even in familiar Arab neighborhoods, embraced a new worldview to cope with this turn of events.

Mystical Jewish Nationalism Jack Ross (2011: 77), in a biography of Elmer Berger, America’s most prominent Jewish anti-Zionist and one of Glueck’s advisees at HUC, suggests that Glueck did not really become a political Zionist so much as he went along with the majority’s wishes, suggesting he “likely remained a Magnes Zionist in his heart.” While this makes sense to the extent that many rabbis’ principles regarding the matter changed little, what suggests to me that the change was more thorough was the way it manifested itself in Glueck’s writings as a shift in his underlying cultural theory. Glueck could not have done the research that went into The River Jordan after the establishment of Israel in 1948. Many of the areas covered in that book, and all of the areas covered in The Other Side of the Jordan, became instantly unavailable to him when the borders were established. A Time magazine cover story on Glueck (Leonard 1963: 60) observed that “Jordan offcials still denounce him as a spy who mapped their country to help Israeli invaders,” a charge that doesn’t add up given his opposition to political Zionism at the time of his archaeological survey of Transjordan. Between 1948 and 1967, he was cut off from ASOR, located in the side of Jerusalem governed by Jordan, and he mourned having to make an international phone call to an institution just a couple of hundred yards away (Glueck 1968a: 39). These events infuenced Glueck’s decision to turn his attention to another desert survey, this time of the Negev, the triangular area in the south of

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 69 the newly formed state. Gone were the days of traveling with one Muslim companion; Glueck instead traveled with members of the Israeli army, who were charged with protecting him from Arab snipers (Brown and Kutler 2005: 146). Glueck did not like traveling in such a large group, but he did enjoy picking out members of the army who were most interested in archaeology (Leonard 1963: 60). A photograph in Rivers in the Desert, his book about the Negev explorations, shows the soldiers at the Red Sea seated around Glueck while he reads aloud “passages of the Bible telling about the arrival of the Israelites at Elath on the Red Sea” (Glueck 1959: opposite 140). He thought this was an excellent opportunity to teach soldiers about their heritage: not the area’s diverse heritages that had once fascinated him, but rather their specifcally Jewish one. Glueck was developing close relationships with Israeli leaders, including David Ben-Gurion. Though Rivers in the Desert did not broach the topic of the contemporary uses to be made of Glueck’s Negev survey, Ben-Gurion charged him with determining whether the area could support large-scale settlement of Jewish immigrants to Israel. Glueck’s hope for his expedition was that he could help turn the Negev into an area as productive and fourishing as what he glimpsed in the archaeological record (Brown and Kutler 2005: 147–148). Rivers in the Desert refects Glueck’s changed views on Zionism. The book tells a chronological history of the Negev from prehistoric peoples to Byzantine times. Rather than a treatise on the achievements of a variety of civilizations, the bulk of the narrative is taken up with explaining the ancient Hebrews’ relationships to the land, from the migration of Abraham to the Israelites wandering under the leadership of Moses to the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms to the establishment of Judea. He hypothesized that Abraham must have lived within a three-century timespan because that was when he found evidence of widespread habitation in the Negev, which would have been necessary to confrm the Bible’s record of Abraham stopping at many inhabited places and surviving such a journey. Glueck dubbed this timespan the Pax Abrahamitic, describing it as a period of a “growing population which pushed even into marginal lands such as the Negev and made careful use of every available acre in dry creek beds” (1959: 76), also his vision for Israel’s future Negev use. Though Abraham would have been a marginal fgure in this fourishing of civilization, Glueck’s naming the period after him would suggest that, as the progenitor of the Jewish people, he was the single most important individual at the time.12 This thus demonstrates the extent to which the biblical story had taken center stage for him since he wrote The River Jordan. The chapter covering the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan and the Davidic and Solomonic kingdom is titled “This Is the Blessing,” a reference to the Promised Land itself. The chapter focuses on the confict between the Israelites and those from whom they wished to wrest the land, a confict, Glueck wrote, that “raged for many centuries and in some ways was never resolved” (1959: 115). This bellicosity, with its foreshadowing of

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the twentieth-century confict, provides a distinct contrast to his way of describing cultural relations in The River Jordan. Rather than seeing the land as a pageant of peoples, by the late 1950s his words suggested frustration with the Israelites’, and perhaps the Israelis’, inability to totally vanquish others: Even after the adversaries had been annihilated or absorbed, their memory and infuence remained amazingly alive. The iron armored Philistines were eradicated, but the impress of their power and culture was perpetuated in the name of Palestine. (1959: 115) Glueck further read the past against the present as he described the Israelite tribal confederation as a “young state” that “had not been killed aborning” and suggested that it would have been better for the Philistines “had they accepted the newcomer in the arena of the ancient Near East and worked with it for their common welfare” (1959: 147–148). Glueck likened the ancients that he had previously seen as the forebears of his old friends, the Bedouin, to animals in relationship to the Israelites when he wrote that ancient Israel’s ability to settle the Negev was occasioned by “governmental control” that allowed them to tame “Bedouin groups … that for centuries had roamed about the Negev like untamed beasts of the feld.” Ancient Israel’s Negev settlement made it “possible for Israel to move to the fulfllment of its destiny … of expanding southward towards the Red Sea” (1959: 169). With the word “destiny” Glueck connected current events to the Bible, writing that although a kingdom of Judea was reestablished, “it was never able to repossess the totality of its former estate and reach out again as far as the Red Sea,” a feat that “was accomplished only by the creation of the modern State of Israel” (1959: 187). For the frst time in his popular works, Glueck cast doubt on the idea that the Bedouin who were his contemporaries could actually be the descendants of biblical peoples. Falling back on his habit of erasing time by merging the Bedouin with biblical fgures, Glueck wrote that he was briefy tempted to ask a Bedouin “against whom he had fought and when and where” when the Israelites invaded the Negev. “But then I suppressed the questions, remembering that all the Bedouins of the Negev had infltrated there in comparatively recent times from Arabia and that their tribal lore could not assist my quest into antiquity” (1959: 184). Also for the frst time in his many retellings of the historical move of peoples across the area, Glueck painted the spread of Islam unfavorably, calling the “fres of Islam” an “irresistible force”; Muslims, with the “fury of their evangelism by the sword[, ] swept … as far east as India and as far west as Spain” (1959: 247). After the publication of Rivers in the Desert, Glueck spoke and wrote often of his belief that the Negev had been vital to ancient Israel and was similarly vital to modern Israel, linking the two in mystical terms. In response

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 71 to calls for the state of Israel to cede parts of the Negev to Jordan or Egypt as an area for settling Palestinian refugees, Glueck made claims that went much further than his earliest argument about the Negev, made to President Harry Truman in late 1948, that through irrigation and river management “the entire Negev could be reclaimed and many tens of thousands of settlers could be placed on its now arid wastes.”13 He came to argue that to give up any of the Negev would be to cut off a piece of the land God had promised to the Jews. He appealed to Christians as allies, religiously because early Christianity had fourished in the Negev, and politically because the state of Israel represented a Western outpost in the Middle East.14 Though he had seen the 1948 borders of Israel drawn by men, he claimed they were drawn by God, who promised the land to the Jews eternally. Peace in the Middle East, Glueck warned, “cannot be bought at the expense of Israel’s birthright of land.”15 Glueck was made an honorary citizen of Eilat, an Israeli town on the Red Sea. In an address there, he stressed mystical attachment to the land. He speculated that if the Israelites, standing on the shores more than thirty centuries ago, had been able “to foresee all the confict which awaited them, even the most stouthearted among them might have been forgiven for shrinking back”; however, perhaps “they would have pressed on anyway, possessed as they were by the Promise which had been made to their fathers.”16 Though the ancient Israelite town named Eilat had not been located, Glueck found the bestowal of the name on a new settlement miraculous, stating that the “continuing miracle … for all of us” was that “once again the people of the State of Israel have rebuilt a city on the shores of the Gulf of Aqabah and have given it the name that Uzziah gave” the ancient town.17 This was miraculous because, Glueck said, he could not explain it in terms of “completely mathematical or scientifcally rational factors.”18 Of course, from another point of view, the events that led to the new Eilat were entirely explicable and needed no recourse to the miraculous to understand; this sort of rhetoric, however, discouraged the asking of too many questions. In another signal of rigidifed ideas about cultural groups, Glueck said he would gladly “go to war” before giving up a centimeter of the Negev to an Arab state or to “that non-Arab conglomerate that calls itself Egypt.”19 This turn of phrase suggests that he saw an ethnic purity to the category “Arab” to which the people of Egypt did not measure up. He appeared to see this lack of purity as a shortcoming, a position that could not be further from his celebration of cultural mixture in The River Jordan. Thanks to second editions, Glueck was able to obscure evidence of this previous viewpoint. In 1968 he published a substantially rewritten version of The River Jordan. Nothing in the volume indicated that a former edition existed, and the alterations Glueck made shifted it from a celebration of diversity and coexistence to a defense of Zionism. A new frst chapter was added titled “To Spy out the Land,” a phrase taken from Numbers 13:17 and referring to the Israelites’ reconnaissance of the Promised Land before

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their conquest of it. The chapter served to orient this new edition around the Bible by frst expounding on the river’s importance to biblical history before other histories were discussed. Updated portions refected Glueck’s surroundings and political temperament when he wrote that the toughened and weary Israelites who crossed the river after forty years of wandering in the desert would let nothing stop them from entering the land, and furthermore from “coming back to it thereafter like homing pigeons whenever they were dispersed” (1968b: 2). In another new passage, he lauded the Jews who chose to return to Palestine after the Babylonian exile as “early Zionists” (1968b: 186). “How glad they must have been to see their city of palms again, how delighted their children born abroad must have been with it!” he enthused (1968b: 187). Where Glueck had once seen the blending and changing of cultures over the centuries, he had shifted to seeing a mystical and essential oneness to Judaism. He argued that Jews, regardless of their differences on other matters, felt the same ineffable experience when they encountered the physical land of Israel. “I will never forget how he arrived in Jerusalem shortly after the Six Day War,” wrote Ezra Spicehandler, director of Jewish Studies at HUC in Jerusalem, after Glueck’s death. “He walked the streets of the Old City, which he had known so well as a young scholar, intoxicated not with victory but with a certainty of prophetic fulfllment.” When he touched the soil, Spicehandler wrote, “he underwent a spiritual transfguration which invested geography and pottery with mystical import.”20 Glueck had become swept up in the mystical ideas about Jewish unity centered on the land that swept up many Israelis at the time. Pushing the idea of an experience that could neither be explained nor shared with non-Jews was a useful way of denying other groups’ claims to the area. As one of the few individuals allowed to enter Israel directly after the 1967 war, Glueck decided to make available his diary from that period, published as Dateline: Jerusalem. He wrote of being “overwhelmed with exultation and thanksgiving about the miraculous victory of Israel” (1968a: 8). Glueck was thrilled to gain access to many sites and people that had been off limits to him since 1948. He briefy took over ASOR, where he had not been able to set foot for nearly twenty years. Much of the book concerned the state of archaeology as a result of the war, and tended to subsume the human element under the archaeological one, especially regarding beautifcation plans for the Old City. He approved of the “great courtyard” that had “been levelled within the last few days in front of the Western Wall, enabling many thousands of people to congregate there at one time and making it possible for the impressive beauty of the great blocks of some of the lower parts of the Herodian wall to be seen” (1968a: 12). He did not mention, though with his comprehensive knowledge of the Old City he must have known, that what was leveled to create the plaza was the Maghariba Quarter, which was hundreds of years old and had been home to at least 650 people (Abu El-Haj 2001: 164–165). This attitude toward the beautifcation of Jerusalem

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 73 at the expense of its poorer inhabitants refected an assumption that the value of the archaeological record could be used as an excuse for removing unwanted persons. To Glueck’s delight, it seemed that all the Jews in Israel were focking to see Jerusalem after the 1967 war. His suggestion for the territories was that “the part of Palestine occupied largely by Arabs [be] made into a separate Arab canton, with largely self-governing powers, contained within the state of Israel” (1968a: 15), which hearkened back to his hopes for a non-divided Palestine in 1948. Even so, Glueck found the new borders satisfying for biblical reasons. During a meeting with President Zalman Shazar, their “discussion turned to the ancient boundaries of Israel,” and the president asked for a copy of Rivers in the Desert, in which Glueck had discussed the matter. He “explained to the President that the boundary lines indicated by the description of ‘from Dan to Beersheba,’ referred only to the most thickly inhabited parts of ancient Israel, but that the outermost limits were variously described in the Bible” as extending from southern Syria to northern Sinai (1968a: 17). Later, Glueck told a reporter that the “present territory held by the Israeli armed forces corresponds almost exactly to the Solomonic boundaries” (1968a: 44), except for extending to the Suez Canal. A particular narrative of biblical territorial extension, mapped onto the present, was instilled with an air of scholarly validity when it came from the man known as “The Professor.”

Hebrew Union College and the Judeo-Christian Tradition In 1963, Glueck’s plan for Hebrew Union College had come to fruition when he dedicated the newly built Jerusalem branch of the school, constructed just a few hundred yards from the Mandelbaum Gate that separated West Jerusalem from Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem. It included the Biblical Archaeology School (now known as the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology), which Glueck hoped could provide an ASOR-like institution to scholars in Israel. The school allowed him to continue ecumenical activities that fostered a connection between Christians and Jews, while at the same time protecting the idea that Jews’ attachment to the land was unique. Glueck’s turn toward Jewish nationalism did not preclude a commitment to the genteel ecumenism, increasingly termed “the Judeo-Christian tradition,” that the United States was known for at mid-century. Indeed, he gave a benediction at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration that included a few somberly delivered lines in biblical Hebrew. Glueck dedicated HUC’s Jerusalem campus by inaugurating the ecumenical summer institute. Glueck used this institute to disseminate his new vision of the land’s importance being biblical, rather than being the site of the fourishing and blending of multiple important civilizations. President Shazar wrote to give his “special blessing” to the scholars of the frst summer institute, reminding them that “the study

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of archaeology” has “a very special place in this country,” and offering his prayer that, through their endeavors, “truth will spring from the earth.”21 On March 27, 1963, an Academic Convocation was held at which Walworth Barbour, the ambassador of the United States, announced a grant from the U.S. State Department to fund the summer institute. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion gave the convocation and “noted the importance of the establishment of the School and welcomed it as a bridge between America and Israel.”22 This institute had an impact on the feld of religious studies. Of the twenty-six participants that year, twenty-three listed their occupations as either college professors or graduate students. Jacob J. Enz, a professor at Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, reported that the Bible had come alive for him in a way it never had before. “Now,” he wrote, “… the mountains and hills of Palestine are forever a part of me.”23 The summer institute continued after Glueck’s death. In 1973 and 1974, the institute was named “Summer Seminar in Israel: The Jewish Sources of Christianity: Literary and Archaeological.” Sister Mary Justine, an associate professor of religious studies at Roman Catholic College in Buffalo, New York, reported that she had always been intrigued to fnd out what precisely it was that made Judaism a living thing and decided to take a second look. Now the land of the Bible became a living page as I visited the sites and probed the secrets of this beautiful country.24 The Rev. Robert E. Price, pastor and Ph.D. candidate at Duke University, wrote that he had “come to realize more fully the treasure we have in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”25 In 1974, under the direction of Eric Meyers of Duke University, the institute participants visited sites that “were centers of life at a time when Judaism and early Christianity coexisted in the Galilee.”26 Harvey Guthrie, an instructor in English and religion at Northfeld Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, wrote that he had a “richly rewarding time” learning “about both past and present Israel.”27 Thus, students at the institute had no trouble seeing a mystical connection between the ancient Israelites and the modern state whose leaders had chosen to name it Israel, and they carried this view back with them to their classrooms. As the wording of a generic press release sent to their home newspapers suggested, the participant “hopes to share with his students this unique experience of ‘digging up’ the past— intellectually, physically and spiritually—adding depth to their understanding of the Jewish roots of Christianity and creating further bridges between the two religious communities.”28 An interfaith Ph.D. program for Christian ministers was begun at HUC in the 1947–1948 school year that Glueck worked in coming years to fund and expand. A public relations document from 1951–1952 claims that it

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 75 is one of the bright characteristics of the American liberal academic tradition that an institution which is essentially a rabbinic institution can welcome Christian scholars [and] ministers, as students and send them out as scholars prepared to teach in Christian institutions.29 In a 1964 fundraising letter, Glueck outlined the accomplishments of the program, which took in ten to ffteen new Christian students each year, who earned Ph.D.s in areas such as “Hellenistic Literature [and] Rabbinic Studies,” being held to the same requirements “as for our Jewish graduate students.”30 Glueck envisioned that the program would contribute to interfaith relations through its wide reach, predicting that its graduates would soon be teaching in most seminaries in the United States.31 Sensitive to questions of why a Jewish seminary would offer such a program, Glueck wrote that the school had never publicized this program for fear that it might be considered as either a publicity or fund-raising gimmick or as a missionary endeavor. Obviously, it is neither. The only thing I ever say to the entering graduate Christian ministers is that I hope when they fnish their studies with us they will leave as better Christians because being better informed Christians than when they entered.32 A prospective Christian fellow, Marvin Runner, wrote a letter to Glueck saying that he was deeply impressed by Glueck’s article in National Geographic and that he had visited Palestine himself, where he found “that there was something about Palestine which drew one irresistibly to it.”33 He had hoped to work with Albright, but Albright was not teaching that year, so he corresponded with G. Ernest Wright, who recommended Glueck’s program.34 Gus W. van Beek, a fellow, wrote a letter of thanks for his fellowship and shared his future plans to pursue a Ph.D. with Albright.35 An additional tension in Glueck’s thought after 1948 was that he praised diversity within Judaism, especially when trying to get the Reform movement recognized by the Orthodox Jewish establishment in Israel, but at the same time continued to push mystical Zionism as an essential unifying factor for all Jews. “We do not want and will not accept any Jewish Ultramontanism,” 36 he wrote of the Orthodox who opposed any recognition for Reform, likening their infuence in Israel to what many Americans would have agreed were the excesses of European Catholicism, and thus not the expression of true ecumenical religion as it was practiced in America.37 In a piece titled “The Prospects for Reform Judaism in the State of Israel,” Glueck argued that Orthodox Judaism created more secularism in Israel because the populace associated it with legalistic arguments unsuited to the modern world. Glueck practiced ecumenism to an extraordinary degree in his hiring at HUC/BAS, bringing on board a large number of Christian biblical

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archaeologists to staff the Biblical Archaeology School when other Jewish and Israeli archaeologists were available. He asked Albright to be the frst American Visiting Professor at the school, but when Albright could not fulfll the obligation, Frank Moore Cross came instead.38 The second year, Wright served as the American Visiting Professor. This put American archaeologists into conversation with Israeli archaeologists in a way that was not possible otherwise because they would ordinarily have spent time at ASOR, which was on the other side of the Mandelbaum Gate. Additionally, Glueck hired William Dever to run the archaeological school from 1964 to 1970. The faculty demographics only began to change after Glueck’s death under the directorship of Avraham Biran. At the institute, relations between Christians and Jews were strengthened, along with uncritical and religiously based support for the state of Israel. While Glueck’s associates were sometimes surprised at the depth of his commitment to ecumenism, it refected his understanding of how important Christians had been to the Zionist project, an importance that is recognized in works on Christian Zionism such as Shalom Goldman’s, in which he attempts to correct the defciency in traditional narratives of Zionism, in which “Christians do not feature … except as antagonists” (2009: 1). This strengthening, however, was to the detriment of relationships that might also have included the other peoples of Palestine and other histories, whether biblical or not; the championing of a Judeo-Christian tradition as opposed to other confgurations is largely, of course, a matter of framing; for an alternative framing, see Richard Bulliet’s The Case for IslamoChristian Civilization (2004). Glueck also worked to strengthen Jewish support for Israel. One of the ways he sought to spread mystic attachment to the land among fellow Jews was by requiring HUC rabbinical students to spend a year in Israel, starting in 1970. In that year, Glueck held dedication exercises at HUC in Jerusalem for a new dormitory to accommodate the American students. According to Glueck, the year in Israel would make them capable of explaining to America’s Jewish youth, many of whom are radical in their thinking, the true meaning of Israel and show how wrong and false is the ideology of much of the radical youth in America. The latter include all too many of Jewish origin, who blindly make common cause with the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Panthers and others of their like and who include Israel in their so-called anti-imperialistic slogans.39 He spoke of “the ineluctable compulsion perceived by almost all Jews everywhere to strike roots in this sacred land and especially in this sacred city of Jerusalem.”40 However, the very reason for bringing the rabbinical students to Jerusalem was to make sure that this sense could be instilled in them, indicating it did not come naturally to all Jews to feel this way.

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 77 Prime Minister Golda Meir spoke at the dedication as well. Addressing the American rabbinical students, Meir compared them to the potential immigrants to Israel who wrote letters to her. Putting aside the economic need of those settlers, and the fact that the rabbinical students were not making aliyah, at least not yet, she tied both groups together by saying they both felt a mystical pull to the land: [L]etter after letter ends on the same note: I am prepared for anything, but I have one desire, and that is to live and die in Israel. When I see them in my mind’s eye and then look at the group of students I just addressed in the other room, how wide is the difference between them! One group is so utterly different from the other, except for this one factor, which cannot be rationally explained.41 Like Glueck, Meir fell back on the language of mystical and non-rational experience to shield her claims from scrutiny and to argue that the one factor that held all Jews together was the land. Meir went on to heap praise on Glueck for his contributions to Zionism: What is the wonderful thing which Nelson Glueck has done for us? … He wanted to prove that the spirit of the Jewish people is rooted in the soil, in the simplest and most physical sense of the word. … Go out and see: Israel is a stone here, a tree there, a road, a hill; study the books he has written about the Jordan Valley and the Negev.42 The language of mystical experience thus constituted a powerful way of marginalizing others’ claims to the land, and a powerful mechanism by which to pressure fellow Jews into accepting political Zionism.

Conclusion Glueck wrote long before James Clifford (1986: 2) argued that “the poetic and the political are inseparable, that science is in, not above, historical and linguistic processes.” This investigation of Glueck’s way of writing historical ethnography demonstrates not only that his implicit theory of culture changed, but that his views of culture and his political outlook were inseparable. Before 1948, his pleas for a culturally diverse Palestine embedded themselves in his words as a celebration of cultural hybridity that presaged late twentieth-century theorists like Homi Bhabha (1994). After 1948 his new politics led to dramatic changes in his writing, embedding in it an implicit defense of political Zionism based on a vision of Jews as mystically unifed around what he came to see as Judaism’s one essential component, the land. When Nelson Glueck looked around in the desert, he sometimes imagined that time had been erased and that he might encounter Abraham in the

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next Bedouin tent. At other times he wished to feel the sands of time doing their work. It “is a pity that one cannot live for a thousand years or two,” he once wrote, “because in the course of time the silly man-made borders are expunged ... by the compulsion of geopolitics” (1968a: 59). The thought that over a long period of time conditions could be improved provided Glueck at least a bit of comfort in the face of the thought that, “in the meantime, infnite hardships and suffering are created, individual lives moulder away, entire generations become unnecessarily imprisoned” (1968a: 59). In Glueck’s case, enthusiasm for the romantic nationalism of Zionism—the geopolitics of his time—masked the nuances of the multiethnic and multireligious populations of Palestine even for an individual who had once celebrated them. The fuidity of cultures that Glueck once championed turned into a belief in the rigid separation of ethnic groups that continues to characterize many people’s understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian confict. Glueck’s early work shows that this state of affairs is not natural, and that the sands of time do shift.

Notes 1 Nelson Glueck to William Foxwell Albright, August 21, 1964. MS20/A1a-110/4, Albright, Wm., American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio (hereafter AJA). 2 Magnes to Glueck, December 16, 1947. MS20/A1a-2/8 Glueck–Personal, AJA. 3 Glueck to Magnes, January 2, 1948. MS20/A1a-2/8 Glueck–Personal, AJA. 4 Glueck to Magnes, January 2, 1948. MS20/A1a-2/8 Glueck–Personal, AJA. 5 Nelson Glueck, April 2, 1948. MS20/A1a-5/2, Palestine, AJA. 6 Nelson Glueck, April 2, 1948. MS20/A1a-5/2, Palestine, AJA. 7 Glueck to Charles Taft, April 5, 1948, MS20/A1a-5/2, Palestine, AJA. 8 Nelson Glueck, undated, MS20/A1a-5/2, Palestine, AJA. This document appears to be comments Glueck delivered to the Executive Committee Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, May 1–2, 1948. 9 Nelson Glueck’s notes from interview with Secretary of State George C. Marshall, July 27, 1948. MS20/A1a-5/2, Palestine, AJA. 10 Nelson Glueck to William Foxwell Albright, February 22, 1948, American Philosophical Society (hereafter APS). 11 Nelson Glueck to William Foxwell Albright, February 22, 1948, APS. 12 While Abraham is also often employed as a conciliatory fgure as a shared ancestor of Jews and Arabs, Glueck does not offer that interpretation of him here. 13 Nelson Glueck, “Notes on conversation with President Harry S. Truman at breakfast at the Netherland-Plaza Hotel, 8:00 A.M. October 1, 1948,” 11 October 1948, MS20A1a-5/2, Palestine, AJA. 14 Glueck to Bernard Cherin, November 17, 1958, MS20A1a-69/13 Rivers in the Desert, AJA. 15 Nelson Glueck, “The Negeb in the Frame of History,” n.d., MS160/2/3, General Writings C–E, AJA. 16 Nelson Glueck, “The Approach of Judaism to Social and Political Problems,” Delivered at the Eilat Archaeological Congress on October 14, 1962, MS160/2/1, General Writings A, AJA. 17 Glueck, “The Approach of Judaism to Social and Political Problems,” AJA. 18 Glueck, “The Approach of Judaism to Social and Political Problems,” AJA. 19 Glueck, “The Approach of Judaism to Social and Political Problems,” AJA.

“The Compulsion of Geopolitics” 79 20 Ezra Spicehandler, “An Appreciation: by Ezra Spicehandler, Director of Jewish Studies, HUC, Jerusalem.” Folder HUC/205, The Archives of Progressive Judaism in Israel at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem (hereafter APJI). 21 Zalman Shazar, July 7, 1963. MS160/1/13, S-Z, General; unidentifed, AJA. 22 “The 1963 Summer Institute on Near Eastern Civilizations Jerusalem School of the Hebrew Union College A Summary Report,” HUC/144, APJI. 23 “The 1963 Summer Institute on Near Eastern Civilizations Jerusalem School of the Hebrew Union College A Summary Report,” HUC/144, APJI. 24 Participant comment sheets, HUC/118, APJI. 25 Participant comment sheets, HUC/118, APJI. 26 Press release, 1974, HUC/118, APJI. 27 Press release, 1974, HUC/118, APJI. 28 Press release, 1974, HUC/118, APJI. 29 “Interfaith Program,” MS20/A1a-18/4, Christian Fellows, AJA. 30 Glueck to Leslie Paffrath, May 25, 1964. MS20 A1a-105/2 Interfaith, AJA. 31 Glueck to Leslie Paffrath, May 25, 1964. MS20 A1a-105/2 Interfaith, AJA. 32 Glueck to Leslie Paffrath, May 25, 1964. MS20 A1a-105/2 Interfaith, AJA. 33 Marvin Runner to Glueck, February 16, 1948. MS20/A1a-1/13, Christian Fellowships, AJA. 34 Marvin Runner to Glueck, February 16, 1948. MS20/A1a-1/13, Christian Fellowships, AJA. 35 Gus W. van Beek to Glueck, March 17, 1948. MS20/A1a-1/13, Christian Fellowships, AJA. 36 Nelson Glueck, “Against Hierarchical Authority” MS160/2/1 “General Writings A,” AJA. 37 Nelson Glueck, “The Prospects for Reform Judaism in the State of Israel,” delivered July 7, 1966 at the World Union for Progressive Judaism Conference in London, MS 160/2/5 General Writings O-S, AJA. 38 Albright to Glueck, October 11, 1963. MS 20/A1a-102/2, Albright, Wm, AJA. 39 Nelson Glueck, “Dr. Nelson Glueck’s Address Given at the Dedication Exercises, October 13, 1970, at the Hebrew Union College Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem.” Folder HUC/205, APJI. 40 Nelson Glueck, “Dr. Nelson Glueck’s Address Given at the Dedication Exercises, October 13, 1970, at the Hebrew Union College Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem.” Folder HUC/205, APJI. 41 Golda Meir, “Address by Her Excellency, Golda Meir, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Residence Hall of the Jerusalem School and Her Receiving of an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, October 13, 1970,” Translated from the Hebrew, Folder HUC/34, APJI. 42 Golda Meir, “Address by Her Excellency,” APJI.

5

Relativism as Bad Religion Objective Knowledge of God’s Mighty Acts in the Work of George Ernest Wright

Little exasperated George Ernest Wright more than liberal Protestants who ignored the Old Testament. “The importance of the Old Testament to the Christian church,” he bluntly explained in his frst book, The Challenge of Israel’s Faith, “is a perfectly obvious fact to anyone who knows much about it” (1944: 99). What the Old Testament demonstrated, he argued, was that God had given his revelation to exactly one ancient people group, the Israelites, who had responded by understanding themselves in terms of history rather than the static mythology of other ancient peoples. Wright’s portrayal of the Israelites as the recipients of an eternal and unchanging religion opposed theories that Israelite religion had changed over time. For Wright (1950: 11), that idea lay “emphasis inevitably upon the process of human discovery rather than on revelation.” There were different conceptions of God in the Bible because God revealed himself more clearly over time, Wright argued, not because humans grew in understanding. Albright’s third Ph.D. student (1937), Wright built much of his career on the idea that scholarship properly carried out was non-political because it created an objective body of knowledge that existed independently of those who produced it. Also, as a leader in the mid-century biblical theology movement, Wright explicitly combined archaeology and theology. Wright’s writings were even more positive than Albright’s toward the Israelites because Albright did not explain away all the similarities he saw between Israelites and Canaanites. Albright left behind many negative comments about the Canaanites, but John J. Collins (2005: 64) asks that we at least recognize that Albright, “to his credit, refected on the problem at some length,” such as in his piece “The Role of the Canaanites in the History of Civilization” (1965). Wright’s binary discouraged mulling over the Canaanites’ positive attributes. In this theological archaeology, the ancient Israelites and Canaanites were radically different because God made them so. If scholars found similarities between them, Wright found ways either to recast those elements as differences or to dismiss them as meaningless to his larger point, which was that the Israelites were the only ancient people who valued history. In the process he constructed a parallel modern binary between those who understood the Old Testament as primarily historical—certain Jews, Protestants, DOI: 10.4324/b22935-6

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and Catholics—and all the rest of the world’s peoples, who were, he believed, as sunk in forms of paganism as the Canaanites had been. Belief in the Old Testament’s historicity thus marked the difference between true religion and false religion, a simple binary into which Wright could categorize all forms of faith. This chapter explores the way Wright, as a theologian but operating under the aegis of archaeology as a scientifc endeavor, constructed a rigid separation between the ancient Israelites and ancient Canaanites. His belief in the Bible as an objective record of God’s mighty acts in history made possible his insistence that the conquest of Palestine occurred in as bloody a manner as described in the book of Joshua, and that the slaughter of the Canaanites was good because God ordered it. In widely read textbooks, Wright described the conquest of the Canaanites in terms that echoed the rhetoric surrounding Palestinian displacement. Wright further argued that Jesus was best understood as one of God’s mighty acts rather than as love, a teacher, or the divine Son of God. Through this theological argument, Wright constructed the main difference among the world’s peoples as being not what they believed about Jesus but whether they believed in the historicity of the Old Testament, a basis on which he could build ecumenical relationships with Catholics and Jews but exclude most of the world’s peoples, including both Muslim and Christian Palestinians. Wright’s decades of reading the Old Testament as an objectively real history, and his rejection of relativist readings as human-created paganism, underpinned his support for Israel as a modern state connected to ancient Israel through an essentialist view of Jewish identity. Wright thus provides a further example of the argument that archaeologists who tended to see the Israelites and Canaanites as more different than similar, who foregrounded the biblical period as the most important part of Near Eastern history, and who saw their own work as objective were also sympathetic to Zionist aspirations for a Jewish ethno-national state in the twentieth century. In the 1960s Wright’s views underwent a transformation that was infuential on his students when he acknowledged the necessity of interpreting archaeological data. The bulk of Wright’s career is still worth examining, however, especially because he wrote often for popular audiences. P. R. S. Moorey writes that in his works for the general public Wright “placed himself in a particularly exposed position” by tending to suggest that “biblical archaeology was indeed primarily concerned to prove the truth of the Bible” (1991: 102). Addressing the question of whether it was appropriate for biblical archaeologists to try to prove the Bible, Wright (1957: 27) answered that the scholar “knows that the primary purpose of biblical archaeology is not to ‘prove’ but to discover.” Then, circularly, he implied that the question was moot because all their discoveries did prove it: The biblical scholar no longer bothers to ask whether archaeology ‘proves’ the Bible. In the sense that the biblical languages, the life and customs of its peoples, its history, and its conceptions are illuminated in

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This legacy not only lived on when the public read Wright’s books but when students were assigned his two textbooks, The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (1956, co-written with Floyd Filson) and Biblical Archaeology (1957). Burke Long writes that the atlas especially became a standard, “on the must-purchase list of countless students” who “entered expanding university and college programs in the study of religion and theology during the 1960s” (Long 2003: 189).

The Israelites against the Canaanites The very title of Wright’s The Old Testament against its Environment (1950), which formed a set with Floyd Filson’s 1952 The New Testament against its Environment, demonstrated his stance that the ancient Israelites had been in their world, “yet were never quite united with the world” (Wright and Filson 1956: 5). The title word “against” signaled his focus on differences between the Israelites and their surroundings rather than similarities. “We must not forget,” Wright (1944: 64) cautioned, “that during the days of Israel the great religious struggle was that between polytheism and monotheism, between a base, magical, licentious superstition especially known in Canaanite religion and the more enlightened, pure, even austere monotheism of Israel.” When Harry Orlinsky commented on The Challenge of Israel’s Faith in manuscript form, he questioned this thesis, pressing Wright to see that the Israelites were not so very different from other groups, though to no avail. “‘… a people who lived in the world, yet were never quite united with the world.’ I fnd this statement of no real value,” Orlinsky wrote, in his customary brusque manner. Scholars could acknowledge some similarities without rendering the Israelites ordinary, Orlinsky suggested. “All peoples have something in common with the peoples round about them and something uncommon,” he continued. It “so happens that what was uniquely Israel’s has come to be regarded more highly than anything peculiar to any of the other peoples.” Orlinsky also questioned Wright’s construction of Israelite homogeneity. “‘When Israel entered the country, she possessed a common religious and historical tradition …’ I wonder,” he mused.1 A reviewer went further in undermining Israelite homogeneity. He suggested the book should be retitled The Challenge of Professor Wright’s Faith, reasoning that “Israel had as many types of faith as she had conficting parties, and the author has selected and used material as desired” (Matthews 1944: 221). These criticisms did not budge Wright’s conviction that all new archaeological data from Palestine confrmed “that biblical monotheism and polytheism are simply two different religions and the former by no empirical means can be shown to be an evolution from the latter.”2

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Wright conceived of the ancient Israelites in terms of culture, ethnicity, and religion but, as a post-Holocaust theologian deeply aware of the consequences of racialist theories, not as a race. Nevertheless, he believed strongly in the idea of essentialized and perduring people groups. Biblical stories that judged peoples as homogeneous groups for their religious practices were for Wright both historically accurate and theologically defensible. “The peoples or nations of the earth … receive in the Bible both positive and negative evaluation,” Wright wrote in The Biblical Doctrine of Man in Society (1954: 52). As part of the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Biblical Studies series, the book emerged from committee work, though Wright was the principal author. In as much as they [peoples or nations] exist, it is felt that they must have behind them an affrmation of God. In as much as they are alienated from God and serve their hand-made idols, they are under the divine condemnation. (Wright 1954: 52) But this did not just pertain to biblical times. Even “biblical eschatology,” Wright proclaimed, “does not appear to contemplate the abolition of nationality” (Wright 1954: 54). On this point in particular, a long footnote explained that Wright was the only committee member who believed this, while the rest believed nationality would be overcome in the Kingdom of God. Scholars had previously argued that the Canaanite and Israelite cultures were diffcult to distinguish from each other, and that the probable reason was that there might have been very little difference between them. Wright (1957: 88) quoted an argument from H. R. Hall published in 1913 to this effect, then rebutted it, writing that no, “differences are indeed clearly apparent.” Wright recast characteristics that other scholars saw as similarities as differences. The Israelites’ sacrifcial system, “while in outward form it resembled” the systems of the polytheists, was actually different because it “was believed to be God’s gift by revelation to Israel” (1957: 144). Yes, the Israelites had borrowed from the Code of Hammurabi. But “the refnement produced by the purity of the Israelite faith sets a great gulf between the Old Testament accounts and the crassly pagan traditions of Babylon” (Wright and Filson 1956: 25). Though some had focused on similarities between the Israelites’ written records and surrounding ones, yet the Bible “radiates an atmosphere, a spirit, a faith, far more profound and radically different than any other ancient literature” (Wright 1957: 27). Wright insisted that the important parts of the Israelites’ religion existed nowhere around them. The central propositions of Israelite religion, according to Wright (1950: 7), were precisely “those central elements of Biblical faith which are so unique and sui generis.” By not fnding these elements in their context, Wright claimed that God provided the ideas that made Israelite religion different. If there were no precedents, then how could the Israelites

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have had these ideas about God on their own? For example, Wright believed Israel was the only people group to see itself as a miracle. He argued that, because he had not found similar self-conceptions in surrounding cultures, the Israelites could not have made this idea up; it was given to them by God. Though “many leading scholars of the last two generations” had suggested evolutionary schemas leading from polytheism to Israelite religion to Christianity (a view held, as we saw, by Burrows), Wright argued that the fruits of archaeology had laid this school of thought to rest. Rather than acknowledging that these were two different interpretations of the available data, Wright claimed that archaeological evidence had made it “diffcult to see how any other conclusion” than his own was “justifed by the facts as we now know them from the vast accumulation of knowledge about the Biblical world” (1950: 7). Such evolutionary schemas have been criticized for implying that Christianity is the most evolved and thus most superior of thought systems. However, this discussion of Wright’s view of people groups shows that the evolutionary thinkers can at least be given credit for placing these thought systems in relationship and not opposition to each other. Wright’s two major textbooks defended the destruction of the Canaanites in terms that resonated in the present. Wright and Filson collaborated on a Bible atlas, published in 1945 and revised in 1956, that had a major impact on biblical studies. Burke Long, in a critique of the book’s place in cultural history, argues that its maps suggested the routes of the Exodus and the locations of biblical cities were settled scholarly questions, when they were not (Long 2003: 189). In addition to creating the false impression of sure knowledge, the volume advanced Wright’s vision of Israelite-Canaanite relations, with hints as to what implications those relations had for the present day. Wright and Filson presented the conquest of Canaan as historical fact. The atlas followed Albright in mustering archaeological data that pointed to widespread destruction of cities and towns in a period that could have been that of the conquest. For them this showed that the book of Joshua depicted actual events and therefore was no nationalistic exaggeration. For example, one “exceedingly strong fortress” that had been excavated was “violently destroyed about 1220 B.C., and the confagration is certainly to be attributed to Israel” (Wright and Filson 1956: 40). The Israelites, Wright and Filson made clear, were justifed in destroying the Canaanites because they were complying with God’s will. At the same time, many of their descriptions of Canaanites sounded like Zionist arguments for why Jews deserved the land. From the Canaanites’ perspective as the “original inhabitants,” Wright and Filson (1956: 33) acknowledged, the Israelites having “deprived them of most of Palestine” was “a disaster.” However, several of the Canaanites’ shortcomings, the authors argued, contributed to their swift defeat. For example, “politically they never were a united people” (Wright and Filson 1956: 34), and the development of their civilization was “hindered” by the “barbarous character” of their religion (Wright and Filson 1956: 36). The suggestion that Canaanites deserved

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dispossession because they were not politically unifed was similar to a charge often leveled against Palestinian nationalist aspirations. Such charges by Zionists who saw Jewish identity as stable did not take into account, of course, the historical processes by which national identities are constructed and shift over time; for discussions of the constructions of modern Palestinian and Jewish identities, see Khalidi 1997 and Sand 2009. Wright and Filson described the Canaanites’ civilization as ripe for destruction because it was, in their view, so advanced as to be on the downward slope, “weak and decaying” (1956: 36). The argument that the Canaanites deserved their fate because their decaying civilization was on its way out echoed past descriptions of the Ottoman Empire by Christian travelers who thought Western infuence could redeem the land. Americans had been commenting on their perception of Ottoman decadence and decay for as long as they had been visiting the Holy Land (see, for example, Sherrard 2011 and Yothers 2007). The simple, humble Israelites’ poverty—a testimony “to a civilization very different from that of the Canaanites”— provided further evidence of their moral superiority (Wright and Filson 1956: 45). Consequently, “It was small loss to the world when in parts of the Palestinian hill country” Canaanite civilization “was virtually annihilated” (Wright and Filson 1956: 36). The Israelites’ conquest provided the opportunity for “the purity and righteous holiness of the God of Israel” to shine against the background of the preexisting “pagan and immoral religion” (Wright and Filson 1956: 36). The Song of Deborah, for Wright, captured the artless, brave spirit of the early Israelites. Characterized by its “intense nationalism” and “religious enthusiasm,” it provided a colorful picture, according to Wright (1957: 94), of “the condition to which the central tribes of Israel had been reduced by the Canaanite oppression.” Blaming the Canaanites as oppressors was a telling choice of words, given that the Israelites, in his understanding, were attempting to conquer the Canaanites’ land. The connections between past and present at some points became more overt. For Wright, Israelite nationalism only appeared similar to other nationalisms. Because God provided the basis for the Israelites’ society, their nationalism was sanctifed and therefore “utterly different from that of overweening nationalisms” (Wright 1950: 48). Thousands of years later the Jewish people continued, from Wright’s perspective (1944: 68), to be unique and set apart from all other peoples. As he put it, “all ancient civilizations fell to pieces, save one—the people of Israel.” The second edition of the atlas, published in 1954, not only refected the state of Israel’s establishment but indeed championed it as successor to the ancient Israelite polity. The wording “Today … Israel reoccupies the Negeb” (Wright and Filson 1956: 68) demonstrates the essentialist link Wright perceived between ancient Israel and modern Israel. Not only were the Israelites superior to the people around them, Wright argued in his widely read 1957 textbook Biblical Archaeology, they were

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superior to people living in the area later. Wright (1957: 45) cautioned readers not to take his use of the term “nomad” to describe the ancient Israelites to mean that they were like the “dirty, uncouth, uncivilized people of the type which are common in the Syrian and Transjordanian semi-desert land today.” He suggested an alternative model for understanding the Israelite lifestyle: “Perhaps it would be better to think of them as breeders of livestock, half-way between the modern nomad and the American ranchers and cowboys of the last century” (Wright 1957: 45). Turning the Israelites into cowboys taming a decadent Oriental landscape put the Israelites in complete opposition to their own surroundings: in both cases, an outside group conquered a new land populated with people who often were portrayed as pagan and disposable. By the same token, American readers could envision themselves as ancient Israelites, with whom, Wright suggested, they shared the same values. Just as with the teachings of Jesus, the teachings of the Old Testament had been a fertile ground for fnding similarities with other religions. Wright acknowledged that much of the Psalter had been shown to be “drawn for the most part from an international movement concerned with the character education of the individual,” and for that reason “swarm[ed] with words, phrases and allusions which were taken from the works of Canaanite poets” (1954: 154). But Wright found the Old Testament’s teachings of much less worth than its history sections, so he argued that, again, similarity could be expected here without harming the Israelites’ uniqueness. The Old Testament was not complete, however, for Christians or Jews. This was not necessarily an argument for Christian supersessionism. Christianity found fulfllment in the New Testament, but, Wright argued, Jews found fulfllment in the Talmud, which worked to “summarize and to make relevant the faith of the fathers” (1950: 75). The New Testament, for Wright, was largely a commentary on the Old Testament. Christians who did not realize this, he warned, would end up basing their faith not on the Old Testament conception of God but on “that which we ourselves provide” (1950: 112), which would turn out to be nothing more than the polytheists’ nature- and human-centered worldview.

The Judeo-Christian Tradition versus Idolatry In his theological writings, Wright found many faults with his contemporaries’ practice of Christianity, especially when compared with Israelite religion. As Delbert Hillers points out, one reason Wright’s pronouncements about the ancient past cannot be taken “at face-value” (Hillers 1985: 264) is that Wright’s portrait of Canaanites so closely resembled his criticisms of liberal Presbyterians in his denomination, while he wanted them to more resemble his construction of the Israelites. He disagreed with many widespread notions of who Jesus was, criticizing Christians who defned him as love, as a teacher, and as the divine Son of God. Rather than the incarnation

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of God, Wright argued, Jesus was the specially adopted son of God, and thus was one of God’s mighty acts in history. By defning Jesus this way, Wright brought the two sides of the hyphen in the “Judeo-Christian tradition” concept, so ascendant in mid-twentieth century America, closer together and strengthened the dichotomy between that tradition and all others, a strict separation that operated like the one between the Israelites and the Canaanites. Wright’s neo-Orthodox focus on God as the sovereign of the universe, and rejection of defning Jesus as love, represented what he described as a shift from a pietistic upbringing. Wright eschewed the emotionalism with which he had been raised with the air of a convert, commenting wryly that the “writer was so indoctrinated with this point of view in his younger years that even now he does not feel that he has really worshiped unless his emotions have been stirred up and his eyes become watery” (1944: 50). For Wright the biggest problem facing Christians was their tendency to replace God with Christ as the center of their devotion. Wright associated the proper understanding of God with the Old Testament, and emotion with the New Testament. According to Wright, American theology had become confused by the heritage of frontier evangelicalism, with its emotional revivalism, antiintellectualism, sentimentalism, and devotion to Christ, as exemplifed in frontier hymns that have become favorite targets of the anti-sentimental, such as “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling” and “In the Garden” (1969: 22). Wright criticized pop music for its basis in the same empty emotion of love, citing a song he had heard on the radio that borrowed the lyrics of an old hymn but substituted “for the name ‘Jesus’, the words ‘you-girl’.” This was possible because “in both, the emotion is the end of everything, the central experience celebrated.”3 Christians who focused on the New Testament, then, tended toward an emotional faith that was subjective rather than objective, and individualistic rather than community-oriented. This emotion-based faith, Wright argued, denatured Christianity into something resembling his version of Canaanitism: static, incapable of effecting change, no longer a divinely inspired religion but simply a man-made one, no deeper or more satisfying than any of the rest. One reason Wright cautioned against the focus on Jesus’ teachings was the parallels scholars had found to them in other religions. When Christians focused on Christ’s teachings then learned they were similar to other religions, it gave them the sense of “all religions as having a basic common denominator” (Wright 1952: 18). For Wright this was the downfall of the Qur’an, “a religious heresy of biblical faith” in comparison to the Bible, because it was “chiefy a series of teachings from the auditions and visions of the prophet Mohammed” (1952: 40). Wright (1952: 18) particularly decried the state of affairs in foreign missions, where missionaries focused on Christ’s teachings as not necessarily different than other religions but as qualitatively superior, causing

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the missionaries “unwittingly to become an agent of the Western feeling of superiority in its patronizing dealing with the ‘inferior’ people.” Wright (1944: 14) had not been entirely immune to arguments of qualitative superiority, such as when he proclaimed the superiority of the Bible because it was so clearly “the cream of the literature which the ancient East produced.” Nevertheless, Wright (1952: 19) appealed to missionaries to teach Christianity’s “utterly unique and radical departure from all contemporary pagan religions,” rather than its qualitative superiority. Focusing on Jesus as the divine Son of God distracted Christians from understanding that what set the Judeo-Christian tradition apart “amidst the variety of religious forms in the world” was knowing God as the sovereign of the universe who acted in history (Wright 1969: 9). Wright used archaeological textual discoveries to bolster his view that the mainstream Christian belief in the incarnation was incorrect. His explanation of the terms used for Jesus, including “Everlasting Father” and “Prince of Peace” in Isaiah, was that they were terms actually used for God, since culturally it was common to give children names that were the attributes of a deity. Reasoning that since this was a common practice, these names for Jesus really “are names of God, and they describe various ways in which God acts in the world” (Wright 1969: 14). If these names referred to God, not Jesus, then these attributes “do not describe the person of the Messiah”; “nor do they confer deity on the Messiah” (Wright 1969: 14). Thus, he suggested, the textual basis upon which Christians built their belief in the divinity of Christ was a misinterpretation. To me the very term ‘incarnation’ is a bad one, and it is certainly unbiblical. God is active and works by his Spirit, but he does not fuse himself in some mysterious way with human fesh. … The combination of God’s planned and purposive act with Christ’s complete love and obedience in life and in death produced the ‘Servant of the Lord,’ ‘the Son of God,’ ‘the Pascal Lamb,’ and the victorious, risen ‘King,’ stationed ‘on the right hand of God’. I myself cannot see why such language and conception fail to do complete justice to the Person of Christ.4 Far from supersessionism toward Jews, Wright was dissolving what many would see as the biggest barrier between Judaism and Christianity, the divinity of Christ, and forging an ecumenical Judeo-Christian tradition that no longer had to tolerate theological pluralism because Christians and Jews could conceive of God the same way. “Jesus is to be understood,” Wright continued, “as the specially adopted son of God” (Wright 1969: 13). Christ’s role had been to bring to fruition the potential for universalism that Wright detected in the early Israelites’ beliefs (Wright 1969: 27). Fusing Judaism and Christianity made it easier to oppose them to all other thought systems, reducing all possibilities into two categories. As in ancient times when God separated the Israelites from the Canaanites, in

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modern times the Judeo-Christian tradition was separate from the world’s other religions. Because of the truth of God’s having acted in history, all other claims to the divine were rendered false. Jews and Christians, Wright argued, belonged to the only faiths to affrm that God had worked in history, separating their faiths from all the rest that were mired in idolatry. Christian scholars magnifed “the differences in conception or emphasis” between the Old and New Testaments “out of all proportion,” and went even further when they posited religious evolution within the Old Testament, disregarding the “uniformity in point of view” that Wright found in “the bulk of the Old Testament literature” (1944: vi). The real differences were not within the Judeo-Christian tradition; they were between that tradition and all others. The progress toward civilization did not need to be charted within the Judeo-Christian tradition when that tradition could simply be opposed to the lack of true civilization still existing outside it. After ruminating in a sermon on an upsurge of interest in African art, Wright proclaimed that the reason he remained a committed Christian “even in one of the world’s greatest centers of academic paganism” (presumably Harvard, where he was employed at the time) was that it was “the one commitment that is any enemy of primitivism.” This was the very primitivism, he warned, to which anyone seriously interested in African art was reverting.5 Wright brought this understanding of the Old Testament as the center around which varying traditions could be harmonized to his ecumenical work. Archaeological discoveries, he believed, could create a conservative consensus by controlling the interpretive excesses of both liberals and fundamentalists. Whereas study of the Old Testament had blossomed among higher critics between 1890 and 1910, “this time,” Wright predicted, scholars would be “more seriously concerned with its proper role as a vital part of the Church’s life” (1951: 42). Not only might advances in Old Testament research contribute to “moderating the tension” between wings of Protestantism, they could bring Jews and Catholics under the same umbrella. Wright wrote that the “new and deep theological interest among many younger Jewish rabbis” and the “phenomenal growth of Roman Catholic interest in Biblical study”—which he witnessed frsthand during his years in Albright’s Oriental Seminary—was resulting in “mutual understanding and stimulation” (1951: 42). Thus at mid-century, Wright yearned for a harmonious whole, a unifcation of biblical knowledge that was objective and not subjective, fxed and not contingent. He did not think it necessary to tolerate difference. His textbooks taught that tolerance was one of the negative characteristics of Canaanite polytheism while Israelites’ intolerance for others’ customs, up to and including destruction of those others, was in the service of the one true God (Wright 1957: 272). For Wright, scholarship was about narrowing difference and pursuing consensus. David Noel Freedman echoed this desire, and the role of Oriental Seminary graduates such as he and Wright in pursuing it, when he wrote to Wright that “it seems to me … that among

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us at least there seems to be a growing body of material which we hold in common along with a fairly homogeneous approach to it.” Freedman saw this as “an encouraging sign” that “suggests that the production of a sound biblical theology in America may not be far off.”6 In 1963 Wright hosted the Protestant-Catholic Colloquium at Harvard, which resulted in the edited volume Ecumenical Dialogue at Harvard. Held between the two sessions of the Second Vatican Council, the colloquium brought together an illustrious set of Protestants and Catholics to discuss points of agreement in their traditions. “Ten years ago the Colloquium would have been an impossibility,” Wright’s Harvard Divinity School colleague George H. Williams wrote in the introduction. While Protestant denominations had “been pressing deeper into ecumenical issues” for “half a century,” offcial Catholic participation was spurred by the Council (Williams 1964: vii). The colloquium’s main speaker was Cardinal Augustin Bea, a biblical scholar who had embraced the incorporation of archaeological evidence. Bea, former rector of the Pontifcal Biblical Institute in Rome, had recently been named president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, a body charged with reformulating the Council’s document on ecumenism. The area in which Protestant-Catholic ecumenism was old hat was biblical studies. Wright (1964: 293) provided the write-up of the colloquium’s biblical studies seminar, and was pleased to report that it “was immediately apparent that a majority of the group were acquainted with one another,” which “marked a difference between our seminar and the others” because in biblical studies, “ecumenical discussion at a scholarly level is already far advanced.” Historical study of the Bible was overcoming Christian differences, Wright wrote, by “taking us behind Protestant provincialism, behind the Reformation itself, and behind the medieval and patristic developments” to reveal the truth of what the Bible taught (1964: 295). Multiple interpretations were the indication that all groups save one were wrong. Wright turned to historical evidence, which, he claimed, “is now providing a ground for unity and a checkrein on divisive tendencies.”7 This included the metaphorical interpretive traditions that had been practiced by Jews and Catholics but were precisely what Jews and Catholics who enrolled at Albright’s Oriental Seminary wished to avoid. Participants in the Protestant-Catholic colloquium were coming together in agreement on a way of reading the Bible that had previously held little sway outside certain historically minded Protestant circles.

Archaeology, Theology, and Political Neutrality Critics of the Albright school’s thinly veiled religiosity must have found it frustrating that one of its leading proponents was a self-professed theologian. For Wright, the real problem was scholars who studied the Bible without a faith, or with theirs bracketed. Wright argued that biblical scholars who studied the archaeology or epigraphy of the Old Testament and yet

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with all this knowledge did not comment on its relation to faith were derelict in their duty. This conviction extended even to curtailing the careers of the non-religious. When Burrows asked his advice on appointing the next director of the Jerusalem school, Wright replied that “[Herbert] May would do a good job” because he “belongs to the Albright school in general, and we ought to have a man out there who is”; he advised against one of Burrows’ suggestions because he was “a pure secular archaeologist.”8 Biblical scholars, with their intensive specialization in “the languages of Scripture, in ancient and in biblical history, in literary and textual criticism, and even occasionally in archeology,” were largely to blame for turning Christians away from the Old Testament because they approached it as “a detached, dissecting technician or historian” (Wright 1944: 103). For Wright, this subject matter was as different from all others as the Israelites were from the Canaanites. Scholarly detachment could be reserved for studying humankind’s many mundane cultures but fell short when studying this one special case. For example, Wright found the standard Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon inadequate because it avoided discussing the proper understanding of religious concepts. “Driver’s long articles on the prepositions are excellent,” but, Wright complained, the lexicon provided little “if one desires to be taught about those things for which the Old Testament exists.” The “preposition ‘on, upon,’ is described in fourteen columns of text, while ‘righteousness’ is given less than four” (Wright 1951: 40). This comment shows that, despite occasional pronouncements encouraging scholarly debate over the Old Testament’s meaning, Wright believed it had one particular, incontestable meaning that most Christians were missing because they focused their attention elsewhere. Of course, if the lexicon had included a theological interpretation Wright might have disagreed with it, just as he remained at odds with his Presbyterian denomination’s teachings on the Old Testament and wrote extensively on his mostly failed attempts to make an impact on its declaration of faith. Like Albright, Wright believed his own political stands not political at all but rather neutral. In words printed in Wright’s 1974 funeral program, several leading Israeli archaeologists expressed gratitude that Wright was unafraid to interact with them in the 1960s, when ASOR in Jerusalem was under Jordanian control and when most scholars living at ASOR believed interacting with Israelis would upset their Jordanian hosts and thus violate ASOR’s policy against political stances. Avraham Biran, who had been one of his graduate school colleagues at Johns Hopkins, fondly remembered the moment in 1961 when Wright, though he “hesitated,” became “the frst foreign scholar to send us slides of his excavations, … and in 1964 he became the frst archaeologist working in Jordan to deliver a lecture in West Jerusalem.”9 Biran remembered that Wright had rejected some ASOR members’ suggestion that laying low after the Six-Day War was best. Again suggesting that his own choices were neutral while others’ were political, Wright maligned that idea by saying, “That is also a political judgment.”10

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He proclaimed the apolitical solution, to Biran’s approval, to be continuing “business as usual,” 11 which for Wright meant ASOR working with Israeli archaeologists. Wright’s ability to present different frameworks to different people suggests he also had some sympathy for the native population in Palestine. In 1964–1965, Wright resided in Israel, teaching at Nelson Glueck’s Hebrew Union College/Biblical Archaeology School. While there he addressed a group of Palestinian Christians at a conference. During the question-andanswer session, an Elias Koussa from Haifa asked Wright “what he would say to a Christian Arab ‘over yonder’ who fnds it diffcult to disassociate the modern Israel state from biblical people.” Wright, who as we saw had equated ancient and modern Israel in print, ridiculed the idea when speaking to Arabs. The attempt “to link ancient Israel with modern Israel,” he assured them, was nothing more than “political fantasy.” I am astonished to fnd that this diffculty exists. I can understand how politics and people who do not know the history of biblical people could fall for this line. I can see how a Jew says it, but I don’t understand how a Christian can say it. Ancient Israel and its people are very different from modern Israel.12 Wright emphasized that such a linkage contributed to the myth of racial purity and appealed to the Arabs’ Christian heritage to keep them from discounting the Old Testament as belonging to Jews. The Old Testament is really the Christians’ book for they understand it and the Orthodox Jews have misinterpreted it. This is what I think the Christian Arabs should be saying, and it is a surprise to me that they are not. … True, Christians share Israel’s great heritage and in that sense we have descended from the ancient Hebrews, as have the Jews.13 In this instance, Wright displayed a Christian supersessionism that did not manifest itself in his published work, so we should take care not to conclude from only one piece of evidence that he was a supersessionist. Elsewhere Wright suggested the rabbinic tradition was as valid as Christianity as an outworking of the Old Testament tradition. And despite these comments to Arab Christians, Wright frequently appealed to Jewish ways of understanding the Bible to show Christians where they had gone wrong. He understood that one of the reasons Christians shied away from the book of Joshua was that they thought of God as a God of love. He argued that this view of God was only possible for those who based their views solely on the New Testament, and thus was an incomplete understanding of God that had to be overcome. Christians and humanists “have adopted this simplistic view of the Bible,” Wright wrote (1982: 4), even though “Judaism, not to speak of

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modern scholars of ancient Israel’s life and faith in her own world, fnds no such deity in the literature of Israel as a whole.”

A Late-Career Acknowledgment of Interpretation In 1959, J. J. Finkelstein called into question the Albrightean pretense to science in an article subtitled “Have the Excavations Corroborated Scripture?” He suggested scholars like Albright, Wright, and Glueck were not practicing science so much as they were presupposing the Bible’s historical accuracy and ftting fnds into that narrative. When Wright decided to lead an excavation at Shechem, he explained that he undertook the excavation to bolster biblical archaeologists’ professional credibility by combating the notion that “the terms ‘Bible’ and ‘Palestine’ smack of ‘religion’ and everything that is unscientifc” (1965: xvi). He seems to have set out thinking the results of such an investigation would defnitively refute criticisms like Finkelstein’s. But Wright found himself the one who was changed through his Shechem excavation. He realized that, instead of fnding conclusive proof that corroborated the Bible, the material he was excavating was meaningless without interpretation. Thomas Davis (2004: 138) therefore credits Wright with ending Albright’s classical biblical archaeology paradigm regarding the possibility of objectivity with his late-career acknowledgment that data required interpretation. Hints that Wright had “abandon[ed] his previous positivist stance” appeared as early as 1962, in his frst writings about the excavation. Wright articulated his new ideas in 1971 with the piece “What Archaeology Can and Cannot Do.” “With regards to Biblical events,” Wright (1971: 73) wrote, “it cannot be overstressed that archaeological data are mute.” The less someone knew about archaeology, he continued, the more likely that person would be to jump to a conclusion about the evidence. For Wright this did not mean removing the Bible; he wrote that what “archaeology can do for Biblical study is to provide a physical context in time and place which was the environment of the people who produced the Bible or are mentioned in it” (Wright 1971: 73). And yet, on the issue of interpretation, a demonstrable change had occurred: No conclusions were certain, Wright wrote, because “[a]mbiguity and relativity enter every sphere of human activity” (Wright 1971: 73). The next chapter uses the case study of an internal confict over politics in ASOR to investigate the way the theological stance Wright held most of his life connected to his being resolutely pro-Israel. Because Wright did not extend his acknowledgment of relativism in interpretation to the idea that scholars’ own positionality affected their interpretations, he still believed scholars could be apolitical. Wright retreated to arguments about objectivity and neutrality when castigating a group of young scholars at ASOR, including his beloved student Paul Lapp, for protesting an Israeli military parade in 1968.

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Notes 1 Harry Orlinsky to G. Ernest Wright, July 18, 1945. Box 7 folder 62 “Orlinsky, Harry, 1943–1962,” Andover-Harvard Library, Harvard Divinity School (hereafter HDS). 2 G. Ernest Wright, “The Unity of the Bible,” September 20, 1954. Box 5 folder 9 “‘The Unity of the Bible’ (manuscript), 1954,” HDS. 3 G. Ernest Wright, sermon, box 2 folder 5 “Wright, George Ernest Sermons (Miscellaneous) (1 of 2) 1953–1974,” HDS. 4 G. Ernest Wright, “The Unity of the Bible,” September 20, 1954. Box 5 folder 9 “‘The Unity of the Bible’ (manuscript), 1954,” HDS. 5 G. Ernest Wright, sermon, box 2 folder 7 “Sermons and Services, Harvard University, 1965–1971,” HDS. 6 David Noel Freedman to G. Ernest Wright, December 1, 1952, box 7 folder 7, “Freedman, David Noel, 1946–1969,” HDS. 7 G. Ernest Wright, typescript of “Chapter 5. Seminar I. Biblical Studies: Record and Interpretation,” box 1 folder 26, “Catholic-Protestant Colloquium (Chapter on Colloquium Seminar) 1963,” HDS. 8 G. Ernest Wright to Millar Burrows, July 17, 1945, box 6 folder 32, “Burrows, M., 1937–1973,” HDS. 9 Avraham Biran, “G. Ernest Wright as Spokesman for American Archaeology,” in In Memoriam G. Ernest Wright, box 1 folder 1 “Wright, George Ernest Biographical Materials (1 of 2),” George Ernest Wright Papers, Bms 667, HDS. 10 Quoted in Avraham Biran, “G. Ernest Wright as Spokesman for American Archaeology,” in In Memoriam G. Ernest Wright, box 1 folder 1 “Wright, George Ernest Biographical Materials (1 of 2),” HDS. 11 Avraham Biran, “G. Ernest Wright as Spokesman for American Archaeology,” in In Memoriam G. Ernest Wright, box 1 folder 1 “Wright, George Ernest Biographical Materials (1 of 2),” HDS. 12 Dwight Baker, typescript of article about Dr. Wright, box 2 folder 8, “Stella Carmel Conference (Article about Dr. Wright) 1964–1965,” HDS. 13 Dwight Baker, typescript of article about Dr. Wright, box 2 folder 8, “Stella Carmel Conference (Article about Dr. Wright) 1964–1965,” HDS.

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Mystical Unifcation or Ethnic Domination? The Six-Day War and Paul Lapp’s Rebellion against Objectivity and Zionism

ASOR policy called for non-involvement in host countries’ politics, including the issue of Jewish nationalism in Palestine. Disagreement occurred, though, over what constituted political involvement, whether it could be avoided, and why it should be off limits. An especially tense and telling episode occurred in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, when four ASOR residents signed a letter printed in The Jerusalem Post of April 29, 1968, protesting the Israeli military’s plan to route a parade through parts of recently occupied East Jerusalem. An analysis of archival materials produced after this incident confrms the larger insight of this book: ASOR members who supported Israel masked this political position by arguing they were neutral, while members who supported Palestinians responded that neutrality was not possible, that all actions and all scholarship have political import. The former group, making connections between biblical history and present-day Christians and Jews, lauded Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem as a mystical unifcation of the holy city. The latter group worked to undermine these seemingly natural connections to persuade their colleagues to consider Palestinians’ perspectives. Signer Paul Lapp, a student of both Albright and Wright, was considered by many the intellectual leader of pro-Palestinian sentiment at the Jerusalem school. Lapp rebelled against the Albright school’s epistemology by insisting knowledge is relative and political. He did not believe archaeological data were objective facts with inherent meaning that could be understood correctly by the initiated. He argued that archaeological data were necessarily interpreted, and that one’s subjectivity could not be set aside. He questioned the at that point normalized idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition linking ASOR’s old guard to Israeli archaeology and strove to include the two groups that this formulation most obviously excluded, Muslims and Eastern Christians who were native to Palestine. He opposed the possibility that scholars can be politically neutral and suggested that because bias cannot be eradicated, scholars must choose their political positions carefully and thoughtfully. After the 1967 war, he took stances against Israeli occupation and against ethnic nationalism of any kind.

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-7

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This chapter discusses attempts in the 1960s by George Mendenhall and Paul Lapp to theorize the feld of biblical archaeology and reject the Albrightean stances on realia and objectivity, then turns to a reading of the extensive correspondence among Wright, Lapp, and other ASOR members produced in the wake of the 1968 protest letter that demonstrates how supporters of Israel invoked theology, the Bible, and neutrality to support their points while supporters of Palestinians framed arguments in terms of politics and theory. The chapter then considers the career of Albert Glock, who moved from his position at ASOR to live in the West Bank and create an alternative to biblical archaeology that included Palestinians and contrasts his pleading for theoretical understanding in the 1980s and 1990s to Avraham Biran’s contemporaneous popular rendition of his Dan excavations.

Theorizing Biblical Archaeology Despite Albright’s view that he had proved the historicity of the conquest and laid to rest its rejection by the Alt/Noth school, his conclusions came under scrutiny when Albright’s student George Mendenhall (1962, 1973) advanced a theory about an internal peasants’ revolt (see also Norman Gottwald [1979], who was not an Albright student). For Mendenhall, the majority of Israelites were Canaanites who rejected corrupt rule, banded together for ideological rather than ethnic reasons, and did not slaughter their enemies in large numbers. Regina Schwartz, whose The Curse of Cain starts off with the question “What about the Canaanites?” (1997: ix), encourages refection on ways the Bible has contributed to “a prevailing understanding of ethnic, religious, and national identity as defned negatively, over against others” (1997: x). For her, the peasants’ revolt model sanitizes the conquest and creates a version “considerably less odious” than the Bible’s (1997: 154). On the other hand, as Werner Lemke notes, “the Biblical evidence is not nearly as unanimous” as conquest model proponents tended to suggest (1986: 68). While acknowledging Schwartz’s concern that such rethinkings attempt to salvage problematic texts, I would suggest that Mendenhall’s non-ethnic explanations created an important alternative at a time when conficts over Palestine past and present were seen as largely ethnic in nature. Mendenhall wrote about the conquest in a way that rejected both Albright’s view of bloody battles and his view of ethnic essentialism. Mendenhall argued that a small band of former slaves from Egypt brought the Exodus story with them and joined with much larger numbers of disaffected Canaanites in Palestine who experienced their Canaanite city-states as oppressive. Individuals who withdrew from the protection of their own rulers were known as Habiru, or Hebrews. “In other words,” Mendenhall explained, “there was no statistically important invasion of Palestine at the beginning of the twelve tribe system of Israel. There was no radical displacement of population, there was no genocide, there was no large scale driving out of population” (1962: 73). What made them Israelites initially

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were political differences that transformed into religious differences as the Israelites rallied around the idea of Yahweh as their just and powerful God. The Israelites formed into tribes, not at frst on the basis of bloodlines, but rather on “a subjective feeling of belonging and loyalty” (Mendenhall 1962: 70). This theory, then, could explain the similarity between Hebrew and Canaanite language, as well as why biblical authors constructed Israelites in such strong opposition to Canaanites. Paul Lapp, another fgure who brought new theoretical concerns to his work, entered the Johns Hopkins Ph.D. program to work with Albright in 1955, ultimately transferring to Harvard to fnish with Wright after Albright’s retirement. Albright initially had some concern that Lapp was a Missouri Synod Lutheran minister; after all, a member of a denomination known for stubborn opposition to textual criticism might not be open to more sophisticated scholarly viewpoints.1 Despite his denominational affliation, though, Lapp did not turn out to be a fundamentalist. Indeed, as he would again demonstrate through his political activism, he was not a company man. In order to combat the rhetoric of objectivity and theology with which his colleagues supported their pro-Israel positions, he employed a theorized version of scholarship that undermined the search for objective truth. Lapp served as Jerusalem school director from 1961 to 1965, and stayed there as a professor until 1968. In 1970 Lapp drowned while swimming off the coast of Cyprus, where he had relocated as the result of a political act: his refusal to excavate in what had become the Israeli-occupied West Bank (Davis 1989: 166). Lapp, who many had considered the next great genius of the feld, thus “passed like a meteor through the frmament of archaeology in Jordan,” remembered P. R. S. Moorey (1991: 130). William Dever suggests in his memoir that Lapp’s politics hurt his career, noting he was a “man with a long list of excavations and several promising publications behind him. But he was very pro-Palestinian.” He adds that Lapp’s death ended “the anti-Israel era at the American Schools of Oriental Research” (2020: 87). Not lukewarm in his positions, Lapp was known to be diffcult to get along with because of his high expectations and brutal honesty. “Sometimes it was hard to love Paul Lapp,” confessed Edward Campbell (1970: 62), one of his closest friends. “Even I, as one of his teachers and sponsors,” Wright wrote by way of explanation on Lapp’s behalf to potential employers at McCormick Seminary, “have been ‘spanked’ for inadequate archaeological reporting.” However, Wright continued, Lapp was “an honest and genuine person” and “quite warm, a good friend—provided that one is not too touchy about his honesty.”2 For Lapp, the Western world’s failure to empathize with Palestinians was caused by inability to comprehend multiple perspectives. “The SixDay War resulted in the liberation and reunifcation of Jerusalem from an Israeli perspective,” Lapp wrote in a book preface he signed “Jerusalem, Occupied Jordan” (1969: ix). But “to the residents of Jordanian Jerusalem

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it has meant occupation by a conquering power, with fear of that knock on the door at night followed by arrest and indefnite incarceration” (1969: viii). Lapp (1970) expressed concern in an article after the Six-Day War subtitled “Who Owns What?” that Israeli takeover was leading to an even narrower focus on Israelite history, in other words history that ethnic essentialists connected to modern-day Jews, rather than a more even-handed approach to the entire history of Palestine. Lapp saw scholars as situated, attempted to practice methodological transparency, and rejected scholars’ ability to achieve objectivity. Lapp agreed with biblical theologians that the Bible presented a clear thesis, “the conviction that in all events described God is working out the salvation of his people” (1969: 41). But rather than an objectively true report of God’s mighty acts, Lapp argued that the Bible was polemic, not history: “No one in those days was out trying to get different observers’ views of an event; there was much more effort spent on eliminating objectionable viewpoints” (1969: 12). Lapp criticized biblical theologians, a group with which Wright was closely associated, for constructing “a framework which fails to take most history and most human achievements seriously” (1969: 58), focusing on the history of the biblical chosen people to the exclusion of other peoples, and paying the most attention to acts these theologians attributed to God. Lapp conveyed his ideas about the situatedness of scholars, and therefore the contingency of their conclusions, by exploring issues of process in history writing. He devoted almost a third of the slim volume Biblical Archaeology and History (1969) to discussing the sources of history in an effort to convey the diffculty of knowing anything about the past. Lapp argued that there were three main sources: literary sources, nonliterary sources such as those provided by archaeology, and, often overlooked, the historian, with the subjectivity that the individual brought to the understanding and writing of history. “It seems obvious why an Irish Catholic of East Harlem—if there is one—writes a history of Irish Catholics of East Harlem, but is it?” Lapp asked (1969: 24). “Perhaps it is a result of a personal struggle for selfunderstanding, perhaps a way to call for social justice, perhaps an easy way to an M.A. degree, perhaps a combination of these and other drives.” Lapp found it especially egregious when historians of the ancient past presented their work as objectively true because the written sources for the ancient past were “infnitesimal” (1969: 17). Lapp’s writings exhibited a commitment to methodological transparency. He explored various points of view to show his non-specialist audience that archaeologists were not able to provide incontrovertible proof of anything. Lapp expressed admiration for historians who relinquished the pretense of objectivity by acknowledging the multiplicity of possible views. He approvingly cited Millar Burrows’ two books on the Dead Sea Scrolls because they detailed “virtually every major hypothesis about the Scrolls published before his books were written.” Rather than informing readers what they should believe about the Scrolls, “Burrows’ approach is extremely negative;

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only rarely does he consider the evidence suffcient to judge between the heterogeneous views of the scholars he quotes” (Lapp 1969: 95). The job of archaeologists, Lapp argued, was to advance hypotheses they felt best ft the data and to welcome the development of better hypotheses. No matter how much evidence a historian had, no historical conclusion could be certain. Knowledge was, therefore, not objective. Nevertheless, historical work could proceed because a conclusion that made more sense than others could be held contingently. Indeed, Lapp weighed the evidence for whether there was a conquest of Palestine in the late thirteenth century and, based on destruction patterns, concluded in contrast to Mendenhall and Gottwald that there probably was (1967: 299). Where he intervened was at the point of deciding what that meant. The probability of the conquest was not a solid enough foundation for saying that archaeology was slowly and surely confrming the Bible’s historical accuracy. The same held true for Albright’s identifcation of “Saul’s fortress.” Lapp (1975: 84) reasoned that, combining the evidence of the biblical text with the evidence of when the fortress was built, it probably was Saul’s. He believed it was all right to say this with two conditions: (1) it had not been proved that it was Saul’s fortress, it was only a best guess; and (2) the guess that it was Saul’s fortress should not lead to logical leaps regarding what fnding Saul’s fortress meant for religion or nationalism. For Lapp, there probably had been an Israelite conquest of Canaan—and later, humans crafted a text defending what they had done, a far cry from Wright’s position that they had been carrying out God’s will. This discussion of Saul’s fortress is the basis on which Keith Whitelam (1996: 164) dismisses Lapp as a typical biblical archaeologist engaged in “the search for ancient Israel.” This is not enough to say about Lapp, though, considering how avidly he was arguing on behalf of Palestinians in the 1960s. The more nuanced reading of Lapp’s views presented here suggests that his adoption of relativist methodology and belief that positionality affected scholarship created a meaningful distinction between him and those ASOR members who angrily rejected his politics (see protest controversy below). In the sense that he thought the fortress could be labeled Saul’s (though only contingently), he sounded like a traditional biblical archaeologist. But his refusal to believe knowledge could be objective led him to a different view of the ramifcations of that knowledge. About a year before the Six-Day War, Lapp upset Wright with his refusal to lecture at institutions he considered Zionist. For Wright, the apolitical solution was to lecture on a “non-discriminatory basis” to any member institution of ASOR that “requests your services,”3 regardless of the institution’s politics. Lapp countered that the better way to honor ASOR policy was to avoid institutions taking a clear political stand. He was living in Jordanian Jerusalem, and it was also ASOR policy to avoid offending host countries. “During my terms of administration at the Jerusalem School I did my best to execute the policies of the Trustees in this delicate area,” Lapp protested.

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Lapp refused to speak to the Israel Exploration Society; such a speech, he argued, “would certainly be construed as a slap in the face by Jordan.”5 Here Wright suggested that a neutral stand was possible, while Lapp argued that these potential activities would also carry political ramifcations.

The Protest of 1968 Wright’s decisions as ASOR president after East Jerusalem, including the ASOR school, fell under Israeli control in 1967 were designed to maintain perceptions of ASOR as neutral. Meanwhile, the war’s effects on the Palestinian population outraged Lapp and several other ASOR residents. Wright, who knew Lapp would care about Arab opinion, wrote him suggestions for how ASOR could handle the situation. ASOR members, Wright wrote, should actively promote to Arabs “the wide-ranging nature of American archaeological work in [the] Middle East”—in other words, not solely focused on the ancient Israelites—and promote to Israelis the importance of ASOR’s and USAID’s archaeological work at West Bank and Jordanian sites so that all would know that the “vast sums of moneys poured in there” from Americans for archaeological work were “for no political purposes.”6 Wright expressed relief that the new ASOR school director, a priest with no previous experience in Israel or Jordan, had just arrived. Father William Van Etten Casey, he informed Lapp, had been selected “precisely because of his administrative experience, good judgment and ability to write top notch Newsletters.”7 At frst, Casey exemplifed Wright’s vision of a neutral position. He framed his approval of the changes in Jerusalem in theological rather than political terms when he rhapsodized about the holy city’s mystical unifcation in his late summer newsletter: At the end of 3000 years of its turbulent history, Jerusalem restored, the one united city, again has a messianic role, barely visible to our unseeing eyes, and a messianic message, scarcely audible to our unhearing ears. That role and that message are trying to tell us that we are not at the end but only at the beginning.8 This romanticization upset Ray Cleveland, a former Albright student who excavated in the Arabian peninsula, as he expressed in an agitated letter to Nelson Glueck. “The picture of a happy, united Jerusalem presented by Fr. Casey’s long newsletter … is a distortion of the situation which exists in the Arab-inhabited sector,” Cleveland wrote. “Very responsible and

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intelligent scholars who spent the summer in Jerusalem are about as happy under the treatment they receive as the French in Paris were during the Nazi occupation.”9 Cleveland then proceeded to attack the old guard’s pretensions to political detachment: You, Albright and others most likely would be quite happy to see the Jerusalem school become an American-Israeli organization geared in every way to the publicity requirements of the conquerors of the city. You have control over the ASOR and you have a viewpoint which is refected in the general news media. There is very little we can do. You are able to discredit me and others by saying that we are “politically motivated”—whatever you mean by that—but in fact you are not exempt from human foible and it could be perhaps that it is you who are politically motivated, as well as lacking the normal humanitarian concern for native populations which are being trampled by European colonists.10 From Cleveland’s vantage point, it seemed ASOR members who supported Israel proclaimed political neutrality while labeling those with different views politically motivated. Cleveland rejected this distinction and labeled this supposedly neutral position as also political. As Casey became more acquainted with the situation in East Jerusalem, his views began to change. The next year he signed the protest letter, along with Lapp, ASOR residents George Landes and Robert Fortna, and dozens of other Americans and British living in East Jerusalem. The furry of mail that the protest set off within ASOR demonstrated that those who opposed the protest thought an actual non-political position was possible while those who supported the protest appealed to the idea that all actions are political in some way. To Wright it was obvious that the signers had violated the neutrality policy, fuming, “This is the frst and most outrageous violation of this rule in … living memory.”11 Wright’s position of outrage after the protest letter’s publication was predicated on his careful framing of his own positions as apolitical. Yigael Yadin framed his admiration for Wright in terms of neutrality. Yadin applauded Wright, not for taking the correct political stand, but for taking the only possible apolitical stand. Yadin, who excavated at Masada and made little effort to hide the nationalistic thrust of his own scholarship, approvingly repeated Wright’s line about the protesters’ actions constituting the rule’s most outrageous violation. Despite Yadin’s own obvious political commitments, he considered this line proof of Wright’s impartiality rather than evidence that Wright’s political sympathies lay in a different place than the signers’.12 Wright sent a letter harshly reprimanding Casey as the school’s director and informed him that the ASOR trustees had voted to censure the participants. Later Wright admitted it was not an offcial censure; according to the

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meeting minutes, the vote actually served to reaffrm ASOR’s policy against political involvement.13 Wright mentioned that most people at that meeting agreed with the protesters that the parade route was provocative. “Yet that was not the issue,” Wright insisted. “The issue is that ASOR appointees must scrupulously refrain from open political talk or activity, especially in the present surcharged atmosphere, yet not only that, but on all occasions.”14 Wright, after sending off his initial angry letter to Casey, sent copies to concerned ASOR members, perhaps in order to persuade them that ASOR policed such activity.15 Casey replied with an eight-page letter in which he argued that the protest had been an “act of simple humanity” because it was designed to protest the daily ill treatment of East Jerusalemites by the Israeli military. “On these terms it would be wrong not to protest in whatever way one can when defenseless people are bullied and humiliated by superior physical force,” he pleaded.16 They had acted as private individuals, Casey insisted, and The Jerusalem Post had not identifed them institutionally in the original letter (though they once were connected to ASOR in a subsequent letter to the editor). To Casey it also seemed apparent that ASOR members had violated the policy before. Casey argued that Glueck’s role in the Middle East as an undercover spy for the U.S. during World War II could make every subsequent director “suspect as a secret political agent.”17 Much more to the point, in July 1967 a group of Christians had published a statement in The New York Times praising Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem because it reunifed the holy city. Three of the sixteen signers, David Noel Freedman, Frank Moore Cross, and James M. Robinson, were active in ASOR. The New York Times statement read, in part: For Christians, to acknowledge the necessity of Jerusalem is to acknowledge that Judaism presupposes inextricable ties with the land of Israel and the city of David, without which Judaism cannot be truly itself. Theologically, it is this dimension to the religion of Judaism which leads us to support the reunifcation of the city of Jerusalem. … This unity is the natural condition of the Holy City. Like Casey’s earlier newsletter, this appeal to correct religion—the claim by a group of Christians that “Judaism cannot be truly itself” without access to the physical Jerusalem—wrapped a political statement in theological protection. Freedman had been chosen as Casey’s replacement despite the publication of this statement, or—as Casey pointed out—perhaps because of it. “Is it possible,” Casey prodded Wright, “that he was appointed precisely because of his professed political sympathies?”18 Wright replied that Casey’s invocation of Glueck and the New York Times ad were hardly applicable. Nelson Glueck’s WWII activity was completely hidden from public view and was a harmless work for our own government.

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It was no open action against a host country. The Robinson, Cross and Freedman signatures were printed in this country.19 One wonders if Wright actually thought the New York Times ad had no ramifcations because it was published in the United States. Maybe not. Five years later, he appointed a First Vice President who would take over ASOR in the event that he died of his heart condition, which he did just a few months later. He had just recommended Frank Moore Cross when he found out Cross had “signed a rather strong statement in support of the Israelis which appeared in the New York Times” a few weeks previously. In a letter to Millar Burrows, Wright despaired, “If I had only known he was going to do something like that again, I would never have considered his appointment as First Vice President.”20 It does seem possible, though, that Wright picked Casey at least in part because of his pro-Israel attitude at the time of appointment, and that could have infuenced his reasoning with Freedman as well. When addressing Burrows, he was, after all, writing to the man who stepped down from ASOR leadership to publish Palestine Is Our Business. Wright may have thought Burrows needed mollifying upon discovering that a well-known pro-Israel ASOR member was next in line for president. While many both inside and outside Israel found the rerouting of the 1968 parade route disturbingly provocative to the recently conquered population, others did not separate protest of that event from a general attack on Israel’s existence.21 They appealed, as had the New York Times signers, to the concept of a heritage shared by Jews and Christians. Baruch C. Levine wrote to Wright that the protest “showed very little appreciation for the pathos and the struggle intrinsic to Israel’s destiny.”22 While Levine felt this destiny was limited to Jews, it was nevertheless “interwoven” with Christians’ because of the two groups’ “common Scriptures,” and if the signers of the protest could not accept this, he continued, they “face a crisis as Christians.”23 A letter from Anson Rainey suggested the Palestinian sympathizers were radicals, whereas pro-Israel archaeologists were just good people. He wrote to complain to Wright that “ASOR has been a center for vicious anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda for as long as I have been in contact with it here in Jerusalem,” a state of affairs he contrasted with “the broad humanistic outlook of its guiding spirit, Prof. W. F. Albright.”24 Albright had certainly participated in pro-Zionist activities in the 1940s, so this is another example of a person with a pro-Zionist stance being described as not political at all. Since Albright later denied this involvement, though, Rainey might not have been aware of it. Mendenhall came to the protesters’ defense by arguing that Wright’s positions were just as political as the others. In a letter to Wright he argued the policy to treat the host country well did not apply because Israel was an occupying force. “Was Germany the ‘host’ country in Norway, 1944?” he asked. “Or Japan in the Philippines in 1945? Such language is violently partisan politically, and you ought to avoid it.” In case Wright missed his point, Mendenhall continued, “there is no social unit more committed to the

104 Mystical Unifcation or Ethnic Domination? double standard today than the Israelis and their sympathizers, including you.”25 Mendenhall admiringly cited Burrows’ decision to publish Palestine Is Our Business. He then cited further evidence of Wright’s double standard, that he had “appointed Freedman Director after he spoke out in favor of the Israeli Anschluss” in The New York Times.26 Wright’s initial May 6 response did not resonate with the ASOR trustees as much as he might have anticipated. In a statement, they mildly reprimanded both sides in the dispute, and rejected, with “all the sincerity and vigor of which we are capable,” the notion that the four protesters could have a “hate-Israel attitude” since all four “possess too great a respect for people as persons to have sponsored any such attitude.” The trustees stated their belief that the four professors signed as individuals, not as ASOR representatives, and that they confned their protest to “one specifc issue on which many Americans and Israelis were agreed.”27 Wright then sent Casey a conciliatory letter in which he apologized but patronized Casey’s attitudes as naïve and easily manipulated. After all, Wright wrote, Casey had arrived at ASOR “very pro-Israeli in viewpoint”— which was, perhaps, the real reason Casey had been appointed, besides his fair for newsletters. “This is your frst experience in Israel, and you have been shocked by what you have seen,” he wrote Casey. Those of us who have known Israel intimately from the inside for some time have not been so shocked because, as I tried to suggest in my cable, there is little new in policy here. What has happened was completely predictable from past precedents. Anyway, war is always hell.28 When Casey became aware of what Wright termed long-term Israeli policy, he opposed it as a matter of principle, as he would later in his stance against the Vietnam War.29 But Wright did not grant that this could be a principled stance, and patronized Casey by suggesting he must have been coerced. “I know that you could not possibly have been a part of that protest unless you were under unbearable social and moral pressures,” 30 he wrote. Wright concluded the fip-fop had nothing to do with Casey’s own underlying principles but instead suggested Casey had a “volatile personality” that had been infuenced by the “fne, calculating hand of Paul Lapp.”31 In 1969 The Jerusalem Post ran a story about ASOR that again threatened attempts to cultivate a neutral position. Titled “Tea and Sympathies,” it began with a description of the daily teatime in the ASOR garden, then turned to sympathies. Journalist Abraham Rabinovitch contended that ASOR could have continued as a genteel throwback to nineteenth-century garden parties if “Arab archaeologists and antiquities offcials” had not “ruled that any archaeologist or institution which dug in Israel or the occupied territories would be barred from working in any Arab country” (1969). The school “had been labouring under a cloud,” Rabinovitch continued, since the 1968 protest letter in The Jerusalem Post, and he discerned an

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attempt to appease Israelis in the decision to replace Casey with Freedman, who, the author reminded readers, had signed the 1967 New York Times ad praising Jerusalem’s unifcation. (For his part, Freedman fretted to Wright after the article appeared that “Israelis have called me to say that they liked it, which immediately made me wonder and worry.”32) “Dr. Freedman took over his new post in June and wasted little time in showing that a new wind was blowing,” soliciting Israeli subscribers to ASOR publications for the frst time and planning four digs in the coming season, three in the West Bank and one in Israel proper. “My object is to make this an Institution of the country,” Rabinovitch quoted Freedman as saying (1969). The journalist seemed far more aware than Wright—or at least more willing to admit—that changing from Casey to Freedman was not changing political activism for neutrality, but rather one type of politics for another.

Theorized versus Non-Theorized Knowledge in the Work of Albert Glock and Avraham Biran Lapp was an infuence on Albert Glock, a fellow Missouri Synod minister and doctoral student of Mendenhall. Glock frst traveled to the Middle East in 1962 to participate in the ASOR excavation Lapp directed at what was considered the site of biblical Taanach. Glock took over the excavation several years after Lapp had put it on hold because of the occupation. Glock dug, though, not to return to business as usual or approve of the occupation, but rather to oppose it through the employment of anthropological theory. Glock theorized that archaeology should beneft the natives in an area. This was best done, he believed, not in a search for biblical connections but rather by attention to daily life. Glock did not want to excavate biblical Taanach, he wanted to excavate centuries of cultural change and continuity at Tell Ti’innik, the modern Arabic name for the site. The renaming of the dig site became symbolic of Glock’s differences from the biblical archaeology establishment. He also worked on All That Remains, a study of abandoned and destroyed Arab villages inside Israel that was edited by Palestinian intellectual Walid Khalidi and published in 1992. Taanach had been considered a Canaanite stronghold; Glock criticized the tendency of post-1967 archaeologists to comb the West Bank for sites and then label the high ones Israelite and the low ones Canaanite based on biblical descriptions of settlements because, he argued, the ancient remains were not ethnically identifable (Fox 2001: 50). Glock (1995: 55) did, however, see progress occurring in this area: A few years ago it was common to hear that the four-room house, the collar-rim storejar, plastered cisterns, and feld terraces were markers of Israelite villages of the twelfth to eleventh centuries B.C. Today we know that most of these markers were older or found in areas not

106 Mystical Unifcation or Ethnic Domination? presumed to have been occupied by Israelites: the force of new evidence has gradually brought about a revision of entrenched interpretations. Because many Palestinians feared archaeology, Glock often had diffculty connecting with them. However, he knew this was because, for them, archaeology “and conquest were indistinguishable: they were part of the process by which the land they live on had been taken away from them” (Fox 2001: 54). In 1976 Glock put his belief that archaeology could be both by and for native populations into practice when he started teaching once a week at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. In 1978 he was elected director of ASOR in Jerusalem, by then known as the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, but disliked the job because of what he increasingly saw as an old-fashioned and politically irresponsible focus on the Bible. In 1980, he was voted out of the directorship, which allowed him to turn his attention entirely to the West Bank. As his biographer, Edward Fox (2001: 73–74), puts it, “He had discovered that what he had thought of in his younger days as the land of the Bible was in reality the land of the Arab-Israeli confict.” That understanding precluded a retreat into claims of scholarly objectivity and the belief that the past and present could be divorced. Glock spent the rest of his life trying to repair the damage he believed biblical archaeology had aided in wreaking on the native population of Palestine. Glock argued that biblical archaeology came up painfully short in the area of theory and method compared with other archaeologies, for example, archaeology of the Americas. Traditionally, he observed, biblical archaeology necessitated mastery of several ancient languages, while archaeology of the Americas required little language work. This was one of the reasons, Glock wrote, that “with rare exceptions American archaeologists in Palestine have majored in Bible and minored in Archaeology,” with scant attention to theory and method (1985: 464). Biblical archaeologists also tended to have little or no training in anthropology. For Glock, all scholarship was political. He argued that while it was good that archaeologists were coming to recognize their biases better, the point was not to attempt the impossible task of eradicating one’s bias but to make sure that one’s bias was a responsible, self-refective one (1995: 45). “Bias is an inescapable academic reality,” Glock argued, “but it can be made useful by harnessing it to serve the needs of the people whose past is being investigated and whose cultural self-understanding is at stake” (1995: 49). In his case, he wanted to overcome the colonial baggage of archaeology by training Palestinian archaeologists. Glock wanted Palestinian archaeology to focus on questions that were diffcult for non-archaeologists to fnd interesting. He disliked the focus by both Western and Arab scholars of Islam on Islamic art history because, while “it is a heritage that elicits pride,” he thought studying the daily life of Palestinians would be more illuminating. Because “the villages in Palestine are ignored,” he claimed, “the real character of Palestine has yet

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to be studied” (Glock 1994: 78). While this could be used for nationalistic purposes, it was not intended to glorify Arabness but rather to show that people from these small villages were inheritors of a long historical process. His article “Archaeology as Cultural Survival” laid out the need for a new kind of archaeology in Palestine. “If we are to preserve an understanding of Palestine’s cultural history,” Glock (1995: 51) wrote, “we cannot allow the Arab people of Palestine to continue as the losers in the archaeologist’s cultural conquest.” It was no accident that Glock used the word “conquest” for what archaeologists had done, the same word applied to the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan and the Israelis’ conquest of Palestine: “It is clear that the story communicated by the winners is heavily biased, fltering out the unwelcome ‘noise’ of the vanquished” (1995: 50). The archaeology of the common people of either the present or the past had been ignored, Glock argued, because “the ‘archaeological record’ has been selectively used to document and sometimes defend the version of the past required by Christian and Jewish Zionists to justify the present occupation of Palestine” (1994: 71). In 1992, Glock was shot and killed by a masked gunman who was never apprehended. Fox wades through the morass of accusations that piled up after the murder. Some Israelis suggested he probably was killed by Palestinians, either by extreme nationalists or extreme Islamists who did not want foreigners in the West Bank. Some Palestinians suggested he probably was killed by Israelis who feared that what he was digging out of the ground would explode the Israelite mythology and show the land belonged to the Palestinians. Nothing Glock could have found would have proved who owned the land; thinking so was missing his point. “There are no archeological facts,” Glock insisted, “only hypotheses and relative explanations” (quoted in Fox 2001: 19). An example of the type of archaeologist whose work Glock opposed was Avraham Biran, who packaged his popular account of his Dan excavations in a way that focused narrowly on Israelite history. Biran, who in 1994 published a popular account of his long-term excavations at Dan, presented facts in such a way that they appear not to have been interpreted. Throughout the book he took the position of presenting innocent knowledge and taking the Hebrew Bible at face value. Questions of what such evidence means, how it should best be interpreted, or what is at stake in a given interpretation are not asked. Biran’s career is one demonstration of the close ties between Albright and the frst generation of Israeli archaeologists. Born Abraham Bergman in 1909 in Palestine, his Romanian great-grandfather had emigrated there long before Theodor Herzl’s success in fostering a Western European Zionist movement. Biran had become involved at a young age with the trend of walking around the countryside looking for signs of ancient Jewish presence, making the logical leap that such evidence would give Jews rights to the area. When Albright died, Biran (1971) approvingly remembered his adviser with a sentence that encapsulated the relationship both saw between

108 Mystical Unifcation or Ethnic Domination? Israelites and Israelis: “A seeker of the truth of ancient Israel, he was a faithful friend of modern Israel.” Biran began a long-term excavation project at Tel Dan in Israel in 1966 during his 1961–1974 tenure as director of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums. In 1994 he published a popular account of the history of the settlement that blended archaeological and biblical evidence in a manner emblematic of the Baltimore school. Biran recalls the inhabitants of Kibbutz Dan wishing to know whether the kibbutz was named after the actual biblical Dan, an identifcation made by Edward Robinson in 1838 (1994: 7). Starting in 1974, when Biran was named director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, the dig became a joint expedition between that organization, the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, and the Harvard Semitic Museum. Two underlying views particularly characterize Biran’s narrative. First, that archaeology is an objective science: in response to the question, “Why excavate?” Biran answered that archaeologists excavate because of “insatiable intellectual curiosity and the search for knowledge” (1994: 10), suggesting that such knowledge is innocent and value-free. Second, that the Bible can be read as an accurate depiction of past events: Biran does not include caveats in the book gesturing to the history of biblical criticism and the questions it raises about when the texts were written relative to the times they described, or about whether they were written by authors with reasons for framing the narratives in certain ways. Perhaps this is because, as he indicated in his remembrance of Albright in The Jerusalem Post (Biran 1971), he believed Albright had put these matters to rest. His reliance on the accuracy of the Bible—not to mention his interest in monumental archaeology over social and anthropological questions—is demonstrated in his discussion of the golden calf. According to the Bible, Jeroboam I set up a golden calf in Dan. The excavators did not fnd it, which for Biran made sense because no one could expect a golden calf to go unpilfered. “Its precious gold,” Biran (1994: 168) wrote, “was no doubt carried off by any one of the foreign kings who conquered Dan.” Biran again appeals to biblical details in his discussion of the scepter found at Dan. Biran warns readers against associating it with the only scepter mentioned in the Bible, that extended toward Esther, because the Esther story is dated later and because “that scepter was of gold” (1994: 198). While it is not uncommon for archaeologists to craft narratives that appeal to the audience’s interest in the Bible, it may not necessarily be as responsible as showing more caution. The book covers the prehistory of Dan in some detail. The second millennium B.C.E., Biran wrote, began “with no hint as to the momentous events that would shape the history of the city in the following centuries” (1994: 47). This suggests, though Biran does not explicitly say so, that his main interest is in the history of the Jewish people; it would be hard to imagine anyone outside Judaism and Christianity being particularly interested in a city that briefy became a rival northern cultic site in Israelite

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times for its own sake and not for what the archaeology could show about larger issues. Biran then embarks on a lengthy exploration of many facets of Dan during the Israelite period, liberally sprinkled with biblical references. At the end, however, Biran dispenses with everything after the biblical period in half a page: During the Roman period, the inhabitants built water installations. Then the name Dan “from the Hebrew verb ‘to judge’ was kept alive in the Arabic name Tell el-Qadi meaning Mound of the Judge,’” and even more clearly in the names ‘Ein el-Dan and Nahr el-Dan for the nearby spring and river. Finally, in 1939, Jews who settled there named it Kibbutz Dan (Biran 1994: 273). This demonstrates the indifference often shown to the post-Judean period. Quick dismissal of these time periods suggests there is more at stake in what is included and what excluded than Biran’s innocuous-sounding appeal to the search for knowledge would indicate.

Notes 1 This insight into Albright’s initial concern about Lapp comes from a letter that Albright’s doctoral student and secretarial assistant Nancy Renn wrote to Wright after she and Lapp became engaged. Nancy Renn to the Wright family, May 4, 1956, box 7 folder 37 “Lapp, Nancy (Renn), 1956–1965,” HDS. 2 G. Ernest Wright to Robert C. Johnson, January 21, 1964, box 7 folder 37 “Lapp, Nancy (Renn), 1956–1965,” HDS. 3 G. Ernest Wright to Paul Lapp, July 19, 1966, box 1 folder 27 “Lapp, Paul W. 1961–1970 3/4” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, Archives of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Boston (hereafter ASOR). 4 Paul Lapp to G. Ernest Wright, July 30, 1966, box 1 folder 27 “Lapp, Paul W. 1961–1970 3/4” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. 5 Paul Lapp to G. Ernest Wright, July 30, 1966, box 1 folder 27 “Lapp, Paul W. 1961–1970 3/4” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. 6 G. Ernest Wright to Paul Lapp, July 13, 1967, box 1 folder 26 “Lapp, Paul W. 1961–1970 2/4” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. 7 G. Ernest Wright to Paul Lapp, July 13, 1967, box 1 folder 26 “Lapp, Paul W. 1961–1970 2/4” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. 8 William Van Etten Casey, ASOR newsletter, August–September 1967, p. 11, box 1/2 folder 14 “1967–1968” Coll. 001 Newsletter Collection 1939–1999, ASOR. 9 Ray L. Cleveland to Nelson Glueck, November 6, 1967, box 7 folder 13 “Glueck, Nelson, 1940–1970,” HDS. 10 Ray L. Cleveland to Nelson Glueck, November 6, 1967, box 7 folder 13 “Glueck, Nelson, 1940–1970,” HDS. 11 G. Ernest Wright to William Van Etten Casey, May 6, 1968, box 6 folder 9 “American Schools of Oriental Research, (2 of 2), 1938–1974,” HDS. 12 Yigael Yadin, “G. Ernest Wright as an Excavator and Archaeologist,” in In Memoriam G. Ernest Wright, box 1 folder 1 “Wright, George Ernest Biographical Materials (1 of 2),” HDS. 13 Trustees present at the May 3, 1968, meeting were Edward Campbell, H. Dunscomb Colt Jr., Robert L. Crowell, A. Henry Detweiler, Harry W. Fowler, Fowler Hamilton, Alfred H. Howell, J. Alan Montgomery, Thomas W. Phelps, William L. Reed, Oliver C. Reynolds, Abraham Sachs, Charles K. Wilkinson, and Wright. Associate trustees present were Philip J. King, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, and John H. Marks Jr.: James B. Pritchard, Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Trustees,

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22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29

30 31 32

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May 3, 1968. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 190 (April 1968): 54–57. This issue of BASOR also includes apologies for its late publication, explaining why May meeting minutes appeared in the April edition. G. Ernest Wright to William Van Etten Casey, May 6, 1968, box 6 folder 9 “American Schools of Oriental Research, (2 of 2), 1938–1974,” HDS. G. Ernest Wright to Edward Campbell, June 19, 1968 box 1 folder 34 “Protest of 1968 1/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. William Van Etten Casey to G. Ernest Wright, May 20, 1968, box 1 folder 35 “Protest of 1968 2/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. William Van Etten Casey to G. Ernest Wright, May 20, 1968, box 1 folder 35 “Protest of 1968 2/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. William Van Etten Casey to G. Ernest Wright, May 20, 1968, box 1 folder 35 “Protest of 1968 2/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. Emphasis in original. G. Ernest Wright to William Van Etten Casey, May 29, 1968, box 1 folder 34 “Protest of 1968 1/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. G. Ernest Wright to Millar Burrows, November 7, 1973, box 1 folder 5 “American Schools of Oriental Research Minutes, agendas, etc.: 1967–79,” Millar Burrows Papers, Record Group No. 71, Yale University Divinity School Library, YDS. The parade went ahead as planned on May 2, 1968. According to Amos Elon (1971: 7–9), who started his 1971 history of Zionism at this parade, 25% of all Israelis attended to commemorate both 20 years as a state and one year since the Six-Day War. He does not mention foreign opposition to the parade but does report that many Israelis protested against the parade’s show of military might. “The critics had not been totally unsuccessful,” Elon notes, “and subsequent Independence days were staged as civilian events” (7). Baruch C. Levine to G. Ernest Wright, May 13, 1968, box 1 folder 3 “General: L (1965–1969)” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. Baruch C. Levine to G. Ernest Wright, May 13, 1968, box 1 folder 3 “General: L (1965–1969)” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. Anson F. Rainey to G. Ernest Wright, May 8, 1968, box 1 folder 35 “Protest of 1968 2/2,” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. George Mendenhall to G. Ernest Wright, June 10, 1968, box 1 folder 34 “Protest of 1968 1/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. George Mendenhall to G. Ernest Wright, June 10, 1968, box 1 folder 34 “Protest of 1968 1/2” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. George G. Cameron, Alfred H. Howell, Thomas W. Phelps, Oliver C. Reynolds, and John W. Warrington, memo of a special committee meeting of ASOR trustees, box 1 folder 34 “Protest of 1968 1/2,” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. G. Ernest Wright to William Van Etten Casey, May 29, 1968, box 1 folder 34 “Protest of 1968 1/2,” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. Two years later, Casey created a stir by devoting an entire issue of Holy Cross Quarterly to Daniel and Philip Berrigan, priests who protested the Vietnam War. “Rev. William Casey, 75, Professor at BC, Holy Cross,” The Boston Globe, June 15, 1990. G. Ernest Wright to William Van Etten Casey, May 14, 1968, box 6 folder 9 “American Schools of Oriental Research, (2 of 2), 1938–1974,” HDS. G. Ernest Wright to Aaron Shaffer, May 22, 1968, box 1 folder 35, “Protest of 1968 2/2,” Coll. 018 G. Ernest Wright Papers, ASOR. David Noel Freedman to G. Ernest Wright, September 28, 1969, box 7 folder 7, “Freedman, David Noel, 1946–1969,” HDS.

7

“No Preconceptions” William G. Dever and the Pursuit of Objectivity

In the 1970s William Dever, an intellectual “grandson” of Albright through his doctoral adviser, Wright, appeared to rebel against his mentors by championing the death of biblical archaeology and its replacement by the alternative paradigm of Syro-Palestinian archaeology. For Dever, the foremost problem with the history of his feld was its entanglement in religious concerns. He wished to put Syro-Palestinian archaeology on the same footing with other world archaeologies, as suggested in his anecdote about a conservative Christian who spent his longed-for visit to the Holy Land volunteering on Dever’s dig and who later wrote a letter to complain that “he might as well have been digging in Nebraska.” Dever was thrilled: “we thought that it was one of the fnest compliments we had been paid over the years!” (1974: 6). For those who looked askance at biblical archaeologists for proverbially holding a Bible in one hand and a spade in the other, Dever sought to make the Bible secondary to archaeology. The question of presupposing the Bible to be true has been, of course, a major debate within these archaeological circles. However, as this book contends, removing presuppositions about the Bible has not gone hand in hand with removing presuppositions about Zionism, as Dever’s writings demonstrate. In the early 2000s Dever began publishing semipopular books starting with What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (2001), a polemic meant to discredit minimalists. Minimalists are characterized by the belief that many biblical texts were written centuries after the events described and thus say a great deal about the periods in which they were written but little about the ones they purport to describe. Maximalists argue these texts contain a small core of historical material that is worth trying to identify. Despite the terminology, the “maximalists” do not think that much of the Bible is historical either, leading Hector Avalos (2007: 113) to propose the term “quasiminimalist” rather than “maximalist” to describe them. What they differ on and the venom produced in the debate suggest there are much larger stakes than whether one ancient state did or did not exist for a while. Professing frustration with the terms maximalist and minimalist, Dever responded to Keith Whitelam’s insistence on the political nature of

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-8

112 William G. Dever and the Pursuit of Objectivity biblical archaeology by despairing, “Next, I suppose, we will see ‘Zionists’ vs. ‘Anti-Semites’” (2001: 9). Dever’s complaint gets at a key distinction: scholars who the minimalists believe support Zionism implicitly through their support for the existence of ancient Israel are often aghast at this charge because they believe they can be politically neutral. The minimalists, who recognize that their skeptical reading of the Bible may have an effect on the Palestinian-Israeli confict, are sometimes accused of anti-Semitism for calling widespread beliefs about the relationship between ancient Israel and modern Israel into question. For the minimalists, Dever interchangeably uses terms like “radicals,” “leftists,” “revisionists,” “nihilists,” and “relativists.” He accuses them of a “thinly-disguised postmodernism” (2001: 27), as though they are concealing it. Dever’s dismissal of theory can be seen in his dispute with Mark Smith, who had the temerity to point out that Dever’s frequent appeal to “common sense” does not pass muster as an argument (Smith 2002: xix). Dever’s response was, “Perhaps Smith, ordinarily a fne scholar, needs more of the ‘common sense’ for which he castigates me” (2005: 205). Of course, Smith was not castigating him for having common sense; he was castigating him for his undertheorized use of the phrase “common sense.” In discussing his epistemology with readers, Dever claims his ability to be neutral and fact-based. Creating a schema of fve levels, from assuming the Bible to be true to assuming it cannot be true, he places himself in his middle category, “approach[ing] the text, as well as the external data, with no preconceptions” (2003: x, emphasis in original). Dever argues his conclusions are based on archaeological data, which provide an “empirical, factual basis for understanding the practices (if not the beliefs) of Israelite folk religion” (2005: 9). He writes of his “insistence that our constructs must be founded on facts wherever possible, not on ideological fancies” (2005: 9). He thanks his “many Israeli colleagues, with whom I have worked for years ‘viewing the land’ (Josh. 2:11), trying to learn the facts on the ground” (2003: ix). This turn of phrase merits some attention in relationship to Nadia Abu El-Haj’s Facts on the Ground (2001), the title of which calls attention to use of this term in Israeli archaeological jargon to suggest that these “facts” need no interpretation and that their meaning is clear to all: the ancient Israelites were here, and they were the progenitors of the Jewish people. In his debate with minimalists, Dever fnds their acknowledgment of scholarship’s political ramifcations particularly repugnant. He laments that translation into Arabic of Whitelam (1996) and Thompson (1999) has “politicized Middle Eastern archaeology” (2020: 161), as though readers of Arabic would otherwise have no insight into archaeology’s potential political implications. And yet Dever’s critiques of the minimalists bring forth the political ramifcations of his own work. Dever demonstrates a propensity toward seeing people groups as internally homogeneous: he refers to the

William G. Dever and the Pursuit of Objectivity 113 ancient Israelites as “Israel,” homogenizing this group by reducing it to a singular entity (2003: x). Since he accepts that the exodus and conquest did not occur as described in the Bible, he articulates these stories’ importance to Israelite history by arguing that these events were “as fundamental to later Israelite history, to the biblical vision of the people’s selfhood, as the American Revolution is to the uniquely American experience and sense of destiny” (2003: 4). Dever thus claims that people groups, whether Israelite or American, are unique and have destinies, a claim that would suggest strong sympathy with strictly bounded nationalisms. One of Dever’s stated reasons for arguing for a strictly bounded Israelite ethnicity is that the biblical writers—who he acknowledges were writing centuries later—believed in it. It is therefore notable that his book Did God Have a Wife? (2005) is about how Israelite religion was extremely diverse, even though, in his view, the biblical writers did not want readers to realize that (2005: xi). As with other fgures discussed in this book, I suggest his reasons for promoting a unifed Israelite ethnicity relate to his views on the modern State of Israel.

Challenging Religious Presuppositions Dever’s career trajectory of making the feld formerly known as “biblical archaeology” more scientifc accompanied his own religious journey from youthful fundamentalism to Albrightean non-fundamentalist Protestantism to atheism, with this last stage including a conversion to Judaism when he married Jewish scholar Pamela Gaber. The frst time Dever traveled to the Middle East was as a seminary student in 1957 visiting the State of Israel. He traveled with a program titled “Workshop in the Lands of the Bible,” the idea of which, Dever recalls, “was simply to attract Christian pastors and teachers to Israel and then send them home with favorable impressions that they might incorporate into their work” (2020: 35). As a self-described fundamentalist up to that point, Dever resisted much of what was being taught at the liberal seminary he attended and found refuge in Wright’s neo-orthodox movement, affected particularly by Wright’s claim that “in Biblical faith everything depends upon whether the central events actually occurred” (1952: 126). Soon after, Dever went to study at Harvard with Wright and Cross, who, in an interesting echo of concerns about Lapp, agreed to accept him despite his fundamentalist background (Dever 2020: 46). Dever, who had preached since he was a teenager, was still a clergyman during early years in the feld but eventually realized he had lost his faith (2020: 5). He ruminates that Wright died a believer, but “[s]ometimes I wonder if I ever really was” (2020: 133). Dever’s growing realization of his loss of faith coincided with his view that, in order for his branch of archaeology to professionalize, it would have to secularize. In 1973 he published his ideas about this matter in an article

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titled “‘Biblical Archaeology—or ‘The Archaeology of Syria-Palestine’?” Dever writes that he chose a small publication for this piece and comforted his concerned wife, Norma, by saying that “no one will ever see it.” But soon after, Wright sent “an anguished letter to me as though I were the prodigal son,” writing that Dever needed “to get right with” the recently deceased Albright (2020: 120). Yet Albright himself had argued he was free from religious infuence because he based his scholarship on external data rather than personal religious beliefs and argued that the Bible’s superiority to other traditions was verifable without reference to religious beliefs. Albright had suggested use of the term Syro-Palestinian archaeology in the 1930s, though he then shifted back toward the term biblical archaeology. So has Dever: the maverick of Syro-Palestinian archaeology has now returned to the term “biblical archaeology,” citing the importance of recognizing that the Bible matters to millions of people. The Bible has also become meaningful to Dever in a distinct way from his youth and yet a way that is recognizably Albrightean. Though Dever lost his Christian faith, he now argues for the importance he perceives the Bible to hold for the Western tradition. This personal view becomes much more in his fnal analysis, as he accuses those who would fail to see the Bible as a font of the Western tradition and the Western tradition as the font of superior values of “nihilism” (2001: 246). In the past Dever’s solution to the problem of religiosity—greater adherence to scientifc objectivity—also sounded quite Albrightean. Dever has gradually become more nuanced in his use of the term “objective,” though he continues to invoke the concept to argue that proper scholarship is neutral, nonpolitical, and as objective as possible. Throughout his 749-page magnum opus, Beyond the Texts (2017), Dever discusses his views of history and history writing, presenting his ideas in ways that are at times tempered and mildly theorized, while at the same time including long sections arguing against the “minimalists,” clearly a major concern of the book as these sections are weaved throughout. Rather than using the term “objectivity” in a way that may no longer be possible in the twenty-frst century, Dever clarifes that his “realism is not, however, extreme empiricism or positivism, because it acknowledges the subjectivity of all our interpretations” (2017: 7). He nods to the idea that the “best histories strive for objectivity but remain provisional” (2017: 641). Occasionally, though, Dever nuances his use of “objectivity” in a way that belies frustration: “It is a truism that absolute objectivity is impossible, but some objectivity is better than none” (2017: 25). He uses the word “fact” to describe what he is sharing with readers; he alerts readers that in the conclusion of Beyond the Texts he will step “beyond fact to some personal convictions” (2017: xii). This wording suggests that, at base, Dever is still arguing that he is producing facts—so much so that he here refers to the main body of this enormous work as “fact.”

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Connecting Israelites to Israelis In his memoir, Dever praises Israeli archaeology as neutral while at the same time, perhaps inadvertently, sharing ways that Israeli archaeology has been nationalistic. At the same time, he uses “nationalism” and “political” as criticisms of those with whom he disagrees. He warns of the “danger of politicizing archaeology in the service of radical new movements such as post-Zionism, although to their credit most Israelis thus far have managed to avoid the alignment of archaeology and nationalism” (2020: 195). Post-Zionism, though, is a movement to take archaeology beyond Israeli nationalism or other nationalisms and create a more equitable and inclusive version of archaeology. Dever praises some Palestinian archaeologists for doing good work but denounces others for not being “cosmopolitan enough to rise above politics and nationalist rhetoric” (2020: 196–197). Dever also fnds much of the archaeology of Jordan acceptable, except when he says it is tainted by “nationalism,” stating, “Despite Jordan’s precarious political situation, plus the fact that several of its archaeologists are Palestinians, I see few signs that archaeology there is being politicized or perverted by nationalism—except where younger archaeologists have been subverted by European minimalism” (2020: 195). This is a misconstruing of minimalism; the attempt to understand and elucidate ways in which archaeology is being infuenced by nationalism is not in itself nationalism. Frequently, Dever connects ancient Israelites to modern Israelis. He writes that after the Six-Day War, as he and Israeli archaeologists toured the West Bank where Dever had dug at Shechem, “It was a sentimental journey for all of us, the Israelis because the heartland of biblical Israel was once again theirs” (2020: 90). Rather than raising a criticism of Israelis using the West Bank for nationalistic purposes, Dever states it as a given that modern Israelis would control biblical Israel. However, taking a common Zionist cue, Dever casts doubt on Palestinian claims by arguing they have not lived there long enough. Regarding Whitelam, he writes, even those sympathetic with his anti-Israel rhetoric have pointed out that the Palestinians of the present confict were not present in ancient Palestine. They did not emerge as a ‘people’ at all until relatively modern times. Not only is this bad historical method, it is dishonest scholarship. (2003: 139; emphasis in original) There is a fundamental misunderstanding here: For Whitelam (1996), “Palestinian” describes those who lived in Palestine over the centuries. But for Dever, the fact that there was not a “Palestinian people” until recently settles the argument—not to mention invoking the rhetoric of the Zionist slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land,” which, since Zionist leaders were aware there was an indigenous population, can be understood as saying that the natives were undeserving because they did

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not form “a people.” Interestingly, it was this very Zionist claim that bothered Albright so much that he ended his pro-Zionist lectures, for he saw it as dishonest to claim the Arabs were recent inhabitants. And as Rashid Khalidi argues in Palestinian Identity (1997), modern Palestinian identity is largely the response to political changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That has little to do with how long the ancestors of people who think of themselves as Palestinians have been there. Though Dever decries the term “social construct,” Palestinian identity today is demonstrably a social construct, as is Israeli identity, and as was Israelite identity by the biblical writers. Dever admits some Israelis may have abused archaeology a little in the past, though he seems more frustrated by Palestinians doing it. Dever criticizes Palestinian archaeologist Hamdan Taha for being “inclined to defend his colleagues’ tactics as fair turnabout” (2003: 238). What he fnds even less defensible is “Israeli archaeological revisionists who fuel the fre”—that is, Israeli archaeologists who cast doubt on knowledge of the ancient past at least partly in order to redress the wrong they believe has been done. For example, Ze’ev Herzog “went public for the frst time with the indigenous origins theory of the emergence of Israel that he and his colleagues had been espousing quietly for a decade” (2003: 238). Dever agrees with the basic idea but suggests Herzog, who calls himself “post-Zionist,” should not have “gone public” with a tale that Herzog had specifcally crafted to create a narrative inclusive of Palestinians. Many Israeli archaeologists, much more moderate, rejected the postZionist argument as aligned with the minimalist or revisionist schools of biblical scholarship at Copenhagen and Sheffeld, which I have characterized above as essentially nihilist—those for whom there was no early Israel, and no need for one. (2003: 239) Here Dever comes quite close to saying that while most archaeologists agree that Israelites emerged from Canaanites, it is better to suppress that theory around those who might any see contemporary relevance in it—even while he himself easily connects ancient Israel to modern Israel. “The archaeology of Israel belongs to Israelis, and rightly so” (2020: 205), he states in his memoir. Dever argues that the minimalists exhibit a “conscious identifcation with ‘Palestinian’ history, ancient and modern” (2017: 54). He assures the reader that though he occasionally uses the term “Palestine,” it “has no implications for the modern situation in the region” (2017: xiii). He more recently ruminated that his previous borrowing of Albright’s phrase “SyroPalestinian archaeology” no longer suffces because the term “Palestinian” is too politicized (2020: 239). He suggests perhaps “Southern Levantine archaeology,” but then settles on the “archaeology of Israel,” as refected

William G. Dever and the Pursuit of Objectivity 117 in the memoir’s subtitle, “Sixty Years in Israeli and Biblical Archaeology” (2020: 205). “Israeli” as it is used here, as the adjective for the modern State of Israel, surely has political content if the term “Palestinian” does. Dever does not, however, acknowledge that, nor does he when he writes approvingly that “the Bible for Israelis means the Hebrew Bible, read not as American Jews and Christians read it but, in effect, as the constitution of the State” (2020: 205). He praises Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni as a “true patriot” who was “a believer that the Hebrew Bible was Israel’s real constitution” (2020: 118). Perhaps Dever’s identifcation with the history of Israel, ancient and modern, is subconscious, though his recollection of his conversion to Judaism at the time of his second marriage suggests it is conscious. The Reconstructionist rabbi asked if he identifed personally with the Jewish people, and his answer centered not necessarily on Judaism or Jewishness but rather on identifcation with Israelis: “I noted that I had risked my life with them in 1967, 1973, and 1982” (2020: 159). The previous criticism that biblical archaeology was an attempt to prove the Bible may not apply to Dever, but the criticism that archaeology in this area is used to study what many assume to be the past of one specifc group in order to bolster that group’s claims clearly persists despite protestations of professionalized scholarship and neutrality.

Defending the Western Tradition Given all this, it may come as a surprise that Dever does consciously make a connection between what he is doing with his scholarship and the present day. In identifying with pragmatism, he adds that the “focus on the real world leads to relevance, to social action rather than philosophical musings” (2017: 7). However, he rejects that the relevance can be in terms of “politics,” which he fnds to be the dirty world of the minimalists, interested as they are in “politics and power” (2017: 6). Evidently scholarship that seeks to ameliorate or shed light on the Israeli-Palestinian confict is not the right sort of social relevance. So what is? In a truly Albrightean mode, Dever locates the roots of Western civilization in ancient Israel, encouraging readers that it is important to care about ancient Israel because it is “our history, at least for those of us who are heirs of the Western cultural tradition” (2017: 645). Albright spent his later years producing philosophies of history that placed the Bible at the center of human history, although by that he tended to mean only Western history, for him the only one that mattered because it had so clearly, in his view, soared to heights far beyond what any other region of the globe had produced. Similarly, Dever decries that biblical histories are now being written by people he terms “deconstructionist literary critics, political activists, New Left ideologues, radical feminists, Third World Liberation theologians, social constructivists, multiculturalists, New Age pop-psychologists, and the like” (2003: 3). This also

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brings to mind Wright’s distaste for liberal Protestantism; as a youth Dever criticized liberal Protestants for not reading the Bible as a fundamentalist as he did, and now he criticizes them for not taking archaeology as seriously as he does. “The average liberal Protestant seminary professors are no longer much interested in the actual history of ancient Israel, only in the Bible as literature,” Dever complains (2020: 204). Thus, though he has removed the aspect of Protestant belief, Dever carries forward Albright and Wright’s appeal to universal values located in the Western tradition. “I no longer subscribe to Wright’s notion that faith depends upon taking the Bible’s historical claims literally, but history still matters,” Dever writes (2020: 161, emphasis in original). Dever claims that if minimalism prevails, it will “irrevocably undermine our confdence in the historicity of the Bible,” so that “the Bible’s only claims to appeal to religious beliefs or claims to moral standards will be philosophical—arbitrary matters of personal need or choice” (2020: 204). And yet, Dever’s conclusions about archaeology leave little room for the Bible: the patriarchal stories are legendary, the exodus has no archaeological backing, the military conquest of Canaan so dear to Albright did not occur, monotheism was a late phenomenon, and so on; as he notes, “All this may appear to make us mainstream archaeologists, both American and Israeli, as much minimalists as the radical European biblicists whom we are vigorously opposing” (2020: 203). What connects ancient Israel to the Western tradition? Dever explicitly distances himself from discussing any later periods that could make the connections through intellectual history, so he does not tell us himself. Indeed, Dever refers to David as one of the “typical oriental despots of the Iron Age” (2017: 635)—here seeing the similarities between the Israelites and the peoples around them. Even granting the emergence of the Israelites as a distinct ethnicity as a “fact,” it may not be a fact that can bear the philosophical weight Dever has placed upon it. Dever, who recalls that he chose to work in modern Israel “not for any ideological reasons … but simply because the opportunities for me arose there” (2020: 41), shows here that his ideology is the ideology of the superiority of Western civilization and the inferiority of other traditions. “If the extremists prevail, as they already do in Europe and most of the Middle East,” he writes, “there is little hope for either our kind of biblical archaeology or the enlightened Western cultural tradition that gave rise to the inquiry” (2020: 207). Though he has backed off the use of the term “objective,” he claims instead the “enlightened” position. Here is the evidence of his view that the Bible is the source of the Western tradition, that the Western tradition is universal, and that Israel represents the Western tradition. He juxtaposes this universal Western tradition with the subjective and particularist arguments of the minimalists. As Dever knows, little separates him from the minimalists in terms of biblical historicity. As he writes, “I would only suggest that on some topics, such as the patriarchal era or the Israelite conquest, we are all minimalists

William G. Dever and the Pursuit of Objectivity 119 nowadays” (2017: 644). The difference, he writes, is that they “see virtually no real history of an Iron Age ‘Israel’ in the biblical texts, whereas I see some” (2017: 644). This is hardly a reason for Dever to spill so much ink on the minimalists; debates over how ancient Israelites are connected to contemporary Israelis, a connection we have seen Dever make without comment, are indeed related to contemporary political debates. Minimalists acknowledge this. Dever goes bigger, pinning the salvation of the Western tradition on his defense of ancient Israel—and refusing to sully such grandiosity with the acknowledgment that there may be some political content in that argument.

Conclusion

These archaeologists’ desires for the political fate of what they all considered the land of the Bible oriented their visions of the past. Those who opposed political Zionism believed Arabs and Jews could coexist without the need for a specifcally Jewish state. They operated with a worldview in which cultures were fuid and therefore not easily separated from each other, an argument they made by focusing on similarities between Israelites and Canaanites. Their appeal to knowledge as relative and perspectival allowed them to argue that traditional readings of the Bible might not be the best ones for understanding past cultural relations. On the other hand, those who supported Zionism believed the Jews were a special people who needed a Jewish state. Because they believed knowledge could be objective, they believed one reading of the Bible—their own—was the objectively correct one. They read the Old Testament as a tale in which, as Lemche has written, the Israelites were the “good guys” and the Canaanites the “bad guys” (2013a: 171). In their reading, cultures were static and strictly bounded, different peoples had separate governments, and modern Jews were obviously the descendants of ancient Israelites. Occasionally Zionists, including Albright, accused non-Jewish antiZionists of being Arab nationalists, in effect simply supporting the other side. The archaeologists discussed here, as demonstrated by their views of cultures as fuid, in fact consistently opposed ethnic nationalism. When Nelson Glueck, Millar Burrows, or Paul Lapp opposed a Jewish state, it was not because they favored a Palestinian state. They rejected ethnic nationalism in any form, and they used the theoretical basis for that opposition to try to combat modern ethnic nationalism. There is much honesty and self-refexivity in the decision by archaeologists who believe nationalist archaeology is damaging to craft narratives that lead to different, more inclusive conclusions. However, making and explicitly defending such a conscious choice leads to criticism from those cloaking themselves in the protection of scientifc objectivity, that one is willfully politicizing the subject matter rather than acknowledging that all scholarship is political.

DOI: 10.4324/b22935-9

Conclusion 121 In recent decades, Christian Zionists’ interest in Israel as the site of end-times events has garnered much attention as a potentially explosive nexus of religion and international politics. None of the archaeologists discussed in depth here were themselves Christian Zionists since they did not believe in a system of premillennial dispensationalism or focus on the role of Jews in the end times (for more on this theology, see Gorenberg 2000; Weber 2005; Clark 2007). Nevertheless, the belief that archaeology is an objective science has had an impact on the thinking of future-oriented Christian Zionists. Glueck, for example, once brashly wrote that “it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference” (1959: 31). Even though many other archaeologists saw this as a bridge too far at the time, the idea was repeated over and over in evangelical circles. Eric Metaxas’ 2021 bestseller Is Atheism Dead? repeats Glueck’s quote for a new generation as the epigraph to a lengthy section in which he appeals to archaeology as a “science” that is proving the existence of God. “When someone like Glueck says something as strong” as this, Metaxas reasons, “it’s hard not to take notice” (2021: 119). Perhaps not surprisingly, Metaxas goes on to frame the modern Israeli state as “The Return of Israel” (2021: 152). Tim LaHaye, the theologian involved in the Left Behind series, also co-wrote the fctional Babylon Rising series chronicling the exploits of an Indiana Jones–like biblical archaeologist, Michael Murphy, who fghts evil while unearthing artifacts that “prove” the Bible. The frst day of his “Biblical Archaeology and Prophecy” class features Murphy asking how we can know for sure that the events of the Bible happened; the student who supplies the answer Murphy is looking for says, “Because the Bible tells us” (LaHaye and Dinallo 2003: 60–61). The element of prophecy sets LaHaye’s vision of archaeology apart from that of Albright or Nelson Glueck, whose support for Israel was not based on premillennial dispensationalist ideas about future events. But LaHaye’s assurance that archaeology will prove the Bible because there is no chance it did not happen in precisely the way he understands it is intellectual kin to the Albrighteans. Albright and his closest followers, with their confdence in science and in the Bible, form an important chapter in understanding the current religio-political situation involving Christian evangelicals and Israel that has often been skipped over in between nineteenth-century travelers and contemporary ones. Such religious schemes would seem a world apart from the mild, scholarly archaeologists detailed here. Their academic cachet, however, should not exempt them from scrutiny as part of this trajectory. Scholars like Albright and Glueck, knowingly or not, provided much fuel for this fre. Acknowledgment that interpretation is inevitable leads to the realization that “facts” can be marshaled to tell various stories. One can use the facts to tell a story about Jewish ownership; one can tell a story in which the native peoples have a greater right to the land. A third possibility takes

122 Conclusion into account cultural change and hybridity and breaks down the often unexamined assumption that past ownership by one people group is compelling evidence. This path, while also being most progressive in its integration of anthropological theory, holds out the hope of telling the story that will be the most just for those who today inhabit Israel/Palestine. Though still a minority position, it has been taken up by archaeologists involved with the Israeli non-governmental organization Emek Shaveh, the subject of the epilogue.

Epilogue

The ongoing controversy over the City of David archaeological site and Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem demonstrates how important the issues examined here still are. The site is located just outside the Old City walls in the densely populated Palestinian village of Silwan. The City of David is a national park, but in 1997 the government handed over the park’s operation to the settler group Elad (Rapaport 2009: 19). Elad’s control of the site signals the growing infuence of settlers, whose “chauvinistic and exclusivist visions of the city have become mainstream politics” (Dumper 2014: 131), and refects an overall shift from secular nationalism to right-wing fundamentalist nationalism (Feige 2015: 246). Since Elad has managed the site, it has gone from “a patchwork of excavations pits” to “a major Israeli national monument and one of Jerusalem’s leading tourist attractions” (Pullan and Gwiazda 2009: 29), with presentations to the public focused on the idea that the relationship between Jews and Jerusalem originated on this spot. In addition, Elad has used various means to take control of Palestinian houses near the archaeological park, in the neighborhood Palestinians call Wadi Hilweh. Raz Kletter shows how past themes continue, with those “responsible for archaeology in East Jerusalem” nourishing “an image of ‘pure’ men of science” and dismissing critics as leftists who inject politics (2020: 24). Yet given Elad’s clear political aims, any claim to objectivity becomes even more untenable. Israeli NGO Emek Shaveh has worked to denaturalize the connection made there between ancient Israelite presence and current Israeli control. The offcial narrative posits a clear distinction between Israelites and Canaanites, painting Israelites as heroes and Canaanites as enemies that existed only to be vanquished to fulfll God’s will. The modern-day inheritors of the Israelite legacy are understood to be the Jews, on the unspoken assumption that Jewish identity has been basically constant for 3,000 years. Archaeologist Eilat Mazar, granddaughter of Benjamin Mazar, argues that a large structure built on the bedrock she discovered there was King David’s fortress, a claim disputed by other archaeologists who do not believe the structure can be associated with a specifc biblical fgure (Galor 2017: 123). The site includes Hezekiah’s Tunnel, where visitors armed with fashlights

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can wade through the cool water and see the place where the plaque was found in which workers described their achievement of building two tunnels that met in the middle. It is known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel because it closely matches the description of a channel that, according to the Bible, the Judean King Hezekiah had built, though the inscription does not mention Hezekiah by name. This is the archaeological fnd that Burrows used as an example, writing that it did not constitute proof but that it was “reasonable to infer” the biblical story refers to this tunnel (1957: 28). Elad’s claim that the City of David is the “primordial Jewish capital” (Pullan and Gwiazda 2009: 31) might make its importance seem obvious and long-standing. However, when Yigal Shiloh of the Hebrew University excavated from 1978 to 1985, he angered Orthodox Jews who said he disturbed a cemetery. This confict led to Shiloh’s excavation becoming “a symbol of secular resistance to religious encroachment on scientifc research” (Greenberg 2009: 41), an unlikely development for a site that soon after became a focus of the settler movement. Elad founder David Be’eri said he established Elad, whose name is the Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David,” in 1986 with the explicit goal of “Judaizing” Silwan (Hasson 2011). The frst Elad settlers entered Silwan’s Wadi Hilweh neighborhood in 1991 after Ariel Sharon’s Ministry of Housing helped transfer to them several properties that had been inhabited by Palestinians, and they have continued to procure more homes through a variety of means (Rapaport 2009: 11). Be’eri’s efforts to create a focus on the City of David as an origin story caught on. In September 1995, the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin kicked off a 15-month celebration of the 3,000th year of Jewish Jerusalem. Even though only a brief opening ceremony was held at the City of David site, the event was predicated on giving credence to the biblical story of when “King David wrested the hilltop town from the Jebusites and proclaimed it the capital of the Jewish people” (Schmemann 1995). In 2010, the municipality of Jerusalem planned to demolish 22 homes in Silwan’s al-Bustan neighborhood to facilitate an expanded visitors’ center with shops, restaurants, and a community center (Tiebel 2010). The makeshift structures were built without permits since permits are rarely granted to Palestinians, “in contrast to the Jewish settlers there” (Greenberg and Hamilakis 2022: 78). Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat expressed the desire to re-create the ancient kings of Israel’s garden on the site (Stahl 2010). Under international pressure, plans to demolish Palestinian homes to expand the park were put on hold (Greenberg and Mizrachi 2011: 31). Barkat opposed the division of Jerusalem in any future peace settlement; each Israeli archaeological site and each Israeli settler in East Jerusalem makes it more diffcult to divide the city in a peace agreement in which Palestinians could utilize East Jerusalem as a capital. Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes broadcast correspondent, investigated the controversy surrounding the City of David in 2010. She found the political implications obvious: Those near half million tourists visiting the City

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of David each year encounter “an implicit message: that because David conquered the city for the Jews back then, Jerusalem belongs to the Jews today.” She spoke with Doron Spielman, the site’s international director of development. When Stahl remarked that she had seen dozens of Israeli soldiers going on the tour, Spielman explained that “when we bring them here they understand that they’re not just fghting for today, they actually represent the return of the Jewish people to Israel after thousands of years.” Spielman argued that “the Arabs have Mecca, they have Medina and they may also be interested in Jerusalem. But for the Jews, this is our only home” (Stahl 2010), thus suggesting that an Arab born and raised in Jerusalem would nevertheless feel more at home in Mecca, and discounting the presence of Christian Palestinians. Spielman showed Stahl a tunnel being dug under the homes of Silwan. She said the Palestinians she talked to worried about the tunnel undermining their homes’ structural integrity. Spielman rebutted that the residents only pretended to be worried about that because they were actually worried about “what the tunnel means.” For Spielman, the only possible meaning of the tunnel, one he assumed would be apparent to all, was that it means further evidence of past and therefore present Jewish ownership. The tunnel, he explained, would eventually lead to the Western Wall Plaza, and those who walked through it “will have undergone an experience that shows the Jewish Temple was important 600 years before Muhammad” (Stahl 2010). This is a possible meaning of these sites, but since interpretations are not inherent in archaeological data, it is only one of several possible meanings. The alternative narrative is provided by Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO that monitors archaeological work in Israel. In 2011, it published a visitors’ guide to the City of David co-written by Tel Aviv University archaeology professor Raphael Greenberg, who has actively worked to change the City of David narrative. The visitors’ guide lays out Emek Shaveh’s vision of archaeology: We view archaeology as a resource for building bridges and strengthening bonds between different peoples and cultures, and we see it as an important factor impacting the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian confict. Our fundamental position is that an archaeological fnd should not and cannot be used to prove ownership by any one nation, ethnic group, or religion over a given place. We believe archaeology tells a complex story that is independent of tradition, religious or otherwise, and that listening to this story and bringing it to the wider public can promote values of tolerance and pluralism. (Greenberg and Mizrachi 2011: 1) Emek Shaveh’s alternative three-hour City of David tour frames the site’s history in terms of multiple possible narratives. According to Greenberg, Emek Shaveh’s principles include “allowing everyone to fnd their own links

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to the past,” not assigning “different value to different cultures,” and that it “is not our business to establish links between modern ethnic identities (e.g., Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans) and ancient ones (e.g., Judeans, Canaanites, or Crusaders)” (Greenberg 2009: 48). The visitors’ guide also attempts to make up for the denigration that has sometimes been heaped on Canaanites by those looking through biblical lenses, describing “bold and resourceful Canaanites” who “harnessed the spring” to support Jerusalem’s frst settlement (Greenberg and Mizrachi 2011: 5). In the late 1990s archaeologist Ronny Reich dated a water system found at the site to the Canaanites. Amy Dockser Marcus points out that this was not exactly what Elad was hoping for when it invested more than $2 million in the dig. Marcus suggests that this fnding could instead be read as a reminder “that King David too was a link, in a chain that began long before the Israelites ever arrived here, of conquerors who had left their mark on Jerusalem” (2000: 88). As Greenberg writes in Public Archaeology, the presence of increasing numbers of Jewish settlers using the site as a reason to move into the neighborhood has created “confict with local Palestinians … at the very basic level of existence” (2009: 35). Archaeologists must not hide behind neutrality in such a situation, Greenberg writes, arguing that in this case neutrality masks “the greater political project of ‘unifying’ Jerusalem” (2009: 36)—a project that uses the language of unity to mask the way a unifed Jerusalem blocks the peace process by blocking return of occupied territories. Greenberg suggests the settler narrative is so new that competing narratives that historicize its newness and thus cast doubt on its claims to absolute truth could still fourish. Encouraging such nuanced presentation at the site could make “Silwan and the City of David a place in which archaeology might contribute to peace rather than to confict” (2009: 44). This goes beyond the City of David to a scenario in which, through responsible, ethical archaeological practice, Jerusalem “can be celebrated as a palimpsest of world cultures, rather than the exclusive property of this or that group” (2009: 46). The debate over whether the City of David should be excavated to fnd evidence of an ancient Jewish past or whether it should be excavated to learn more about the past to which all current inhabitants of the area belong is a contemporary phase of the debates this project has explored. In the phase of his career when he opposed a Jewish state, Nelson Glueck wrote about showing an Arab shepherd some sherds he had found. He explained to the shepherd that the pottery told the story “of a past to which both of us belonged” (1946: 244), precisely the goal of Emek Shaveh today. Emek Shaveh’s alternative narrative attempts to be more just to all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine. Like Burrows, Lapp, Glock, and Whitelam, Emek Shaveh argues that scholarship is political, and that scholarship that claims otherwise deserves special scrutiny. They based these arguments, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, on the theory that cultures are not essential, that they are fuid and that their boundaries are blurry, which

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makes arguments about essential Jewishness not only politically dangerous but untenable. The offcial City of David narrative is the less theorized of the two. It is based on unexamined assumptions about Jewish identity as having been mystically stable for millennia. Albright, who believed the current state of Israel was the rebirth of an ancient polity and who argued that archaeological discoveries consistently corroborated the Bible, concealed his political desire for Israel/Palestine beneath a rhetoric of objectivity, neutrality, and adherence to scientifc principles. The position of the offcial narrative bears close resemblance to the position of Albright; the continuing infuence of ideas like his in the archaeology of the land of the Bible can be seen in just such locations.

Selected Bibliography

Archives American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati. The American Schools of Oriental Research archive in Boston. The Archives of Progressive Judaism in Israel at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. Harvard Divinity School archive in Cambridge, MA. American Philosophical Society archive in Philadelphia. Yale Divinity School archive in New Haven, CT. Books and Articles Abu El-Haj, Nadia. 2001. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Albright, William Foxwell. 1942. “The Near East Needs the Jews.” The New Palestine 32/9: 12–13. ———. 1949. “The Biblical Period,” in The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, vol. 1, ed. Louis Finkelstein. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America: 3–69. ———. 1953. Archaeology and the Religion of Israel [1942]. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1955. Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands [1936]. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. ———. 1957. From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process. [1940] Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. ———. 1964. History, Archaeology and Christian Humanism. New York: McGrawHill Book Company. ———. 1965. “The Role of the Canaanites in the History of Civilization,” in The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of William Foxwell Albright, ed. G. Ernest Wright. New York: Doubleday: 438–487. ———. 1966. Archaeology, Historical Analogy, and Early Biblical Tradition. Rockwell Lecture series. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ———. 1968. Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths. The Jordan Lectures 1965 Delivered at the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. ———. 1971. “Nelson Glueck in Memoriam.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 202: 1–6.

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———. 2009. The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible [1932]. Gorgias Classic Archaeological Reprints. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. Alter, Stephen G. 2012. “From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth, Folklore, and Christian Origins.” Journal of Religious History 36/1: 1–18. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Avalos, Hector. 2007. The End of Biblical Studies. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Ben-Arieh, Yehoshua. 1979. The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century. Jerusalem: Magnes. Ben-Gurion, David. 1972. Ben-Gurion Reads the Bible. Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David Publishers. Benvenisti, Meron. 2000. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948. Trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. 2007. “Excavating Masada: The Politics-Archaeology Connection at Work,” in Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts, ed. Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press: 247–276. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Biran, Avraham. 1971. “Albright—Last of the Giants.” The Jerusalem Post, 28 September 1971. ———. 1994. Biblical Dan. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Brown, Jonathan M., and Laurence Kutler. 2005. Nelson Glueck: Biblical Archaeologist and President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press. Burrows, Edwin Gladding. 1981. The Cup & the Unicorn: Episodes from a Life; Millar Burrows, 1889–1980. Burrows, Edwin Grant. 1947. Hawaiian Americans: An Account of the Mingling of Japanese, Chinese, Polynesian, and American Cultures. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Burrows, Millar. 1931. Founders of Great Religions: Being Personal Sketches of Famous Leaders. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1932. “Palestinian and Syrian Archaeology in 1931.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 45: 20–32. ———. 1933. “Biblical Background in Palestine.” Religion in Life 2: 212–224. ———. 1934. “The New Approach to the Bible: Signifcance of Recent Excavations in Palestine,” The Christian Register, 20 September 1934, 558–559, 573–576. ———. 1938. Bible Religion: Its Growth in the Scriptures. New York: Abingdon. ———. 1941. “Syncretism in the Old Testament.” Journal of Bible and Religion 9/1: 10–16. ———. 1946a. An Outline of Biblical Theology. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press. ———. 1946b. “The Task of Biblical Theology.” Journal of Bible and Religion 14/1: 13–15. ———. 1949. Palestine is Our Business. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press. ———. 1955. The Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: The Viking Press.

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———. 1957. What Mean These Stones?: The Signifcance of Archeology for Biblical Studies [1941]. New York: Meridian Books. ———. 1958. More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: The Viking Press. ———. 1977. Jesus in the First Three Gospels. Nashville, TN: Abingdon. Campbell, Edward F., Jr. 1970. “Paul W. Lapp: In Memoriam.” The Biblical Archaeologist 33/2: 60–62. Canaan, Taufk. 1927. Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine. London: Luzac & Co. Clark, Victoria. 2007. Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Clifford, James. 1986. “Introduction: Partial Truths” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press: 1–26. Cline, Eric H. 2020. Digging up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collins, John J. 2005. The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Corbett, Elena. 2014. Competitive Archaeology in Jordan: Narrating Identity from the Ottomans to the Hashemites. Austin: University of Texas Press. Davis, John. 1996. The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture. The Princeton Series in Nineteenth-Century Art, Culture and Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Davis, Thomas W. 1989. “A History of American Archaeology on Cyprus.” The Biblical Archaeologist 52/4: 163–169. ———. 2004. Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dayan, Moshe. 1978. Living with the Bible. New York: W. Morrow. Dever, William G. 1973. “‘Biblical Archaeology’—or ‘The Archaeology of Syria– Palestine’?” Christian News from Israel 22/1: 21–22. ———. 1974. Archaeology and Biblical Studies: Retrospects and Prospects. The William C. Winslow Lectures, 1972. Evanston, IL: Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. ———. 1990. Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research. The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ———. 1993. “What Remains of the House That Albright Built?” Biblical Archaeologist 56/1: 25–35. ———. 1998. “Review of Burke Long’s Planting and Reaping Albright.” Near Eastern Archaeology 61/2: 131. ———. 2000. “Nelson Glueck and the Other Half of the Holy Land,” in The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of James A. Sauer, ed. Lawrence E. Stager, Joseph A. Greene, and Michael D. Coogan. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns: 114–121. ———. 2001. What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. 2003. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

132 Selected Bibliography ———. 2005. Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. 2017. Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press. ———. 2020. My Nine Lives: Sixty Years in Israeli and Biblical Archaeology. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press. Díaz-Andreu, Margarita. 2007. A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past. Oxford Studies in the History of Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dumper, Michael. 2014. Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History, & the Future of the Holy City. New York: Columbia University Press. Elliott, Mark. 2002. Biblical Interpretation Using Archaeological Evidence, 1900– 1930. Studies in Bible and Early Christianity Volume 51. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen. Elon, Amos. 1971. The Israelis: Founders and Sons. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Feige, Michael. 2015. “‘Where It All Began’: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism in Silwan,” in Toward an Anthropology of National Building and Unbuilding in Israel, eds. Fran Markowitz, Stephen Sharot, and Moshe Shokeid. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press: 243–257. Feinman, Peter. 2004. William Foxwell Albright and the Origins of Biblical Archaeology. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press. ———. 2012. “Canaanites, Catholics, and Chosen Peoples: William Foxwell Albright’s Biblical Archaeology.” Near Eastern Archaeology 75/3: 148–160. Feldman, Jackie. 2007. “Constructing a Shared Bible Land: Jewish Israeli Guiding Performances for Protestant Pilgrims.” American Ethnologist 34/2: 351–374. Feron, James. 1969. “Jerusalem Hails U.S. Archeologist.” The New York Times, 24 March 1969. Fields, Weston W. 2009. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Full History: Volume One, 1947– 1960. Leiden: Brill. Fierman, Floyd. 1986. “Rabbi Nelson Glueck. An Archaeologist’s Secret Life in the OSS.” Biblical Archaeology Review 12/5: 18–22. Finkelstein, J. J. 1959. “The Bible, Archaeology, and History: Have the Excavations Corroborated Scripture?” Commentary 27: 34–39. Fox, Edward. 2001. Sacred Geography: A Tale of Murder and Archeology in the Holy Land. New York: Metropolitan Books. Freedman, David N., ed. 1975. The Published Works of William Foxwell Albright: A Comprehensive Bibliography. With the assistance of Robert B. MacDonald and Daniel L. Mattson. Cambridge, MA: The American Schools of Oriental Research. Gallagher, Nancy. 2007. Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Confict: The Dilemmas of NGO Humanitarian Activism. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Galor, Katharina. 2017. Finding Jerusalem: Archaeology between Science and Ideology. Oakland: University of California Press. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Glock, Albert. 1985. “Tradition and Change in Two Archaeologies.” American Antiquity 50/2: 464–477. ———. 1994. “Archaeology as Cultural Survival: The Future of the Palestinian Past.” Journal of Palestine Studies 23/3: 70–84.

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———. 1995. “Cultural Bias in the Archaeology of Palestine.” Journal of Palestine Studies 24/2: 48–59. Glueck, Nelson. 1937. “Report of the Director of the School in Jerusalem.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 68: 32–42. ———. 1939. “On the Occasion of the Centenary of Edward Robinson’s First Journey to Palestine in 1838.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 74: 2–4. ———. 1944. “The Geography of the Jordan.” The National Geographic Magazine 86/6: 719–744. ———. 1944. “On the Trail of King Solomon’s Mines.” The National Geographic Magazine 85/2: 233–256. ———. 1946. The River Jordan: Being an Illustrated Account of Earth’s Most Storied River. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America. ———. 1947. “An Archaeologist Looks at Palestine.” The National Geographic Magazine 92/6: 739–752. ———. 1951. “Go, View the Land.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 122: 14–18. ———. 1959. Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev. New York: Grove Press. ———. 1965. Deities and Dolphins: The Story of the Nabataeans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ———. 1968a. Dateline: Jerusalem; a Diary. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press. ———. 1968b. The River Jordan, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1970. The Other Side of the Jordan [1940]. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. Goldman, Shalom. 2009. Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of The Promised Land. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Goode, James F. 2007. Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919–1941. Austin: University of Texas Press. Gorenberg, Gershom. 2000. The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gottwald, Norman K. 1979. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Greenberg, Raphael. 2009. “Towards an Inclusive Archaeology in Jerusalem: The Case of Silwan/The City of David.” Public Archaeology 8/1: 35–50. Greenberg, Raphael, and Yannis Hamilakis. 2022. Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel. New York: Cambridge University Press. Greenberg, Raphael, and Yonathan Mizrachi. 2011. From Shiloah to Silwan: Visitor’s Guide to Ancient Jerusalem (City of David) and the Village of Silwan. Jerusalem: Emek Shaveh. Hallote, Rachel. 2006. Bible, Map, and Spade: The American Palestine Exploration Society, Frederick Jones Bliss, and the Forgotten Story of Early American Biblical Archaeology. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. Hasson, Nir. 2011. “Jerusalem’s Time Tunnels.” Haaretz. 24 April 2011. Herberg, Will. 1955. Protestant–Catholic–Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Heyrman, Christine Leigh. 2013. American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam. New York: Hill & Wang.

134

Selected Bibliography

Hillers, Delbert R. 1985. “Analyzing the Abominable: Our Understanding of Canaanite Religion.” The Jewish Quarterly Review LXXV/3: 253–269. ———. 1989. “William F. Albright as a Philologian,” in The Scholarship of William Foxwell Albright: An Appraisal, ed. Gus Van Beek. Harvard Semitic Studies 33. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press: 45–59. Hobsbawm, Eric, and T. Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoffmeier, James K., and Alan Millard, eds. 2004. The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. “Jerusalem Should Remain Unifed” (Display ad). 1967. The New York Times. 12 July 1967, 12. Kaell, Hillary. 2014. Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage. North American Religions. New York: New York University Press. Karff, Samuel E., ed. 1976. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion at One Hundred Years. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press. Khalidi, Rashid. 1997. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press. Killebrew, Ann E. 1999. “From Canaanites to Crusaders: The Presentation of Archaeological Sites in Israel.” Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 3: 17–32. King, Philip J. 1983. American Archaeology in the Mideast: A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Philadelphia, PA: American Schools of Oriental Research. Kletter, Raz. 2006. Just Past? The Making of Israeli Archaeology. London: Equinox. ———. 2020. Archaeology, Heritage and Ethics in the Western Wall Plaza, Jerusalem: Darkness at the End of the Tunnel. Copenhagen International Seminar. London: Routledge. Kohl, Philip L., and Clare Fawcett, eds. 1995. Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kolsky, Thomas A. 1990. Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942–1948. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kuklick, Bruce. 1996. Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kyle, Melvin Grove. 2007. Explorations at Sodom: The Story of Ancient Sodom in the Light of Modern Research [1927]. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. LaHaye, Tim, and Greg Dinallo. 2003. Babylon Rising. New York: Bantam Books. Lapp, Paul W. 1967. “The Conquest of Palestine in the Light of Archaeology.” Concordia Theological Monthly 38: 283–300. ———. 1969. Biblical Archaeology and History. New York: The World Publishing Company. ———. 1970. “Captive Treasures: Who Owns What?” Mid East 10: 35–42. ———. 1975. The Tale of the Tell: Archaeological Studies by Paul W. Lapp. Ed. Nancy L. Lapp. Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series 5. Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Press. Lemche, Niels Peter. 2013a. Biblical Studies and the Failure of History. Copenhagen International Seminar: Changing Perspectives 3. London: Routledge. ———. 2013b. “History as an Argument for Land Possession,” in The Politics of Israel’s Past: The Bible, Archaeology and Nation-Building, ed. Emanuel Pfoh and Keith W. Whitelam. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Phoenix Press: 102–119.

Selected Bibliography

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Lemke, Werner E. 1986. “Interpreting Biblical History through the Eyes of Sociology and Politics: The Work of George Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald.” Conservative Judaism 39/1: 67–80. Leonard, Jonathan Norton. 1963. “Unearthing the Past: A Decade of Discoveries.” Time 82/24: 50–60. Levy, Thomas E., and David Noel Freedman. 2009. “William Foxwell Albright, 1891–1971: A Biographical Memoir,” in Biographical Memoirs Vol. 91. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press: 3–29. Long, Burke O. 1993. “Mythic Trope in the Autobiography of William Foxwell Albright.” Biblical Archaeologist 56/1: 36–45. ———. 1997. Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ———. 2003. Imagining the Holy Land: Maps, Models, and Fantasy Travels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lowdermilk, Walter C. 1944. Palestine: Land of Promise. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Machinist, Peter. 1996. “William Foxwell Albright: The Man and His Work,” in The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-First Century: The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference, eds. Jerrold S. Cooper and Glenn M. Schwartz. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns: 385–403. Makdisi, Ussama. 2008. Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. The United States in the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Marcus, Amy Dockser. 2000. The View from Nebo: How Archaeology is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Marr, Timothy. 2006. The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Masalha, Nur. 2007. The Bible & Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine. London: Zed Books. ———. 2018. Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History. London: Zed. Matthews, I. G. 1944. “Review of The Challenge of Israel’s Faith.” Journal of Religion 24/3: 221. Mendenhall, George E. 1962. “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine.” The Biblical Archaeologist 25/3: 66–87. ———. 1973. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Meskell, Lynn. 2020. “Imperialism, Internationalism, and Archaeology in the Un/ Making of the Middle East.” American Anthropologist 122/3: 554–567. Metaxas, Eric. 2021. Is Atheism Dead? Washington, DC: Salem Books. Meyer, Michael A. 1976. “A Centennial History,” in Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion at One Hundred Years, ed. Samuel E. Karff. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press: 1–283. Moore, Deborah D. 2004. GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Moorey, P. R. S. 1991. A Century of Biblical Archaeology. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. Novick, Peter. 1998. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. Ideas in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

136 Selected Bibliography Obenzinger, Hilton. 1999. American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pappe, Ilan. 2016. “The Bible in the Service of Zionism: ‘We Do Not Believe in God, but he Nonetheless Promised Us Palestine,’” in History, Archaeology and the Bible Forty Years after Historicity: Changing Perspectives 6, eds. Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson. Copenhagen International Seminar. London: Routledge: 205–217. Pfoh, Emanuel. 2009. The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Copenhagen International Seminar. London: Equinox. ———. 2013. “Some Refections on the Politics of Ancient History, Archaeological Practice and Nation-Building in Israel/Palestine,” in The Politics of Israel’s Past: The Bible, Archaeology and Nation-Building, eds. Emanuel Pfoh and Keith W. Whitelam. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Phoenix Press: 1–17. Phillips, Clifton Jackson. 1968. Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810–1860. Harvard East Asian Monographs 32. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pritchard, James B. 1968. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Trustees, May 3, 1968.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 190: 54–57. Pullan, Wendy, and Maximilian Gwiazda. 2009. “‘City of David’: Urban Design and Frontier Heritage.” Jerusalem Quarterly 39: 29–38. Ra‘ad, Basem L. 2010. Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean. London: Pluto Press. Rabinovitch, Abraham. 1969. “Tea and Sympathies.” The Jerusalem Post, 26 September 1969. Rapaport, Meron. 2009. Shady Dealings in Silwan. Trans. Soshana London Sappir. Jerusalem: Ir Amim. Robinson, Edward and Eli Smith. 1856. Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1838–52. In three volumes. Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster. Rogers, Stephanie Stidham. 2011. Inventing the Holy Land: American Protestant Pilgrimage to Palestine, 1865–1941. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Ross, Jack. 2011. Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism. Washington, DC: Potomac Books. Running, Leona Glidden and David Noel Freedman. 1975. William Foxwell Albright: A Twentieth-Century Genius. New York: Morgan Press. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient. New York: Penguin. ———. 1986. “Michael Walzer’s ‘Exodus and Revolution’: A Canaanite Reading.” Grand Street 5/2: 86–106. ———. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Sand, Shlomo. 2009. The Invention of the Jewish People. Trans. Yael Lotan. London: Verso. Sasson, J.M. 1993. “Albright as an Orientalist.” Biblical Archaeologist 56/1: 3–7. Schmemann, Serge. 1995. “Fireworks on Jerusalem’s 3000th Year.” The New York Times, 5 September 1995. Schultz, Kevin M. 2011. Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to its Protestant Promise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Selected Bibliography

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Schwartz, Regina M. 1997. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sherrard, Brooke. 2011. “‘Palestine Sits in Sackcloth and Ashes’: Reading Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad as a Protestant Holy Land Narrative.” Religion and the Arts 15: 82–110. Silberman, Neil Asher. 1989. Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East. New York: H. Holt. ———. 1993. “Visions of the Future: Albright in Jerusalem, 1919–1929.” Biblical Archaeologist 56/1: 8–16. ———. 1994. The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism, & the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Silk, Mark. 1984. “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America.” American Quarterly 36/1: 65–85. Smith, J. Z. 1990. Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Mark S. 2002. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. 2nd ed. The Biblical Resource Series [1990]. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Stahl, Lesley. 2010. “Controversy in Jerusalem: The City of David.” 60 Minutes, 17 October 2010. Stern, Ellen Norman. 1980. Dreamer in the Desert: A Profle of Nelson Glueck. New York: KTAV Publishing. Taha, Hamdan. 2019. “Palestinian Historical Narrative,” in A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine, eds. Ingrid Hjelm, Hamdan Taha, Ilan Pappe, and Thomas L. Thompson. Palestine History and Heritage Project 1. London: Routledge: 19–42. Tamari, Salim. 2004. “Lepers, Lunatics and Saints: The Nativist Ethnography of Tawfq Canaan and his Jerusalem Circle.” Jerusalem Quarterly 20: 24–43. Thompson, Henry O. 1987. Biblical Archaeology: The World, The Mediterranean, The Bible. New York: Paragon House Publishers. Thompson, Thomas L. 1974. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Berlin: de Gruyter. ———.1999. The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. New York: Basic Books. ———. 2019. “Introduction: Creating Coherence and Continuity: Suggestions and Illustrations of Methods and Themes,” in A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine, eds. Ingrid Hjelm, Hamdan Taha, Ilan Pappe, and Thomas L. Thompson. Palestine History and Heritage Project 1. London: Routledge: 1–16. Tiebel, Amy. 2010. “Jerusalem Seeks to Demolish 22 Palestinian Homes, Replace with Israel Tourist Center in al-Bustan,” The Associated Press, 21 June 2010. Vogel, Lester I. 1993. To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Weber, Timothy P. 2005. On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Weir, Alison. 2014. Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing. Whitelam, Keith W. 1996. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. London: Routledge.

138 Selected Bibliography Williams, George H. 1964. “Introduction,” in Ecumenical Dialogue at Harvard: The Roman-Catholic Colloquium, eds. Samuel H. Miller and G. Ernest Wright. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 3–24. Williams, Jay G. 1999. The Times and Life of Edward Robinson: Connecticut Yankee in King Solomon’s Court. Society of Biblical Literature Biblical Scholarship in North America. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. Wilson, Edmund. 1955. The Scrolls from the Dead Sea. New York: Oxford University Press. Wright, G. Ernest. 1944. The Challenge of Israel’s Faith. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1950. The Old Testament Against Its Environment. Studies in Biblical Theology 2. London: SCM Press. ———. 1951. “The Study of the Old Testament,” in Protestant Thought in the Twentieth Century: Whence and Whither? ed. Arnold S. Nash. New York: Macmillan Company: 17–44. ———. 1952. God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital. Studies in Biblical Theology 8. London: SCM Press. ———. 1954. The Biblical Doctrine of Man in Society. Ecumenical Biblical Studies 2. London: SCM Press. ———. 1957. Biblical Archaeology. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1957. ———. 1959. “Is Glueck’s Aim to Prove that the Bible Is True?” Biblical Archaeologist 22/1: 101–108. ———. 1960. The Rule of God: Essays in Biblical Theology. New York: Doubleday & Company. ———. 1964. “Seminar I. Biblical Studies: Record and Interpretation,” in Ecumenical Dialogue at Harvard: The Roman-Catholic Colloquium, eds. Samuel H. Miller and G. Ernest Wright. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 293–315. ———. 1965. Shechem: The Biography of a Biblical City. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1969. The Old Testament and Theology. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1971. “What Archaeology Can and Cannot Do.” The Biblical Archaeologist 34/3: 69–76. ———. 1982. “Introduction,” in The Anchor Bible Joshua: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary. By Robert G. Boling. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company: 1–88. Wright, George Ernest, and Floyd Vivian Filson, eds. 1956. The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible. Rev. ed. Westminster Aids to the Study of the Scriptures [1945]. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Wright, J. Edward, guest editor. 2002a. “‘The House That Albright Built.’” Near Eastern Archaeology 65/1: 4. ———. 2002b. “W. F. Albright’s Vision of Israelite Religion.” Near Eastern Archaeology 65/1: 63–68. Yahya, Adel H. 2005. “Archaeology and Nationalism in the Holy Land,” in Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives, eds. Susan Pollock, and Reinhard Bernbeck. Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell: 66–77. Yeivin, Sh. 1971. The Israelite Conquest of Canaan. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in Het Nabije Ooosten.

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Yothers, Brian. 2007. The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–1876. Aldershot: Ashgate. Zerubavel, Yael. 1995. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ziadeh-Seely, Ghada. 2007. “An Archaeology of Palestine: Mourning a Dream,” in Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts, eds. Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press: 326–345.

Copenhagen International Seminar Series Founded by Thomas L. Thompson, 1996

1 Mogens Müller, The First Bible of the Church: A Plea for the Septuagint. CIS 1. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1996. 2 Tilde Binger, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament. CIS 2. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1997. 3 Thomas M. Bolin, Freedom Beyond Forgiveness: The Book of Jonah Re-Examined. CIS 3. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1997. 4 Flemming A. J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomic History. CIS 4. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1997. 5 Alan Rosengren Petersen, The Royal God: Enthronement Festivals in Ancient Israel and Ugarit. CIS 5. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1998. 6 Frederick H. Cryer and Thomas L. Thompson (eds.), Qumran Between the Old and New Testaments. CIS 6. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1998. 7 Ingrid Hjelm, The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis. CIS 7. London: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2000. 8 Gregory L. Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition. CIS 8. London: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2001. 9 Margreet Steiner, Excavations by Kathleen M. Kenyon in Jerusalem 1961–1967. Volume III. CIS 9. London: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2001. 10 Glenna Jackson, ‘Have Mercy on Me’: The Story of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15.21-28. CIS 10. London: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2002. 11 Mogens Müller and Henrik Tronier (eds.), The New Testament as Reception. CIS 11. London: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2002. 12 George Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation. CIS 12. London: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2003. 13 Thomas L. Thompson (with Salma Jayyusi), Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition. CIS 13. London: T&T Clark 2003; paperback 2003. 14 Ingrid Hjelm, Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition. CIS 14. London: T&T Clark Intl., 2004. 15 Russel E. Gmirkin, Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. CIS 15. London: T&T Clark Intl., 2006.

142 Copenhagen International Seminar Series 16 Mogens Müller, The Expression ‘Son of Man’ and the Development of Christology: A History of Interpretation. London: Equinox Press, 2008; paperback: Routledge, 2013. 17 Joshua A. Sabih, Japheth ben Ali’s Book of Jeremiah: A Critical Edition and Linguistic Analysis of the Judaeo-Arabic Translation. London: Equinox Press, 2009; paperback 2016. 18 Emanuel Pfoh, The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. London: Equinox, 2009; paperback 2016. 19 Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano, Origin Myths and Holy Places in the Old Testament: A Study of Aetiological Narratives. London: Equinox Press, 2011; paperback: Routledge 2016. 20 John Van Seters (with Introduction by Thomas L. Thompson), Changing Perspectives 1: Studies in the History, Literature and Religion of Biblical Israel. London: Equinox Press, 2011. 21 Philippe Wajdenbaum, Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Sheffeld: Equinox Press, 2011. 22 Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas S. Verenna (eds.), ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’: The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus. Sheffeld: Equinox Press, 2012; paperback 2014. 23 Thomas L. Thompson, Biblical Narratives and Palestine’s History. Changing Perspectives 2. Sheffeld: Equinox/Acumen, 2013. 24 Niels Peter Lemche, Biblical Studies and the Failure of History. Changing Perspectives 3. Sheffeld: Equinox/Acumen, 2013. 25 Thomas L. Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum (eds.), The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Infuence on Jewish and Early Christian Culture. Durham: Acumen, 2014. 26 Philip R. Davies, Rethinking Biblical Scholarship. Changing Perspectives 4. Durham: Acumen, 2014. 27 Frederik Poulsen, Representing Zion. Judgement and Salvation in the Old Testament. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 28 Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme and Ingrid Hjelm (eds.), Myths of Exile. History and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 29 Finn Damgaard, Rewriting Peter as An Intertextual Character in the Canonical Gospels. London: Routledge and New York: Routledge, 2016. 30 Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson (eds.), History, Archaeology and the Bible Forty Years after “Historicity”. Changing Perspectives 6. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. 31 Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson (eds.), Biblical Interpretation beyond Historicity. Changing Perspectives 7. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. 32 Emanuel Pfoh, Syria–Palestine in the Late Bronze Age. An Anthropology of Politics and Power. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. 33 Russel E. Gmirkin, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.

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34 Keith W. Whitelam, Revealing the History of Ancient Palestine. Changing Perspectives 8. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. 35 Ingrid Hjelm, Hamdan Taha, Ilan Pappe and Thomas L. Thompson, (eds.), A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine. Palestine History and Heritage Project 1. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. 36 Raz Kletter, Archaeology, Heritage and Ethics in the Western Wall Plaza, Jerusalem. Darkness at the End of the Tunnel. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. 37 Jim West and Niels P. Lemche (eds.), Jeremiah in History and Tradition. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. 38 Robert K. Gnuse, Hellenism and the Primary History: The Imprint of Greek Sources in Genesis—2 Kings. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. 39 Christina Michelsen Chauchot, John the Baptist as a Rewritten Figure in Luke-Acts. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. 40 Mario Liverani, Historiography, Ideology and Politics in the Ancient Near East and Israel. Changing Perspectives 5. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. 41 Russel E. Gmirkin, Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts. Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. London and New York: Routledge 2022. Copenhagen International Seminar—Book Series—Routledge & CRC Press

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to end notes. Abrams, H. 56–57 Abu el-Haj, N. 5, 112 Aharoni, Y. 117 Albright, H. 50, 52 Albright, R. 29, 52 Albright, Wilbur 12, 26 Albright, William F.: and activism 27–32, 41, 116; as ASOR Jerusalem school director 12, 16; and Baltimore school 1, 47–52; and colonialism 4, 27; and conquest narrative 2, 24, 27, 118; and G. E. Wright 80; and N. Glueck 63, 76; and higher criticism 13–14; as historian 8, 25–27, 117; and historicity of the Old Testament 2, 14–15, 18, 22, 32, 52; and Islam 54; and liberal Protestantism 52–56; and objectivity 2, 8, 26–27; and Palestinian folklore 18–19; and P. Haupt 13–16, 21 Alpert, C. 31 Alt, A. 13, 96 Alter, S. 26 American Council for Judaism 28, 30–31 American Jewish Committee 66 American Schools of Oriental Research 1, 16–17, 22, 60, 95–97, 100–106 Amiran, R. 49 Assyriology 14 Atkinson, H. 30 Avalos, H. 2, 111 Avigad, N. 34 Aviram, J. 34 Baltimore school 1, 47–52, 63, 89–91; see also Oriental Seminary Barbour, W. 74 Barkat, N. 124

Bea, A. 90 Bedouin 63–64, 70, 86 Beegle, D. 54 van Beek, G. 75 Be’eri, D. 124 Ben-Gurion, D. 4–5, 6, 74 Ben-Yehuda, N. 5 Ben-Zvi, Y. 6 Berger, E. 7, 30–31, 68 Berkson, I. B. 55 Beyond the Texts 114 Biblical Colloquium 10 Bir Zeit University 106 Biran, A. 34, 76, 91–92, 96, 107–109 Bloomhardt, P. 15 Boas, F. 8 Breasted, J. 14 Bright, J. 30 Brown, J. 62 Brownlee, W. 34 Bulliet, R. 76 Burrows, Edwin Gladding 35 Burrows, Edwin Grant 42 Burrows, M.: and activism 40–43; as ASOR Jerusalem school director 22, 35, 40–41, 67; and biblical theology 38–40; and cultural theory 9, 35–37, 126; and Dead Sea Scrolls 40, 43–45; and G. E. Wright 35, 38–39, 91, 103; and G. Mendenhall 104; and Hezekiah’s Tunnel 38, 124; as Presbyterian minister 35; and religious evolution 39, 84 Campbell, E. 97, 109n13 Canaan, T. 9, 12, 19–21, 41 Casey, W. 100–105, 110n29

146

Index

Christian Council on Palestine 30–32 Christian Zionism 21, 121 City of David 11, 123–127 Cleveland, R. 100–101 Clifford, J. 6, 77 Collins, J. 80 Columbus Platform 62 conquest narrative 2, 24, 27, 81, 84, 92, 96, 99, 106–107, 113, 118 Cross, F. M. 50, 76, 102–103, 113 Dahood, M. 49, 51 Danby, H. 21 Davis, T. 3, 16, 93 Dayan, M. 4–5 Dead Sea Scrolls 33–34, 41–44, 43–45 Dever, W. G.: and conquest narrative 113, 118; and G. E. Wright 111, 113– 114, 118; as HUC/BAS director 76; and Israeli archaeology 3, 115–117; and liberal Protestantism 118; and minimalism 111–119; and N. Glueck 62–63, 76; and neutrality 4, 10–11, 112, 114–115; and P. Lapp 97, 113; and Syro-Palestinian archaeology 111, 114, 116; and the Western tradition 117–119; and W. F. Albright 111, 114 ecumenism 52–54, 73–76, 81, 89–90; see also Judeo-Christian tradition Elad 11, 123–126 Elliott, M. 13 Ember, A. 15 Emek Shaveh 122–126 Enz, J. 74 Feinman, P. 24 Fierman, F. 61 Filson, F. 82, 85 Finkelstein, J. J. 93 Fortna, R. 101 Fosdick, H. E. 26 Fox, E. 106 Freedman, D. N. 49–51, 55, 89–90, 102, 104–105 From the Stone Age to Christianity 25–27, 48, 54 fundamentalism 12–13, 18, 35, 48, 52, 57, 89, 97, 113, 118, 121, 123 Gaber, P. 113 Geiser, S. 12, 30 Ginsberg, H. L. 51 Gitlin, E. 49

Glock, A. 10, 96, 105–107, 126 Glueck, N.: as ASOR Jerusalem school director 60, 72; and Bedouin 63–64, 70; and cultural hybridity 9, 63–68; as HUC president 61, 63, 66, 73–77; and Islam 65, 70; and Jewish nationalism 68–73; and Judeo-Christian tradition 73–76; and Reform Judaism 62, 75; and Six-Day War 72–73; and unifcation of Jerusalem 72–73, 100–102; and W. F. Albright 63; and W. Dever 62–63; and World War II 61, 102 Goetze, A. 55 Goldman, S. 21, 76 Gottwald, N. 96, 99 Greenberg, R. 5, 11, 124–126 Guthrie, H. 74 Ha’am, A. 7, 30 Hallote, R. 14 Harvard Divinity School 10, 50, 89–90, 97, 113 Harvard Semitic Museum 108 Haupt, P. 8, 12–16, 21 Hebrew Union College 50, 61–63, 66, 73–77, 92, 117 Hebrew University 29, 60 Hegel, G. 36 Herberg, W. 47 Herzl, T. 107 Herzog, Z. 116 Hezekiah’s Tunnel 38, 123–124 higher criticism 8, 13–15, 38, 89 Hillers, D. 24, 86 historicity of Old Testament 2–3, 9, 14–15, 18, 22, 32–33, 52, 81, 96, 118 Hitti, P. K. 31 Israel Department of Antiquities & Museums 108 Israel Exploration Society 100 The Jerusalem Post 95, 102, 104, 108 Jerusalem, unifcation of 68, 72–73, 95, 100, 102, 105 Jewish nationalism 5, 68–73, 95; see also Zionism Johns Hopkins University 1, 14, 21, 48, 52, 91 Judeo-Christian tradition 9, 47–48, 54, 57, 61, 73–76, 86–90, 103; see also ecumenism

Index

147

Karff, S. 62 Katz, P. 13 Kelso, J. 35 Kepler, T. 53 Khalidi, R. 116 Khalidi, W. 105 Killebrew, A. 2 King Ibn Saud 31 King, P. 3, 18, 29, 61–62 Kletter, R. 123 Kolsky, T. 7 Kuklick, B. 14 Kutler, L. 62 Kyle, M. G. 9, 12, 16–18, 20

Missouri Synod 97, 105 Moore, D. 47 Moorey, P. R. S. 3, 81, 97 Morgenstern, J. 50, 63

LaHaye, T. 121 Landes, G. 101 Lapp, P.: and A. Glock 105; and archaeological theory 10, 96–100, 126; as ASOR Jerusalem school director 97, 99–100; and conquest narrative 99; and G. E. Wright 95–97, 99–104; and Judeo-Christian tradition 95; and M. Burrows 98–99; and Protest of 1968 93, 95, 100–104; and Saul’s fortress 5–6, 99; and W. F. Albright 95–97; and W. Dever 97, 113 Lemche, N. P. 2, 120 Lemke, W. 96 Levine, B. C. 103 Lewy, J. 55 liberal Protestantism 52–56, 80, 86–87, 118 Long, B. 3–4, 15–16, 82, 84 Lowdermilk, W. 28

Palestine Is Our Business 23, 42–43, 103–104 Palestinian Christians 12, 19–20, 92 Palestinian nationalism 5, 23, 66, 85, 96, 115–117, 120, 123 Palestinian refugees 9, 22–23, 42, 71, 81 Pappe, I. 5 peasants’ revolt model 96 pietism 87 Pittsburgh Platform 62 post-Zionism 115–116 Presbyterianism 17, 35, 49, 55, 86, 91 Price, R. 74 Protest of 1968 10, 93, 100–105 Protestant-Catholic Colloquium 90

Machinist, P. 13, 25–26 MacInnes, R. 21 Magnes, J. L. 7, 29–30, 60, 66, 68 Marcus, A. 126 Marr, T. 4 Marshall, G. C. 67 Masalha, N. 5, 7–8 May, H. G. 35, 91 Mazar, B. 34, 123 Mazar, E. 123 Meir, G. 77 Mendenhall, G. 96–97, 99, 103–105 Meskell, L. 4 Metaxas, E. 121 Methodism 53–56 Meyers, E. 74 minimalism 11, 111–119 missionaries 87–88

Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology 73–77, 108, 117 Neumann, E. 27–28 Noth, M. 13, 96 Novick, P. 8 Oriental Seminary 14, 48–49, 52, 89–90; see also Baltimore school Orlinsky, H. 34, 47, 82

Ra‘ad, B. 4 Rabin, Y. 124 Rabinovitch, A. 104–105 Rainey, A. 103 Reform Judaism 7–8, 62, 75 religious evolution 39, 80, 84 The River Jordan 64–66 The River Jordan 2nd ed. 71–72 Rivers in the Desert 68–71 Robinson, E. 47, 108 Robinson, J. M. 102 Ross, J. 68 Runner, M. 75 Said, E. 2, 4 Sand, S. 5, 6 Sasson, J. M. 13 Schultz, K. 47 Schwartz, R. 96 Sellers, O. 41 Sharon, A. 124 Shazar, Z. 73 Shechem 93, 115

148 Index Shiloh, Yigal 124 Silberman, N. A. 18, 23, 44 Silk, M. 47 Siloam inscription 38 Silver, A. H. 28 Six-Day War 72–73, 91, 95, 97–99, 110n21, 115 Smith, J. Z. 7 Smith, M. 112 Smith, W. 26 Speiser, E. 28, 51 Spielman, D. 125 Stahl, L. 124–125 Stern, E. 62 Stinespring, W. F. 55–56 Sukenik, E. 17 supersessionism 86, 92 Syro-Palestinian archaeology 24, 111, 114, 116 Taha, H. 19, 116 Taft, C. 66–67 Thompson, T. 2, 112 Totah, K. 32 Truman, H. 67, 71 unifcation of Jerusalem 68, 72–73, 95, 100, 102, 105 Upper Iowa University 12 Voss, C. 32, 56 Weigle, L. 55

Wellhausen, J. 13 What Mean These Stones? 35–37 Whitelam, K. 5–6, 99, 111–112, 115, 126 Williams, G. 90 Wilson, E. 43 Wise, S. S. 27 Worrell, W. H. 16 Wright, G. E.: and Anchor Bible Series 51–52; as ASOR president 100–105; and Bedouin 86; and comparison 7, 10, 80–86; and conquest narrative 81–84, 92, 99; and interpretation 81, 93; and Islam 87; and JudeoChristian tradition 86–90; and liberal Protestantism 80, 86–87; and M. Burrows 35, 38–39, 91, 103; and nationalism 83–85; and P. Lapp 93, 95–97, 100–104; as Presbyterian 86, 91; and role of Jesus 81, 86–88; and supersessionism 86; and unifcation of biblical knowledge 89; and W. Dever 111, 113–114, 118 Wright, J. E. 15, 16, 22 Yadin, Y. 5, 33–35, 101 Yahya, A. 5 Zerubavel, Y. 5 Ziadeh-Seely, G. 5 Zionism 1, 4–9, 21; and N. Glueck 60–61, 67–68, 69, 71, 75–76, 89; and P. Lapp 95, 100, and W. F. Albright 22, 24–25, 27–32, 41, 116, 55–57