Anthropology and the Bible 9781607249566, 2010022809, 1607249561

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................................................................vii Abbreviations ...........................................................................................ix List of Contributors ................................................................................xi Introduction Emanuel Pfoh Introduction: Anthropology and the Bible Revisited .........................3 Method Emanuel Pfoh Anthropology and Biblical Studies: A Critical Manifesto ................15 David Chalcraft Is Sociology Also Among the Social Sciences? Some Personal Reflections on Sociological Approaches in Biblical Studies...37 Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme Modes of Religion: An Alternative to ‘Popular/Official’ Religion ...........................................................................................77 Criticism Niels Peter Lemche Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, and Social Anthropology..93

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Case Studies Philippe Guillaume The Hidden Benefits of Patronage: Debt.........................................107 Eveline J. van der Steen David as a Tribal Hero: Reshaping Oral Traditions .......................127 Philippe Wajdenbaum Jacob and David, the Bible’s Literary Twins...................................137 Index of Authors ..................................................................................159 Index of References .............................................................................165

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the European Association of Biblical Studies for allowing the creation of the Anthropology and the Bible programme in late 2008. I want to express gratitude to all the contributors to this volume for their readiness to publish the papers that constituted the first Anthropology and the Bible session in 2009. I especially thank Philippe Wajdenbaum, who did not read at the session, for contributing with his paper. I also thank Katie Stott from Gorgias Press who did a great job in preparing the volume for publication. Emanuel Pfoh

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ABBREVIATIONS BA BASOR CIS ESHM EvTh FAT HANES HLS JAAR JBL JCS JESHO JSOT JSOTSup JSPSup KAT LAI LHB/OTS NSKAT OTL SAHL SBL SBLSS SJOT SHANE SHCANE SWABAS VTSup ZAW

Biblical Archaeologist Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Copenhagen International Seminar European Seminar in Historical Methodology Evangelische Theologie Forschungen zum Alten Testament History of the Ancient Near East Studies Holy Land Studies Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series Kommentar zum Alten Testament Library of Ancient Israel Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar, Altes Testament Old Testament Library Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature—Symposium Series Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS David J. Chalcraft, Society, Religion and Belief Research Group, University of Derby, UK. Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, Institute of Biblical Exegesis, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Philippe Guillaume, University of Bern, Switzerland. Niels Peter Lemche, Institute of Biblical Exegesis, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Emanuel Pfoh, Department of History, National University of La Plata, Argentina. Eveline J. van der Steen, School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, UK. Philippe Wajdenbaum, University of Brussels, Belgium.

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INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION:

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE BIBLE REVISITED EMANUEL PFOH PRESENTATION This volume is the outcome of the first session of the Anthropology and the Bible programme in the European Association of Biblical Studies Annual Meeting, celebrated in July 2009 at the University of Lincoln, UK. The programme has a wide yet profoundly intertwined number of goals and interests, namely the fostering of critical uses of social anthropology for reading biblical stories but also for understanding the history and archaeology of ancient Palestine, and the interpretative context of modern biblical scholarship and ancient Near Eastern studies related to the Bible as well. An ultimate goal of this programme is to produce ‘epistemological ruptures’1 within the field of biblical studies, reviewing results based on common sense, anachronisms, ethnocentrisms and preconceived notions. The papers of this volume reflect all the aforementioned perspectives and stand as a critical and necessary renewal of the uses of anthropology and sociology in biblical scholarship to be differentiated from social-science approaches, as I will explain later. From a more formal perspective, the programme deals with three strategies of scholarly discussion: 1) theoretical contributions on method; 2) criticism of previous scholarship; and 3) more specific case studies. Of course, these three approaches could just as well The term (rupture épistémologique) was coined by G. Bachelard. Cf. further P. Bourdieu, J.-C. Chamboredon and J.-C. Passeron, The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1991 [1968]), esp. 13–31. 1

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appear together in different combinations, as we will see in the contributions to this volume.

ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY AND THE BIBLE IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES Anthropology and sociology, as distinctive disciplines, have their particularities: even though both disciplines were borne out of the consequences of modernization processes in the Western world (sociology) and the European imperialist expansion throughout the world and the encounter with non-Western societies (anthropology), especially during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, a key difference would reside in that anthropologists usually conduct fieldwork among non-Western societies and/or communities, whereas sociologists usually work within the social realm of modern, Western societies. Beyond this classical distinction, both disciplines come together when a search for explaining and understanding social behaviour is attempted, overcoming ‘common sense’ depictions of reality and what appears to be natural or plainly given. Sociology and anthropology are deconstructive endeavours of social realities and both promote an epistemological awareness of each interpretive context of such social realities.2 After this brief sketch on what anthropology and sociology are about, if we take a look on the use of anthropology (and sociology) in the field of biblical studies during the last century and a half we may end up not fully satisfied. We can, however, witness how sociology and anthropology played a significant role, first corroborating historical depictions of ancient Israel (the new socioanthropological understanding of human reality enabled by the Enlightenment allowed also new understandings of the ancient world in such terms), then rearranging such historical depictions (anthropology and sociology allowed for a scientific explanation of Israel’s past, at times refuting the biblical narrative, but leaving the general outline from Joshua to Kings virtually untouched).

2 Of course, the specific features of these disciplines can be emphasized according to different aspects of social research. See further D. J. Chalcraft’s article in this volume (pp. 37–75).

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Overviewing the socio-anthropological treatments of the biblical social world, we find in William Robertson Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889),3 in Max Weber’s studies about Judaism,4 and in Antonin Causse’s address of Israelite religion,5 very clear antecedents of serious efforts to grasp critical knowledge about the society depicted in the Bible or found beyond its stories. The historicity of the biblical accounts was not under significant doubt in these approaches. The key question was instead how to understand and explain the social world of the Bible by making use of the modern sciences of ethnography/anthropology and sociology. Things did not change much from this picture until mid-20th century. It was in the 1960s that George E. Mendenhall challenged biblical scholarship’s historical reconstructions with a new hypothesis that proposed to view Israel’s origins as native to ancient Palestine rather than foreign, as the biblical narrative tells—to which Norman K. Gottwald added elements of social revolution.6 The Bible’s depiction of ancient Israel’s history and social life was then modified and rearranged through anthropological and sociological insights and data, but only to accommodate biblical stories to new interpretive contexts. In New Testament scholarship, the work of Bruce J. Malina and the Context Group provided fresh light to the social world of the Gospels’ stories, building on social anthropology and socialsciences approaches, which used comparative examples of different societies to explain social practices in the time of Jesus and his folW. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series, The Fundamental Institutions (New York: Macmillan, 3rd edn 1927 [1889]). 4 M. Weber, Das antike Judentum (Tübingen: [Mohr] Siebeck, 1921); see further, D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2007), 26–111. 5 A. Causse, Du groupe ethnique à la communauté religieuse: Le problème sociologique de la religion d’Israël (Études d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 33; Paris: Alcan, 1937). 6 G.E. Mendenhall, ‘The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine’, BA 25 (1962), 66–87; N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 BCE (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979). 3

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lowers and early Christianity.7 Even though this socio-scientific interpretation often depends more on fixed models or stereotypes—in some cases, we may say, wrongly handled8—it has proven to be a most valid way to overcome simplistic and literalist interpretations of the Gospels’ milieu. Although some social anthropologists, not associated with the field of biblical studies, attempted some important work on a sound anthropological comprehension of biblical images, myths and depicted practices (e.g., Edmund Leach, Julian Pitt-Rivers, Mary Douglas9), and cared little for issues of historicity, in general sociological and anthropological approaches10 and proper socialSee, for instance, B. J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. (Louisville, KY: WJK, 3rd edn, 2001 [1981]); idem, The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels (London: Routledge, 1996); J. H. Elliott (ed.), Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1993); B. J. Malina and J. H. Neyrey, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996); R. Rohrbaugh, The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2007); D. Neufeld and R. deMaris (eds.), Understanding the Social World of the New Testament (London: Routledge, 2009); and the recent critical reassessment by Z. Crook, ‘Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited’, JBL 128 (2009), 591–612. Another pioneering work, not formally associated with the Context Group, is W. H. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 8 See J. G. Crossley, ‘“Forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing!” Bruce Malina, the Holocaust and a Rotten Core of Anthropological Approaches in New Testament Studies’ (forthcoming). 9 E. Leach, Genesis as Myth, and Other Essays (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969); J. Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of Shechem or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Cambridge Studies and Papers in Social Anthropology, 19; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); M. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 10 See, for instance, V. H. Matthews and D. C. Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel, 1250–587 BCE (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993). Cf. also J. W. Rogerson, Anthropology and the Old Testament (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1978); R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980); idem, Sociological Approaches to the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); B. Lang (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). 7

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scientific criticism of the Old Testament11 have usually aimed at strengthening a not usually disputed historical image of ancient Israel. In other words, these approaches have often taken for granted the historicity of many biblical figures, events and sociohistorical processes (e.g., state formation, institutionalization of religion, religious reforms, ‘national’ crises, etc.) and proposed anthropological, sociological and/or socio-scientific explanations for realities depending more on ancient stories but hardly confirmed by independent archaeological or historical work. Perhaps a very clear example of how sociology and anthropology was/is used in biblical studies can be shown by Gottwald’s monumental The Tribes of Yahweh: in a nutshell, socio-anthropological data employed by Gottwald is ultimately subsumed to the biblical narrative in the books of Exodus-Judges.12 This appears to be the general rule in biblical scholarship, even nowadays, as the also monumental history of Israelite religion by Rainer Albertz (from 1992/1994) witnesses, following the chronological scheme from Genesis to EzraNehemiah.13 And the examples, I believe, could be easily multiplied. My point is that historical reconstructions have been based on an acceptance of the biblical narrative’s ‘historical’ plot and supplemented with socio-anthropological insights. But the real critical attempt would be to see how anthropology and sociology can modify and enhance our representations of Israel’s historical past without relying or depending slavishly on the Bible’s depictions. This, I propose, is the main distinction of anthropologiSee C. E. Carter and C. L. Meyers (eds.), Community, Identity, and Ideology: Social Science Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (SBTS, 6; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), esp. C. E. Carter’s ‘A Discipline in Transition: The Contributions of the Social Sciences to the Study of the Hebrew Bible’, 3– 36; P. F. Esler (ed.), Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in Its Social Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006). 12 Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh. The main relevant criticism of this, nonetheless, important oeuvre is to be found in N. P. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy (VTSup, 37; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985). 13 R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament (2 vols.; OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 1994 [original edition in German from 1992]). 11

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cal/sociological perspectives on the Bible from the so-called socioscientific approaches in current biblical scholarship. We may accordingly ask, what could be the (sociological) reasons for this methodological flaw? They could be many, but I think that an inherent socio-religious identification on behalf of the modern interpreters of biblical literature with their ‘biblical natives’ is what essentially produces unsound results in socio-scientific approaches to biblical literature—but also in more traditional historical-critical exegesis—which, in methodological terms, in most cases fails to produce the ‘epistemological ruptures’ required in sociological and anthropological research. Another very clear example of the lack of reflexivity in biblical studies’ production of knowledge can be found if we attend to the, more often than not, ignored question of the historicity of the analytical categories.14 Recently, John Van Seters has produced an important study dealing with the adoption of the category of ‘editor’ in the 17th century and up to the 20th in biblical scholarship from the field of Homeric studies in classical scholarship, exposing thus the background of the production of knowledge in biblical studies and how this makes an impact on scholarly hypotheses.15 Recognition of the historical context of modern biblical interpretation—as Van Seters shows with his case—should provide a critical awareness towards the results produced by an application of such concepts, often taken as a ‘natural’ tool for interpretation: let us think of other concepts generally employed in modern biblical interpretation, such as ‘religion’, ‘nation/nationalism’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘history/historiography’, ‘statehood’, etc. My question is: Can we just use these concepts without first acknowledging the historicity of each concept, i.e., its social, historical and cultural contextualization? Critical socio-anthropological insights must start with this epistemological awareness. My opinion is that so far most biblical Cf. already M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 2002 [1966]); idem, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1989 [1969]). 15 See J. Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the ‘Editor’ in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006). 14

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scholarship dealing with socio-anthropological issues in the Old and New Testament has not produced a full detachment from modern socio-religious images that form part of the interpreters’ personal background. Even so, I think there are many open avenues in the field that can allow for critical results. Old Testament scholarship, as we noted above, has made use of anthropological studies to shed some sociological light on ancient Israelite society. In fact, the use of ethnographic studies from the Mediterranean basin constitutes perhaps the most fertile avenue for such interpretations, building on critical assessments of traditional communities/societies of this area.16 The papers that constitute this volume do not cover, of course, all of the possible topics in the relationship of anthropological perspectives with biblical matters. However, they represent a first provocation, aiming at widening critical perspectives.

CONTRIBUTIONS Emanuel Pfoh, in the opening paper of this anthology, presents the main characteristics of the interpretive perspectives that the “Anthropology and the Bible” session is expected to foster. The idea behind a critical anthropology of ancient Palestine and Israel, and its main literary/cultural product (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the New Testament and the rest of para-biblical literature), is moving beyond rationalistic paraphrases of biblical images, favouring instead critical anthropological assessments to both the history of Palestine, in its social, political, economic and ideological aspects, and the biblical stories, in order to grasp a sound understanding of their meaning for the ancient scribes that produced them. As a token, I find S. M. Olyan’s article, ‘Honor, Shame, and Covenant Relations in Ancient Israel and Its Environment’, JBL 115 (1996), 201–218, a very important contribution towards a critical use of anthropology in Old Testament studies. For an evaluation of the use of Mediterranean ethnographic data and insights, overcoming the Orientalist fallacies that have been associated with Mediterranean studies during the 20th century, see E. Pfoh, ‘The “Anthropology of the Mediterranean” and Near Eastern and Biblical Studies’ (forthcoming). 16

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David Chalcraft’s essay explores the relations between sociology and the other social sciences commonly used within biblical studies. A key concern is with establishing the similarities and differences between the social sciences in an effort to articulate what is unique to the sociological enterprise (and why the approach would be interested in ancient Israel/Judaism), so as to understand the reasons why sociological approaches might often wish to distance their endeavours in biblical studies from approaches using social psychology, economics and cognitive science of religion and, to some extents, anthropology. According to Chalcraft, these differences are relevant to appreciating the typical questions a sociologist will ask and the manner in which methods, concepts and theories operate in comparative historical sociological enquiry, including the analysis of ancient social worlds. In the process a few remarks are also made about sociology’s closer relations to cultural studies, literary studies and types of comparative history. In her paper, Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme suggests to view the performance of religious practices as ‘modes of religion’, in an attempt to overcome the dualities based on social classes, such as official/popular, literate/folk and elite/mass, that are often seen in studies on Israel’s religion(s). The problem with this dualist approach, Gudme argues, is that when one looks for a binary pair, such as official and popular religion, one tends to find it, producing thus a picture of two monolithic and irreconcilable religious groups, which leaves us with the rather unsatisfactory task of gathering scraps of evidence about the ‘denigrated’ group, popular religion, in the cultural products of the elite, such as the Hebrew Bible. Niels Peter Lemche reviews critically the main issues addressed in the recent volume by Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis (2006). According to Lemche, Faust operates with a concept of ethnicity which he claims goes back to Fredrik Barth, and he uses Barth—or so he believes—to construct an early Israelite ethnicity and even nationality. However, Faust has failed to display a broader anthropological understanding of the concept. As it stands, his thesis is just one more example of how biblical scholars adopt concepts developed within other parts of the academic world without understanding the place of such concepts in, for instance, social anthropology. Philippe Guillaume deals in his contribution with the socioeconomic dynamics of ancient Israel, using ethnohistorical data

INTRODUCTION

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from the Middle East to inform his case. Social-scientific exegetes, Guillaume argues, present debt as a weapon in the hand of the rich to dispossess the poor. However, in societies where land was far more abundant than manpower, foreclosures on land were meaningless. Money-lenders were rather interested in securing labour and production, not land. Considered within the framework of patronage, debt maintained a crucial bond between merchants and farmers, namely, a subsistence insurance.17 Eveline J. van der Steen presents a perspective of heroic biblical David using also information from ethnohistorical studies from the Middle East. David is the great hero of the people of Israel, but he is also one of the most controversial people in the Bible. Recently, there has been a trend to paint him as a raider, robber, mafioso, by artists and historians alike. Whether he was a historical figure or not (van der Steen thinks he was) his life has been romanticized by his contemporaries and by generations after him, found its way into oral traditions, and likewise was edited by the compilers of the Bible for their own, political and ideological purposes. That this course of events is not unique, but fits in the society from which David originated, is proven by the corpus of oral traditions from the pre-Islamic and Islamic tribal society. Van der Steen compares these traditions, particularly the Song of Antar, with the story-cycle of David, in order to understand in a better way how these traditions were formed, and what kind of hero David was originally. The final contribution, by Philippe Wajdenbaum, represents the view of a professional anthropologist working with biblical issues and offers a comparative analysis of the stories of Jacob in Genesis and David in the Book of Samuel. Using Claude LéviStrauss’ model of diachronic and synchronic reading, it shows how See also on patronage in the ancient Near East, N. P. Lemche, ‘Kings and Clients: On Loyalty between the Ruler and the Ruled in Ancient “Israel”’, Semeia 66 (1995), 119–132; idem, ‘Justice in Western Asia in Antiquity, or: Why No Laws Were Needed!’, Chicago Kent Law Review 70 (1995), 1695–1716; E. Pfoh, ‘Some Remarks on Patronage in SyriaPalestine during the Late Bronze Age’, JESHO 52 (2009), 363–381; idem, The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (CIS; London: Equinox, 2009), 113–60. 17

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both Jacob and David were cheated by their deceitful fathers-in-law (Laban and Saul); how their wives worshiped household gods (Rachel and Michal); how their daughters were ravished and subsequently avenged by their brothers (Dinah and Tamar); and how their sons raped their concubines (Ruben and Absalom). Jacob walked with a limp after his fight with God’s angel and he robbed his red-haired rival twin brother Esau of his birthright and of Isaac’s blessing. Inversely, David was red-haired himself, and robbed Saul’s last heir, the limping Mephibaal, of his right to the throne of Israel. The article addresses the question whether this symmetry between Jacob and David could actually result from a deliberate literary strategy, possibly by a single writer for the books of Genesis to Kings.

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ANTHROPOLOGY AND BIBLICAL STUDIES: A CRITICAL MANIFESTO EMANUEL PFOH The methods, one must say it ten times, are what is essential, also what is most difficult, also what is for the longest time opposed by habits and laziness. F. Nietzsche, The Antichrist The separation of sociology and history is a disastrous division, and one totally devoid of epistemological justification: All sociology should be historical and all history sociological. P. Bourdieu and L. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology

ANTHROPOLOGY AS A MAIN ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE FOR THE HISTORIAN Is an ethnographic interpretation of biblical stories possible? How can anthropology and sociology, which from this point of view would not differ notably in method, address the Bible as a set of documents produced by an ancient society? There is one wellknown methodological principle among social anthropologists, ever since the participation of W. H. R. Rivers in the Cambridge expedition to a group of Melanesian islands in the Torres Strait in 1898, but better known after Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) stayed in the Trobriand islands on the Pacific Ocean in the 1920s: the observation and participation of the researcher among his/her subjects is a quintessential part of the practice of the discipline.1 1 Cf. P. P. Viazzo, Introduzione all’antropologia storica (Bari-Roma: Laterza, 4th edn, 2009), 29–38; see also B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge, 1922), esp. the Introduction; idem,

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According to this perspective then, and when attempting to look into the Bible’s stories anthropologically or sociologically, our methodology aims at performing a kind of ethnography of a dead culture, because our biblical natives (those people who authored and were the audience of biblical stories) are no more among us.2 In spite of the seemingly paradoxical character of this approach, this is in fact a critical manner of doing socio-historical research, a kind of ‘total historical method’ covering not only the subjects of common historical inquiry (social, economic, political, ideological matters of a society in the past)3 but also the intellectual and social backCrime and Custom in Savage Society: An Anthropological Study of Savagery (London: Kegan Paul, 1926). See further C. Geertz, ‘“From the Native Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding’, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28 (1974), 26–45. It is necessary, however, to take into account the reflexive criticism in J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); but see also the perspectives in R. Aunger, ‘On Ethnography: Storytelling or Science?’, Current Anthropology 36 (1995), 97–130. 2 Cf. already N. P. Lemche, ‘On Doing Sociology with “Solomon”’, in L. K. Handy (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium (SHCANE, 11; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997), 312–335. B. J. Malina and J. H. Neyrey, in their Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 5–6, recognise that our native informants of the New Testament world have disappeared a long time ago; even then, both authors show an over-optimistic reliance on written documents as depicting an ethnographic reality. 3 ‘Comme l’ethnologue qui utilise la distance qu’il perçoit entre sa propre culture et celle de son terrain d’observation, pour se débarrasser de ses propres catégories et reconstituer le système logique de la société qu’il étudie, l’historien peut mettre à profit le caractère parcellaire, non construit, de ces sources brutes, pour retrouver, au-delà de la réalité manifeste, les mécanismes et la logique qui expliquent telle conjoncture – ce qu’on appelle une époque – ou telle évolution’ (A. Burguière, ‘L’anthropologie historique’, in J. Le Goff [dir.], La nouvelle histoire [Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2006 (orig. ed. 1988)], 137–164 [142–43]). See also Viazzo, Introduzione all’antropologia storica; and the approaches, e.g., in E. E. EvansPritchard, ‘Social Anthropology: Past and Present’, Man 50 (1950), 118– 124; M. D. Sahlins, ‘Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History’, American Anthropologist 85 (1983), 517–544; T. Skocpol, ‘Sociolo-

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ground of the production of historical knowledge; namely, the reflexivity of the scholarly practice. This position stands, accordingly, for an epistemological awareness of the scholar that creates the conditions for a better and sounder historical knowledge of past realities. An ‘ethnographic view’ on the Bible deals with the nature itself of the data we found in the Bible (which, as it stands, is a palimpsest of ancient mythic understandings of the world) but also with the method for using biblical data for socio-historical purposes: ‘Ethnography as a methodology…; as an approach to experiencing, interpreting and representing culture and society that informs and is informed by sets of different disciplinary agendas and theoretical principles. Rather than being a method for the collection of “data”, ethnography is a process of creating and representing knowledge (about society, culture and individuals) that is based on ethnographers’ own experiences’.4 We can recognize then two levels of ethnographic analysis: first, the mythic nature of biblical stories; second, the handling of such stories when crafting historical landscapes out of ancient sources. In that way, the biblical testimony should not be used to write ancient history without understanding the literary and mythic (epistemological) nature of the Bible’s stories. The ethnographer/anthropologist/sociologist cannot base his/her analysis of a particular culture following the sole testimony of his/her native informant. Even when the information provided by the informant, in parts or as a whole, can be tested and proved to be veridical to whatever degree, this kind of information must be assessed through theoretical and conceptual frameworks to place the native informant’s discourse within the cultural matrix

gy’s Historical Imagination’, in T. Skocpol (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1–20; C. Geertz, ‘History and Anthropology’, New Literary History 21 (1990), 321– 335; P. Burke, History and Social Theory (London: Polity Press, 2nd edn, 2005); among many others. 4 S. Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography [London: SAGE Publications, 2001], 18). Cf. also A. Destro and M. Pesce, Antropologia delle origini cristiane (Bari: Laterza, 2nd edn, 2008), esp. 3–17.

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of his/her own society.5 The informant is not that much a witness, a middleperson between a foreign culture and the researcher, but he/she is better a manifestation of his/her own culture. And so are ancient texts: following M. Liverani, in what could be perhaps the most important analytical methodology for the historian of antiquity, we should better interpret ancient sources ‘not as a “source of information”, but as information in itself; not as an opening on a reality laying beyond, but as an element which makes up that reality’.6 This is, then, also a sound method for approaching an historical understanding of the biblical stories, which under no circumstances must be taken at face value, as depicting literally some kind of past reality, without sound interpretive analyses. In that sense, the Bible tells us more about the culture of the ancient Levant than specifically about the historical past of an ‘ancient Israel’. What we read in the Bible is not much a direct testimony about Israel’s history but rather cultural evidence from Western Asia’s ancient world. From a methodologically ethnographic point of view, the sin of modern biblical scholarship, when dealing with historical issues and the Bible, has been the adoption of a ‘native’ discourse (the Bible) and its use as ‘ethnographic’ (i.e., as reflecting historical realities), without questioning the very nature of such a discourse due mainly to cultural, religious and political reasons: the Bible is considered a foundational Western document, the ultimate referent of 5 This is recognisable in C. Lévi-Strauss’ criticism of M. Mauss’ understanding of the nature of exchanges in Polynesia: Mauss used a native category to describe a phenomenon that should follow an ethnographic method aiming at discovering unconscious structures, rather than a conscious native explanation of the question; cf. C. Lévi-Strauss, ‘Introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss’, in M. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), ix-lii. 6 M. Liverani, ‘Memorandum on the Approach to Historiographic Texts’, Orientalia NS 42 (1973), 178–194 (179). Destro and Pesce refer to an ‘antropologia dei testi, intesi como luogo di condensazione di processi e di elaborazioni culturali […] Noi prendiamo in considerazione questi testi come fonte per conoscere le consezioni sociali, le categorie mentali, la cultura di chi li ha scritti e non per ricostruire la cultura dei gruppi sociali di cui essi narrano o a cui essi rivolgono’ (Antropologia delle origini cristiane, viii).

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Christian and Jewish faiths and the cultural/ideological legitimation behind political events, such as the founding of the modern state of Israel.7 These cultural, religious and political phenomena, which have their own historico-socio-anthropological explanations, cannot be the bases of any scientific epistemology in the field of biblical scholarship. Any critical historical, anthropological and literary understanding of the Bible and Palestine’s past must begin with a deconstruction of such phenomena.8

INTERPRETIVE STRATEGIES: EMIC AND ETIC IN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION More often than not, the awareness of ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ perspectives when studying the biblical material for history-writing is absent. Norman K. Gottwald had already noted this crucial methodological strategy in 1979: “Emics” refers to cultural explanations that draw their criteria from the consciousness of the people in the culture being explained, so that emic statements can be verified or falsified according to their correspondence or deviation from the understanding of the cultural actors. “Etics” refers to cultural explanations whose criteria derive from a body of theory and method shared in a community of scientific observers. […] Etic statements cannot be verified or falsified by what cultural actors think is true, but only by their predictive success or failure. “Emics” systematically exclude “etics,” but “etics” makes room for “emics” insofar as what cultural actors think about their action is part of the data to be accounted for in developing a corpus of predictions about lawful social behavior.9

See N. P. Lemche, ‘How Christianity Won the World’, SJOT 23 (2009), 103–121; E. Pfoh, ‘Una deconstrucción del pasado de Israel en el antiguo Oriente: Hacia una nueva historia de la antigua Palestina’, Estudios de Asia y África (in press). 8 Cf. E. Pfoh, The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (CIS; London: Equinox, 2009), 11–68. 9 N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 BCE (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 785 n. 7

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However, the results of the full potentiality of this methodology are seldom witnessed in current treatments of biblical Israel and the history of Palestine.10 It is evident that traditional historical-critical methods are still hegemonic within the field of biblical studies. Yet, from outside this field, an alliance of anthropological and historical perspectives can foster better criteria and results for a sounder understanding of Palestine’s past and biblical traditions. Taking this criteria into account, we may arrange some broad characterisation of the perspectives that the etic and the emic approaches allow: 1) Emic Perspectives 1.1. Literal Readings. The original (historical) context of interpretation of biblical stories is missing, creating thus a modern and essentialist connection between the ancient religious community implicit in the text and the modern and present one. This kind of fundamentalist interpretation is far from being historically critical, meaning that it usually lacks of the analytical methods of history-writing, like a historical understanding of the sources (primary, secondary, etc.) and the context(s) of such sources.11

558. These terms derive from the field of linguistics and were first used in anthropological theoretical thought by M. Harris in his The Nature of Cultural Things (New York: Random House, 1964). 10 A few examples: T. L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite Peoples: From the Written and Archaeological Sources (SHANE, 4; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992); idem, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999); E. A. Knauf, Die Umwelt des Alten Testaments (NSKAT, 29; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1994); N. P. Lemche, Die Vorgeschichte Israels: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des 13. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Biblische Enzyklopädie, 1; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1996); idem, The Israelites in History and Tradition (LAI; Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 1998); M. Liverani, Oltre la Bibbia: Storia antica di Israele (BariRome: Laterza, 2003). 11 Modern examples of this are constituted by W. C. Kaiser, Jr., A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1998); and I. W. Provan, V. Philips Long and Tremper Longman III, A Biblical History of Israel (LAI; Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 2003).

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1.2. Rationalistic Paraphrases. Although the biblical picture is not taken literally into account, a modern sketch is crafted ignoring the original context of the text and its assumed historical-contextual meaning. A final picture, highly dependent on a mix of mythic and historical realities, is preferred instead of recognition of the problematic nature of the biblical stories as historical sources and the scarcity of our historical knowledge on many particular aspects of the history of Palestine. This approach possesses a greater degree of sophistication than the previous; even so, it is still dependent on the biblical testimony. The Bible, then, is not treated as a historical source properly, meaning that it is submitted to a critical historical analysis, but is instead use as a main part of the interpretive method for understanding the past. In the end, it means a scholarly inability to make a distinction between the past as it appears in ancient texts and the past that modern historians attempt to reconstruct.12 A critical methodology would use the ethnographic data to understand the behavioural dynamics within a story, but that would not deem such story’s contents historical because of ‘ethnographic possibility’. 1.3. A Contextual Approach (a): From Within the Text. There is an effort to grasp the intellectual matrix behind ancient texts and especially to perform a ‘deep interpretation’ or a ‘thick description’13 of Cf., e.g., P. McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel (LAI; Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 1999); and K. M. Heffelfinger, ‘“My Father is King”: Chiefly Politics and the Rise and Fall of Abimelech’, JSOT 32 (2009), 277–292. McNutt rationalises the biblical chronological stages of biblical Israel through anthropological models of socio-political organisation, and Heffelfinger uses an anthropological model for understanding a biblical story. None of these approaches deals with historical processes, analysing archaeological and epigraphic data, but with stories which are secondary sources for Iron Age Palestine. 13 See C. Geertz, ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, The Interpretation of Cultures (London: Hutchinson, 1973), 3–30, whose reading of culture as a text could in this sense be fruitful as a path for interpreting biblical stories culturally, that is, as a cultural product whose ultimate meaning is disputed by theological readings from different times and social locations. The historical anthropologist must understand and explain all these different readings socially and historically, which 12

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biblical stories and also to deal with intertextuality. In a certain way, also, this approach deals with the ‘cultural memories’ present in ancient texts, rather than with the historical data we can extract from them.14 A critical interpretation from this perspective must avoid being ethnocentric or anachronistic and, for that matter, religiously-driven but rather ‘religiously-related’. The aim is to discover, to figure out the kind of ancient perception in ancient texts. This perception can be named under the term ‘mythic mind’ and there is much that can be learned from contemporary ethnographic data. In that sense, if we realise that the biblical stories often display a set of mythic and literary patterns to depict a certain reality, past, present or future,15 it is then legitimate to ask how much can we really know about ancient Near Eastern events, independently corroborated, portrayed in the Bible? From this point of view, the event per se is not relevant; it is only significant because it expresses some theological or ideological insight through a mythic depiction of reality. A precious contemporary example of the working of a mythic mind, is the belief by the Orthodox Christians of Axum (Ethiopia) that the Ark of the Covenant is nearby at the cathedral of Holy Mary of Zion, where it is kept out of sight of the people, except for its guardian priest, and also that Jesus and his mother Mary were actually in Ethiopia and that it is possible to see their footsteps on means, then, that the hermeneutical potentialities of a text must be set in the context of the social history of such text; see for a starter J. Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), esp. 1–18. 14 This is especially evident (although implicitly, because the author does not recognise it) in G. Garbini, Scrivere la storia d’Israele. Vicende e memorie ebraiche (Biblioteca di storia e storiografia dei tempi biblici, 15; Brescia: Paideia, 2008). See E. Pfoh, ‘Review of G. Garbini, Scrivere la storia d’Israele’, Palamedes 4 (2009), 191–195. 15 Cf. T. L. Thompson, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (New York: Basic Books, 2005), passim. Also M. Liverani, ‘Leaving by Chariot for the Desert’ and ‘Rib-Adda, Righteous Sufferer’, both in M. Liverani, Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (ed. by Z. Bahrani and M. van de Mieroop; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2004), 85–96 and 97–144.

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stone.16 Nobody there needs scientific proofs regarding the authenticity of the Ark or that particular Jesus tradition; everybody believes that, and so it is. From the native perception of the matter, there is no point in questioning the veracity of this datum. This example provides us a possible avenue for understanding the social dynamics behind ancient texts.17 2) Etic Perspectives 2.1. A Contextual Approach (b): From Outside the Text. Depending on the social, political and intellectual context this approach reads biblical stories as native examples of the production of knowledge and traditions (or ‘cultural memories’) in specific historical contexts. We must then be able to reconstruct ancient contexts of interpretation for the texts to be understood in a proper historical manner.18 See T. Oestigaard, ‘Jesus i Etiopia’, Bergenavisen 09.10.09, 24. See further N. Wyatt, ‘The Mythic Mind’, SJOT 15 (2001), 3–56; idem, ‘The Mythic Mind Revisited: Myth and History, or Myth versus History, a Continuing Problem in Biblical Studies’, SJOT 23 (2008), 161–175. An example dealing with ancient ‘magical societies’, as Israel, is found in F. H. Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel and Its Near Eastern Environment: A Socio-Historical Investigation (JSOTSup, 142; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). See further the wonderful anthropological insight on historical matters (dealing with Captain Cook in Hawaii) in M. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985). 18 Cf. P. R. Davies, Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History – Ancient and Modern (Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 2008). I have also found B. J. Malina’s work (e.g., The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels [London: Routledge, 1996]) very relevant for the kind of anthropological view envisioned here. Even though it is possible to dissent with some of the Context Group’s (of which Malina is a main figure) analyses and generalizations regarding some issues of ‘Mediterranean culture’ (cf., e.g., the anthropological perspective in J. de PinaCabral, ‘The Mediterranean as a Category of Regional Comparison: A Critical View’, Current Anthropology 30 [1989], 399–406), the approach is to be certainly taken into account. See also Destro and Pesce, Antropologia delle origini cristiane. On the anthropology of the Mediterranean, see the recent reviews in D. Albera, A. Blok and C. Bromberger (eds.), L’anthropologie de la Méditerranée / Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose-MMSH, 2001); W. V. Harris (ed.), Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); D. Albera and M. 16 17

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2.2. An Historical Anthropological Perspective. This is a broader approach, a comprehensive perspective that includes the results of archaeology, epigraphy, ethnography and related disciplines for history-writing purposes. Biblical stories are viewed better as the cultural product of a particular society, rather than sources for historical reconstruction, and as a part of a greater scheme of historical processes.19 This is a plea for a critical research program. The key question then is not to see how the ethnographic analogy tells us what one must find but instead how the ethnographic analogy assists the researcher with historical and sociological imagination when handling data from the past.20 From this comprehensive perspective, the social past of an historical entity named Israel in the Iron Age or the evidence of a cult of a deity named Yahweh in antiquity makes little sense if seen in isolation from its broader regional context. It is a history of Palestine or the South Levant that should be pursued, because ‘Israel’ and ‘Yahwism’ are historical phenomena, products of the societies of that corner of the Near East. Tozy (eds.), La Méditerranée des anthropologues. Fractures, filiations, contiguïtés (Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose, 2006). 19 See the approach in J. Elayi and J. Sapin, Beyond the River: New Perspectives on Transeuphratene (JSOTSup, 250; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). Cf. further Pfoh, The Emergence of Israel. 20 Cf. N. P. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy (VTSup, 37; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), 84–244. For example, as R. Kessler affirms (Sozialgeschichte des alten Israel: Eine Einführung [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006], 43): ‘Man wird also nicht direkt die afrikanischen Völker der Nuer, Tiv oder Dinka, die die Völkerkundler im 20. Jh. n. Chr. studiert haben, mit den alten Israeliten und Judäern des 1. Jts. v. Chr. vergleichen. Aber man kann aus dem Studium der rezenten afrikanischen Völker einer Theorie von segmentärer Lineage-Gesellschaft und akephaler Herrschaft bilden’. Kessler refers here specifically to the so-called ‘pre-monarchic period’ of Israelite history, but his statement can be extended to the whole sociopolitical history of Iron Age Palestine. Cf. also K. van der Toorn, ‘Nine Months among the Peasants in the Palestinian Highlands: An Anthropological Perspective on Local Religion in the Early Iron Age’, in W. G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.), Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past. Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 393–410.

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At least five anthropological aspects of Palestine’s past should be developed independent of the Bible’s pictures of Israel’s past, taking contemporary ethnographic data into account together with a proper use of textual and archaeological sources, namely (and without any priority order): 2.2.1. An anthropology of the dynamics of political power, attending to the epigraphic and archaeological remains, which means also an archaeology of power display. The processes of urbanisation and long-distance trade since the beginnings of the Bronze Age produced modifications within Palestine’s societies. The question is what modifications and how. To what extent concepts such as ‘city-state’, ‘tribal state’, ‘ethnic state’, and so on, are useful—it should be noted here that notions of ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ are extremely anachronistic, at least for pre-classical Near Eastern societies and their use should be explicitly justified rather than taken for granted.21 The understanding of the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age should not follow any biblical image of the past, especially on the nature of socio-political developments. Speculations built on cultural evolutionary perspectives have led to understand Saul’s rise to power as resulting in a ‘complex chiefdom’, David’s kingdom as an ‘early state’ and Solomon’s empire as ‘full-blown statehood’; however, these are rationalistic paraphrases that remain unproven by archaeology but also by a critical handling of the ethnographic data used by political anthropologists.22 For the first millennium BCE we must deal with the impact of Neo-Assyrian, NeoBabylonian, Persian and Greco-Roman imperialism in the Levant, not only on a political and economic level but on a religious as well. An emic point of view would look for the 21 Cf. E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); A.-M. Thiesse, La creation des identités nationales: Europe XVIIIe siècle–XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1999). 22 See E. Pfoh, ‘Dealing with Tribes and States in Ancient Palestine: A Critique on the Use of State Formation Theories in the Archaeology of Israel’, SJOT 22 (2008), 86–113; idem, The Emergence of Israel, esp. 69–160.

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PFOH dynamics of power (e.g., kinship and patronage) as present in the biblical stories, but as a cultural reflection on these dynamics, not necessarily as a depiction of historical reality. 2.2.2. An anthropology of Palestine’s ethnicities: How can we know the ethnic affiliations of the South Levant peoples? Without contemporary texts, all we can attempt to do is a well-argued scholarly guess, depending on the archaeological material and ethographic data. We may identify an ethnic difference between a Group A in the Palestinian highlands and Group B in the coastland, but, without evidence of self-perception from these groups, we can hardly tag them with ethnic labels such as ‘Israelites’ or ‘Philistines’ during the early Iron Age. The idea that it is possible to attach ethnic labels to archaeological remains has been seriously undermined in current anthropological and archaeological studies, and it should be also critised as a biblicallydriven interpretation within the field of Syro-Palestinian archaeology.23 Also within this perspective, one must include a sociology of early Judaism, as developed in some recent works.24

Contra, e.g., A. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology; London: Equinox, 2006); see the criticism in E. Pfoh, ‘On Israel’s Ethnogenesis and Historical Method’, HLS 7 (2008), 213–219; idem, The Emergence of Israel, Chapter 5; and N. P. Lemche in this volume. See further the archaeological studies of S. Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997); and T. Oestigaard, Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism: Archaeological Battles over the Bible and Land in Israel and Palestine from 1967–2000 (Gotarc Series C, Nº 67; Gothenburg: Göteborg University, 2007); and the anthropological views in T.H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press, 2nd edn, 2002); and P. Poutignat and J. StreiffFenart, Théories de l’ethnicité, suivi de Les groupes ethniques et leur frontières par Fredrik Barth (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2nd edn, 2008). 24 See D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2007). 23

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2.2.3. A socio-anthropology of Palestine’s religious imagination and practices: What can we know of religious practices and beliefs in ancient Palestine? And how can we know it? The second millennium BCE texts from Ugarit, for instance, can provide us with analogies and a presentation of the Syro-Palestinian pantheon; however, for the Iron Age, our main evidence is archaeological: cult places, epigraphic inscriptions and burials.25 Even so, an anthropological view on religion in the Bible would not take a historical perspective on a religious development as presented in the biblical texts,26 but rather would attend to the worldviews from the pre-Hellenistic periods in the Levant that survived in the biblical stories.27 As we noted, the impact of Near Eastern empires in the region affected also the religious imagination of the peoples, as can be detected, for instance, in some books of the Old Testament. An emic view would attempt an understanding of the interpretive matrix of the religious images and practices that appear represented in

25 The treatment by B. B. Schmidt in his Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition (FAT, 11; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1994), places on a same level of analysis data from archaeological and epigraphic remains from the Near East and biblical texts, which from a methodological point of view has to be objected: biblical texts are culturally dependent on Syro-Palestinian beliefs about the dead, but these texts are secondary reflections, not primary data for the Iron Age. Cf. instead the treatment in O. Keel and Ch. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998 [1992]); and I. Oggiano, Dal terreno al divino: Archeologia del culto nella Palestina del primo millennio (Rome: Carocci, 2005). 26 Contra the general treatment in R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament (2 vols.; OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 1994). See Lemche, The Israelites, 145–48; Pfoh, The Emergence of Israel, 22–24, 60–62. 27 See C. Peri, Il regno del nemico: La morte nella religione di Canaan (Studi Biblici, 140; Brescia: Paideia, 2003). Cf. also H. Niehr, Religionen in Israels Umwelt: Einführung in die nordwestsemitischen Religionen Syrien-Palästinas (KAT, 5; Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1998).

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PFOH the Bible,28 yet we cannot be certain that such images and practices reflect the social world of Iron Age Palestine. Finally, social disciplines can provide interpretive frameworks for textual and archaeological data related to Near Eastern and biblical rituals and the practice of prophecy.29 2.2.4. An anthropology of Palestine’s economics: This represents the tracking of trade or exchange networks and the development of agricultural and pastoralist strategies in the Levant since, at least, the beginnings of the Bronze Age. For the Late Bronze Age there are plenty of studies dealing with classical themes of the anthropology of pre-capitalist societies: gifts, tributes and exchanges.30 In the Iron Age we must deal once again with the impact of the empires, this time on the autochtonous economy of Palestine. Also within this perspective, a re-evaluation of the relevance of the concept of ‘class structure’ for the economics (but also for the politics) of these societies must be undertaken. At this point we may say that the concept could be retained as an etic perspective but not as an emic: we can suggest that a class difference exists between a kinglet, a prince, a priest, etc., and a peasant, because of the access to the means of production, and with them to power; however,

28 See, for instance, M. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and, from a structuralist anthropological perspective, the more comprehensive treatment by H. J. Lundager Jensen, Den fortærende Ild: Strukturelle analyser af narrative og rituelle tekster i Det Gamle Testamente (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2000). 29 On rituals, from a textual point of view, see the approach in S. M. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); on prophecy, see, e.g., R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), and more recently L. L. Grabbe, ‘Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy from an Anthropological Perspective’, in M. Nissinen (ed.), Prophecy in Its Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives (SBLSS, 13; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 13–32, with bibliography. 30 See M. Liverani, Prestige and Interest: International Relations in the Near East, ca. 1600–1100 B.C. (HANES, 1; Padua: Sargon, 1990).

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in societies with no class consciousness and possessing instead hierarchical representations and self-perceptions of themselves,31 the concept of class might lead us to attach modern political and economic power dynamics to Near Eastern societies. 2.2.5. An anthropology of the biblical mythic universe: This represents an attempt to understand the mythic structure (its working) behind biblical stories as part of the SyroPalestinian (and Near Eastern) intellectual world, but also the way in which they were created, trasmitted and received. The creation, transmission and reception of biblical stories is currently being approached by ‘cultural memory’ studies within the field of biblical studies as a new means of interpretation—although the approach in more general historical studies can be traced back at least to the French school of Les Annales in the mid-20th century and previously, of course, to the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbawchs (1877–1945) in the 1920s.32 All these aspects are analytical, they belong to the modern interpreter of ancient social realities. Within these past realities, such aspects are interrelated in a total picture which can hardly be understood from an isolation of each of them. In that way, economics are about goods but also about politics and religion; imperialism is about economy but also about politics and religion; politics are See the description of the religious hierarchy (which to an extent builds on socio-political perceptions of reality) in L. K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994). See also a noted medieval example in G. Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 32 See M. Halbawchs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1925); idem, La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950); J. Le Goff, Histoire et mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). See further, J. Le Goff (dir.), Le nouvelle histoire (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2006 [orig. ed. 1988]), esp. 167–190 (‘L’histoire des mentalités’, by Ph. Ariès), and 307–332 (‘L’histoire de l’imaginaire’, by E. Patlagean). 31

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about power but also about identity, religion and economics, etc.33 This is the kind of issues that an historical anthropology of ancient Palestine has to deal with.

THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF TEXTS AND OF THE INTERPRETERS OF TEXTS Building on the etic perspectives aforementioned, we can deepen our interpretive sociological and anthropological approach by asking questions related to social contexts, audiences/readerships and the transmission of traditions/cultural memories,34 in the past but also in the present. In other words, it represents an attempt to acknowledge and grasp the dynamics of the multiple interpretive contexts of biblical (and para-biblical) texts: 1) The ‘Original’ Interpreters, namely, those societies and communities who produced the biblical text(s) in antiquity. Of course, many biblical traditions come from different periods of the history of the Near East, so we can only date the context of the text’s interpreters.35 Even so, what can we learn of their socio-cultural background by reading the extant biblical texts?36 This means that we should enhance our awareness of the otherness of the biblical data, in spite of its current theological message or Western cultural memories regarding the biblical past. In the Bible we find a world 33 Cf. the perspective in M. Liverani, ‘The Ideology of the Assyrian Empire’, in M. T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (Mesopotamia, 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979), 297–317. 34 Although these terms do not refer to the same thing, they are often understood as synonymous, ‘cultural memory’ being a more sophisticated way of referring to the more old-fashioned ‘tradition’. Cf. Davies, Memories of Ancient Israel, 105–23. 35 See T. L. Thompson, ‘Text, Context and Referent in Israelite Historiography’, in D. V. Edelman (ed.), The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact and Israel’s Past (JSOTSup, 127; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 65–92. 36 Cf. N. P. Lemche, ‘“Because They Have Cast away the Law of the Lord of Hosts”–or: “We and the Rest of the World!”: The Authors Who “Wrote” the Old Testament’, SJOT 17 (2003), 268–290.

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of theological metaphors and myths that has reached our (modern) times and, as such, an anthropological and historical view has to recognise the profane processes that shaped our current view of biblical literature after more than two millennia, which means that we must deal with a second perspective as well: 2) The Received View, namely, the worldview of those societies and communities who understand themselves as inheritors of the message of biblical texts and as an essential continuation of the ‘original’ interpreters; although from a historical point of view they are not: their new historical context—into which every society and community is embedded—has inevitably produced a new interpretation.37 3) The Historiographical Context of Biblical Studies: Usually, and historically, related and/or connected to the (religious) received view, but nowadays more ‘independent’, especially in academic quarters. This view represents a critical reflection on the discourse of biblical studies during the last two hundred years.38 It places the methods developed by biblical scholars in historical perspective. It questions their results and their usefulness. When such methods are proven to be not completely explanatory of the data, new interpretive criteria are to be proposed. This represents an awareness of a sociology of knowledge in biblical studies: why Near Eastern and Biblical research is done and under what circumstances. How knowledge is constructed and produced, and for whom.39 There are Christian and Jewish interpretations of biblical stories and traditions; but also an Israeli and a Palestinian view of Palestine’s past as related to the Bible. Religion and politics appear explicitly interCf. the discussion in B. J. Malina, ‘Interfaith Dialogue: Challenging the Received View’, in P. F. Esler (ed.), Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in Its Social Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 283–295. 38 Cf. K. W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996). Also the criticism in H. Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007). 39 On the sociology of knowledge of Israeli archaeology, see N. Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001). 37

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twined in current non-academic (and at times implicitly in academic) views of Palestine’s past, which, however, produce often a much deeper impact in society than academic views. Also religion, even in more secular realms, such as Western ‘popular culture’, leaves its mark.40 Not to mention the academic, at times apologetic but also often para-religious interest in the Bible, depending whether we look to North American locations or places in Europe or the rest of the world, that calls seriously for a much needed sociology of modern and contemporary biblical scholarship. A critical anthropological approach fosters also a reflexive understanding of our scholarly results. Biblical scholarship has not been very reflexive, in socio-anthropological terms, as a discipline—maybe it is among its more secular practitioners. This current sociological situation has to be consciously recognised as the background of our work and its politics.41 The structural (or symbolic, in a lévi-straussian manner: cf. C. LéviStrauss, ‘The Structural Study of Myth’, Journal of American Folklore 78 [1955], 428–444) appeal of novels and popular films such as The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia or the more messianicapocalyptic films and series Terminator and The Matrix, is only understandable if we attend to the several biblical thematic references, e.g., good vs. evil, fulfilment of a prophecy, the challenge of the chosen one(s), etc., that these products display, often explicitly. Further, on secularism and the Bible, see J. Berlinerblau, The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and R. Boer (ed.), Secularism and Biblical Studies (BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2010). 41 For the case of ‘ancient Israel’, see Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel; M. Prior, The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique (The Biblical Seminar, 48; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); N. Masalha, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel (London: Zed Books, 2007); Oestigaard, Political Archaeology; T. L. Thompson, ‘The Politics of Reading the Bible in Israel’, HLS 7 (2008), 1– 15; idem, ‘Biblical Archaeology and the Politics of Nation Building’, HLS 8 (2009), 133–142; N. Masalha and E. Pfoh (eds.), Reading the Bible in Israel: Dispossessing Archaeology and the Politics of Nation-Building (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press: forthcoming). For a more general approach to the politics of archaeology, see B. G. Trigger, ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’, Man NS 19 (1984), 355–370; P. L. Kohl, ‘Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Construction of Nations and the Recon40

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The historization of biblical stories represents in a way— from an anthropological perspective—a direct colonisation of the intellectual product of an ancient worldview. Biblical scholarship, along with modern views dependent on the theological thinking of Catholicism and Protestantism, claims for itself an ontological recovery based not on an actual recovery of the biblical natives’ worldview, but rather on the rediscovery of a religious essence present in ancient times and reaching our modern times. In this sense, as it happened with Victorian anthropology,42 the interpretation of our biblical natives is telling more about contemporary religious reflections on the ‘biblical history’ than about a historical process in ancient Palestine, not enabling a proper understanding of the natives’ mindset. It is not the rediscovery of the roots of modern values that should be the concern of critical historians of the Bible and of Palestine’s past, but a real discovery of the cultural Other present in biblical texts, something usually denied by ethnocentric interpretations of the Bible. The temporal distance between us and the production of biblical traditions and texts is notably also a cultural distance that can not be bridged through rationalisation or naïve paraphrases but only by means of critical understandings based on data drawn from historical and ethnographic examples. Without such a deconstruction of biblical stories, all we have are foundation stories for our present-day values, ethics, political aims

structions of the Remote Past’, Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998), 223–246. 42 ‘These Victorian anthropologists were men of outstanding ability, wide learning and obvious integrity. If they overemphasized resemblances in custom and belief and paid insufficient attention to diversities, they were investigating a real and not an imaginary problem when they attempted to account for remarkable similarities in societies widely separated in space and time; and much of permanent value has come out of their researches. Nevertheless, it is difficult to read their theoretical constructions today without irritation, and at times we feel embarrassed at what seems complacency’ (Evans-Pritchard, ‘Social Anthropology’, 119). These words by Evans-Pritchard could very well serve to characterise American and European biblical scholarship of the 20th century as it dealt with the society behind the Bible and the history of Palestine.

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and religious imaginations, which serve purposes other than the ones of critical scholarship. Historians of the ancient South Levant must deal as well with the whole spectrum of histories of Israel and Palestine, from the most conservative to the most radically revisionist of the past of the peoples from this part of the world.43 Argument and evidence mark the rules of the historiographic practice. Building our knowledge on these two aspects represents a sound manner of sifting apart those theologically or politically motivated histories from critical ones, not to just ignore them but rather to understand the context and the reason(s) for their production. History-writing meets anthropology not only when we deal with past human realities and their extant cultural productions, but also when we acknowledge the epistemological bases for the production of knowledge of the past out of the extant textual sources. There is good and bad historiography according to Western professional standards; however, when historiographical standards are culturally variable (i.e., non-Western), we must ask for and acknowledge the interpretive contexts of such variant renderings of the past.44 And historians of ancient Palestine should attend also to nonhegemonic renderings of the past: see T. L. Thompson, ‘Hidden Histories and the Problem of Ethnicity in Palestine’, in M. Prior (ed.), Western Scholarship and the History of Palestine (London: Melisende, 1998), 23–39; S. Sand, Comment le peuple juif fut inventé: De la Bible au sionisme (Paris: Fayard, 2008). Sand, in this important book, addresses topics of ‘cultural amnesia’ in reference to the Zionist understanding of the Jewish people’s past. On cultural memory and cultural amnesia, see J. Candau, Anthropologie de la mémoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), esp. Chapter 5. 44 I am thinking, for instance, of strictly orthodox religious Jewish understandings of Israel’s past and present but also of more secular and Zionist ones (cf. Y. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995]; Prior, The Bible and Colonialism, esp. 106–73; Masalha, The Bible and Zionism, esp. 135–211), or of traditional Arab recollections of Palestine’s past as well as personal accounts (see, e.g., K. Sabbagh, Palestine: A Personal History [London: Atlantic Books, 2006]). These variant ‘histories’ are qualitatively different from the Western, modern historical practice, yet they are most valuable as examples of cultural (and political) narrative expressions on the past. On the different criteria for dealing with 43

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To sum up my standing in this programmatic paper: The role of critical historical-anthropological thinking and research in biblical studies is to deal not only with a proper understanding and explanation of the past of Palestine’s societies and their cultural products (in this case, notably the Bible) through sound methodological bases but also to address the epistemological nature of biblical studies and its role in writing critical histories of ancient Palestine, with an awareness of the context for the production, the consumption and the reproduction of such discourses in different social realms. It is then that we will be able to recover, represent and understand the plurality of social manifestations in the ancient Levant, apart from religious, cultural or political distortions and aiming at a general and comprehensive programme of critical history-writing.

the past in the West, see F. Hartog, Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps (Librairie du XXIe Siècle; Paris: Seuil, 2003).

IS SOCIOLOGY ALSO AMONG THE SOCIAL SCIENCES? SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES IN BIBLICAL STUDIES DAVID J. CHALCRAFT 1. IS SOCIOLOGY ALSO A SOCIAL SCIENCE?1 The number of biblical scholars in Hebrew Bible, Qumran and New Testament studies utilising the social sciences2 in their historiIs sociology also a social science? This question is often discussed in the social science literature (including the philosophy of the social sciences) in terms of whether sociology as a discipline operates like a science or whether its methods leave a lot to be desired. Part of the debate will revolve around whether it is deemed appropriate to use natural science techniques to understand human life and culture. A more apologetic stance might be to argue that even the natural sciences are social constructions whose practice does not conform to a scientific ideal. These debates are not now my central concern (see Lazar 1998, Chalmers 1982, Delanty 2005, Fay 1996, Flew 1991, Hughes 1990, Hollis 1994, Root 1993, Trigg 1985). Rather I seek to explore the role of sociology through a concentration on its central problematic. 2 I include among the social sciences, social policy and administration, social geography, economics, politics, psychology, social psychology, evolutionary psychology and branches of the new cognitive sciences. The position of anthropology and of psychoanalysis (given its medical and clinical setting) and various art therapies is less clear as is the place of various forms of theoretical history, but I include the former two and am aware that their practice and findings are of great interest to sociology. For discussions of which disciplines constitute the social sciences and what the relations between sociology and these other social sciences disciplines might be see, Martindale 1961, Bottomore 1987, Goldthorpe 1985, Gordon 1988, Mackenzie 1966, Inkeles 1964, Parsons 1967 and Cavalletto 1

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cal research and exegesis is growing apace, and in some quarters such research has a relatively long history.3 Despite these important contributions and the existence of something of a tradition there is still a need to take stock of the current state of affairs since some fundamental and key questions and problems still remain to be tackled, and as the disciplines continue lately to develop individually and collectively in various ways, new issues suggest themselves. It seems especially urgent to consider whether speaking of ‘the social sciences’ as a whole, or of the ‘social scientific approach’ as such, is to use too broad a brush which has the effect of smoothing out the ontological and epistemological differences that pertain to the individual disciplines that make up the social sciences. It could well be important to bring out what these differences happen to be and to appreciate that particular social sciences, especially sociology, may be committed to a project or agenda that does not sit so very comfortably with the other social science disciplines with which it is so often grouped. From my perspective, the use of sociology in Biblical Studies will be severely curtailed and lead to disappointing results if the role and place of sociology within the social sciences is not properly understood. It is to this end that this essay is addressed.4 2007. Newer developments in evolutionary psychology claim to be fresh approaches and model themselves in opposition to a supposed standard social science model (SSSM) in which psychology and the social sciences share a perspective (Hampton, 2004). 3 This is reflected, for example, in recent SBL events where various social science sessions looked back over the past 40 or 30 years. For example, the anniversary of the publication of Wayne Meeks’ The First Urban Christians was a topic at the last SBL Annual Conference in New Orleans, November 2009. Norman Gottwald’s The Tribes of Yahweh first appeared in 1979. One cannot say that the interest in using the social sciences in Biblical Studies is as rampant within the social sciences themselves, and this behoves someone like myself, who is employed as a professional sociologist, to articulate why such an interest is of importance not only to Biblical Studies but to the advance of sociology as well. In some ways this paper emerges from my search for such justifications. 4 At a minimum it is probably true to say that biblical scholars approaching the use of the social sciences for the first time within the field meet a confusing situation where it is unclear what the differences might

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be between, for example, a cultural anthropological approach and a sociological one, or how a sociological approach might be integrated with a psychological (especially social identity theory) or cognitive science perspective. Again, how the social sciences align with more traditional philological, historical and literary methods in Biblical Studies also needs to be addressed. The otherwise useful reader, Judges and Methods (Yee 1995) is a good case to illustrate my point since it has chapters on feminist, ideological and social scientific approaches (Steinberg 1995), all of which can have a very close relation to sociology, and the social scientific approach described in the book is actually more akin, to my mind, to social and cultural anthropology. Similarly, Robert Wilson’s (1984) Fortress Press guide mixes up sociology and anthropology: the first two chapters and the last chapter talk about sociology and Biblical Studies covering the past and the future, whilst the actual reconstructive work uses an anthropological approach and readers are instructed within it! As if in recognition of this problem Fortress Press published in 1996 a ‘replacement’ volume where Overholt is very clear about the discipline he seeks to promote; however Gene Tucker in the forward speaks of the social sciences, inadvertently making cultural anthropology I suppose synonymous with it! Now it could be said in defence of these books that anthropology is used when discussing sociological questions since anthropology provides the case studies that are comparable since they deal with agricultural or kin based societies (in modernity!). However, at no time are these enquiries placed within a sociological problematic. Often Sociology is represented as a series of competing perspectives (Mayes 1989) rather than as a discipline engaged in the analysis of the rise and nature and futures of modernity. For sure, this is at least an improvement on ‘confusing’ sociology with anthropology and in the SOTS volume of 1989, there are separate essays on Anthropology (Rogerson 1989) and Sociology (Mayes) respectively. Unfortunately, the rest of the volume contains much by way of ‘social world’ analysis with hardly any theory or social scientific conceptualisation at all. My own essay here, to be sure, is to be found in a volume discussing ‘Anthropology and Biblical Studies’ as was a previous essay of mine on Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary sociological approach to ancient Israel (Chalcraft 2004). Finally, many discussions of the social sciences in Biblical Studies do not distinguish them from each other to the confusion of the reader and the failure of sociology—this seems to be the case more in New Testament studies than elsewhere where the phrase ‘social sciences’ seems to roll effortlessly off the tongue (e.g. Elliott 1990, 1993, Osiek 1992, Pilch 2001 and the essays there, Esler 1994, 2005, 2005a; Esler and Hagedorn 1995).

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At the same time, I would not want to offer a conservative and rear-guard action against inter-disciplinary work—indeed the whole project of sociological approaches in Biblical Studies is an interdisciplinary one. I am conscious that there are positions within sociology that see the task to understand late modernity as being best achieved through thinking along ‘post-disciplinary’ lines, or at least in close connection with advanced thinking in all relevant social sciences, to analyse social processes ‘beyond societies’ (Urry 2000, 2007). Generally, inter-disciplinarity is a positive development and I certainly agree that advances in social scientific biblical criticism are not possible without collaborative work. Nonetheless, there are movements afoot in certain branches of the social sciences that posit what seems to be a universal human nature which moreover can be, so they claim, best understood through re-conceptualising sociology and related disciplines on natural science and neoevolutionary principles (Lopreato and Crippen 2002; Barber 2008). These approaches certainly challenge the type of sociology I am seeking to advocate. Being reminded of the sociological enterprise as defined by classical and modernist sociologists will serve to introduce a degree of critical caution with respect to these new developments.

2. SOCIOLOGY UNIQUE AMONGST THE SOCIAL SCIENCES From the perspective of Biblical Studies sociology should be seen as unique among the social sciences. It is unique since it includes the study of ancient biblical social worlds within its historical comparative sociological project.5 The sociological project is to account Contemporary sociology might not be aware of the importance of the ancient world to its theories of society, but such a concern has been obvious to leading sociologists during the classical and modernist periods and there are one or two contemporary sociologists who continue, in their own ways, with this tradition (e.g. Fenn 1992, Stark 1996). It seems to me that contemporary theoretical concern with risk, sect, stratification, trauma, and memory and so on, all need to extend their historical purviews in order to contribute to historical sociology and universal social theory. In these sociological endeavours, ancient biblical social worlds 5

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for the rise, nature and potential futures of modern social and cultural forms. It is concerned with the nature of modernity and its futures.6 Sociology is also unique among the social sciences because

offer a number of case studies and deserve analysis. This analysis needs to be undertaken with the cooperation of Biblical Studies and be seen to be of benefit for Biblical Studies as well, as I believe it is. 6 Harrington (Chapter 1) helpfully distinguishes the following dimensions of modernity from each other: a cultural dimension (decline of religion, autonomous thinking individuals, rise of science, mass culture), a political dimension (state—especially: nation state, civil law, democracy) and a socio-economic dimension (industrialisation and urbanization). When modernity is seen as originating in the industrial and democratic revolutions of the past, its emergence is dated to the late 18th century. When modernity is considered in its more cultural dimensions then modern attitudes can perhaps be traced to different times and places, unassociated with accompanying institutional changes. Since the classical sociologists were writing more or less as contemporaries in the period after the half century, during the 1880’s, 1890’s and the first decades of the 20th century, sociology’s reflections on modernity share similarities with modernism and focus our attention on this period of social and cultural life to understand the sociology they produced. Whilst certain central features of modern society may well be traced back to much earlier periods it is the coming together of a number of factors that gives modernity its character and gives rise to personal, social and cultural phenomena that are in some senses unique. This classical sociological understanding of modernity led to numerous dualistic typologies comparing the modern with an apparent pre-modern. Examples include Durkheim’s distinction between mechanical and organic types of society/solidarity (in his text, The Division of Labour, 1893) and Toennies’ Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft distinction: in both cases the second type represents the modern [and, as postcolonial criticism points out it is the second part of the dualism, the modern, that carries greater moral force as the superior of the two). In recent times these classical dualisms have been criticised on account of the awareness of there being more than one path to modernity or indeed on there being multiple modernities. Moreover, the ethnographic data on which the dualisms depend is highly suspect and the pre-modern is hardly differentiated. For some, the pre-modern is ‘primitive’, whilst for others it is agricultural or feudal and so on. Finally, it is now essential to include in our understandings of modernity, notions of new social forms in moder-

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it recognises the importance of the question of the diverse legacies of the Bible in various (but not all) cultures and societies as a further part of its commitment to understanding the nature of modernity/modernities and for isolating the social variables that contribute to social order and social change. Some of those variables are biblical in origin or rather have been located in a biblical source/tradition by the ‘carriers’ (Weber 1948) and implementers of the ideas and practices. Sociology therefore seeks to promote an empirical Rezeptions- and Wirkungs-geschichte within Biblical Studies, alongside its commitment to an historical comparative sociology of ancient Israel or Early Christianity (see further below).7 Sociology needs the case studies and data that the ancient biblical social world provides to further its analytical aims of understanding the nature of societies, social formations and the dynamics of social life. This is not the case for the other social science disciplines.8 nity which suggest further periodisations into the early modern, the modern, the late modern and even the post-modern. See Lee 2006. 7 A further reason why there is a unity of purpose in sociological approaches to ancient and contemporary biblical social worlds is that it is not methodologically sound to constantly compare the ‘then’ and the ‘now’ in Biblical Studies (which is often the wont) and hence all genuine sociological work is actually universally historically comparative. Approaching historical, sociological reconstruction and performing exegesis on the basis of comparison of past and present needs to not only explore the disconnections between past and present but also be able to articulate the range of social contexts and conditions that may account for similarities and differences between past and present. These similarities between past and present will only become analytically clear if ‘the societies and conditions that exist “in-between” the past and the present’ are also analysed. In other words, all sociological work is ideal typical in nature and ideal types are created to facilitate comparison of historical social forms and not merely to contrast the old and the new. So sociology, while being interested in the contemporary and in the ancient also remains interested in the social formations that are neither ancient nor contemporary. 8 Historical psychoanalysis, however, is one social science discipline that shares this kind of concern. This is evident in work which traces the history of trauma or of pathologies (Frankl 1989). When informed by a sense of historical change and sociological specificity such work is helpful since it helps isolate the social conditions that give rise to particular condi-

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This essay is not the place to explore the origins of the social sciences and the ways in which individual specialisms and disciplines within them emerged and contested the terrain (Mcdonald 1993; Smith 1997; Bainbridge 2003); neither do I wish to engage in a detailed discussion of the similarities and differences between all those disciplines within the social sciences that have proved to be useful to Biblical Studies to date and/or hold out hope for future advances (see Luomanen et al 2007).9 I want to address the problem I have posed by way of articulating as clearly as I can a version of the sociological approach in Biblical Studies which will hopefully serve to at least clarify the role of this social science, and contribute to a much wider and needed debate. If nothing else, such a discussion will help to clear up some of the apparent anomalies of studies that define themselves as social scientific when the actual paradigm or approach utilised is neither social nor scientific (from the perspective of the natural sciences or positivistic social science) or is social but not scientific or scientific but not social as normally defined.10 The type of sociology promoted in this essay does not conform to such positivistic notions of science, nor models itself on the natural sciences: rather, it is a sociology that is humanistic, qualitative and nearer in conception and execution to historical, literary and cultural studies. Hence it is not too much of a problem from my perspective if an approach is ‘social’ but not ‘scientific’; what needs to be resisted are studies that purport to be scientific and are more or less un-social in their approaches. For example, it tions and thereby correct notions of ‘a universal human nature or experience’. 9 It is also important to work out where sociological issues and approaches should be placed within the range or sequence of methods normally recommended to beginning students in Biblical Studies. Further, working out relationships between the various social sciences, and sociology in particular, with other disciplines such as history, literary studies, archaeology and so on is also a pressing concern. 10 For example while psychology definitely models itself upon and conforms to a natural science conception of science it is hardly social from the perspective of sociology. Being scientific, I would venture, is less important for sociology than being concerned with the social.

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is hardly convincing to a sociologist to read of the apparent value of evolutionary psychological and socio-biological approaches to society and social relations when they are presented in the following way: ‘…the stuff of anthropology- the traditions, the myths, the crafts, the language, the rituals- is to me but the froth on the surface. Beneath lie giant themes of humanity that are the same everywhere and that are characteristically male and female. To a Martian, an anthropologist studying the difference between races would seem like a farmer studying the differences between each of the wheat plants in his field. The Martian is much more interested in the typical wheat plant. It is the human universals, not the differences, that are truly intriguing’ (Ridley 1993:266).

On the contrary: It is precisely the differences between societies and within societies that are of amazing and significant concern and require explanation in the light of the shared human condition.11 This chapter views the question of the relation of sociology to the social sciences from the perspective of sociology and seeks to articulate what is unique about a sociological approach in Biblical Studies. This is undertaken to achieve clarity and not to colonise the whole field: it is not that the researches of other social science disciplines (or other sociological approaches per se) are not needed nor that sociology (or my version of it) can answer every question: rather it is to be aware of what a sociological approach and argument might look like in the light of the sociological commitment to the understanding of the rise, nature and futures of modernity (cf. Durkheim 1895).12 Despite the misunderstanding of social science, and the hardly concealed racism and sexism of Ridley’s arguments, this type of treatment is very popular and hence widespread. It seems to appeal to those prejudiced and conservative individuals who want to find scientific arguments for their socially derived prejudices. 12 It is also important to reflect on the fact that it is on account of the use of ‘the social sciences’ in Biblical Studies that the constitution of the social sciences and the relations between the various disciplines that 11

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In what follows, to begin with I explore some points of procedure in the use of sociology in Biblical Studies before concentrating on central features of the sociological imagination.

3. EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES Sociology needs to be distinguished from other social sciences (more than the other social sciences themselves perhaps need to be distinguished from each other once sociology is taken out of the equation) on ontological and epistemological grounds (Blaikie 1993). How a sociologist presumes the way the world works, what it is constituted by and how one might go about coming to knowledge of that world is often very different from how these matters are viewed by practitioners of the other social sciences.13 These differences manifest themselves in various methodological and ethical dimensions. It seems to me that continuing to talk of social science approaches in Biblical Studies, and especially to talk about social science approaches without differentiating the social sciences from each other, is very unhelpful and quite misleading.14 Using the notion of social science in Biblical Studies seems to suggest either a) a commonly are taken to be social sciences become matters of discussion. Whilst one effect of this usage, as I am arguing here, is to potentially introduce confusion about what is specific to each discipline, other effects are to encourage interdisciplinary reflection and ecumenical practice. 13 Different schools of sociology likewise may be differentiated on the grounds if not of ontology then certainly of epistemology. Often these debates are characterised as conflicts between quantitative and qualitative approaches (Bryman 1988), but more recently neo-evolutionary theory has come to exert considerable influence and this approach emphasises the natural science basis of sociological research and hence the debate between it and sociology more generally cannot be subsumed under the quantitative/qualitative distinction. 14 My edited collection, Social Scientific Old Testament Criticism of 1997 more or less had its title dictated by the acceptance of the term at the time. Even though, in the introduction, I tried to make a case for a sociological imagination rooted in the classical tradition I am more convinced now that the social sciences need distinguishing from each other if the sociological approach is to be clearly conceived.

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unity of purpose between all those disciplines that can be called social sciences and/or b) that is possible to be, to paraphrase Karl Marx, a psychologist in the morning, an economist after lunch, and a sociologist in the evening. I would like to argue that these ideas are misleading, unhelpful and in some instances plain wrong. It is important not to mix the social science disciplines up by postulating a unity of purpose that they do not share and it is important to be clear which of the disciplines is being utilised at any one time, appreciating that there are differences between them of which we need to be conscious.15 Even a cursory glance at contemporary publications within Biblical Studies shows that when biblical scholars increasingly use the phrase ‘social science’ in the titles of their dissertations and books it is not clear what it is they have in mind, and this suggests a confusion about the nature of the social sciences and how they are constituted. For example, it might mean that a particular text or event is to be viewed in sequence from the perspective of a range of disciplines. If this is not what is meant and what actually occurs in the work is the use of one rather than another social science to orient the enquiry, why is it that that single social science does not figure in the title: for example, as a psychological or sociological or economic reading or whatever? If sociology is the intellectual point of departure surely it would be better to use the word sociology in the title? Even when a social world is described by reference to its material base, its spatial organisation and its kinship patterns for example, this does not mean that the work is economics, geography and anthropology.16 If it is indeed this, one would want to know 15 This is not to argue that working with more than one social science in approaching specific problems is not possible or that we should not seek out ways of integrating the social sciences where it will lead to analytical and methodological advances. My approach in this essay is to work from the assumption of difference in order then to be clearer about what each social science has to offer; from such a knowledge it might then be possible to pursue integrative work. 16 A similar problem occurs when certain social scientific buzz-words are utilised in titles but where there is no deep discussion of the concepts utilised or any attempt made to place the notion of ‘empire’, ‘shame’, ‘re-

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what the orientating perspective could have been to keep all these interests interacting and moving towards explanation. If the designation stems from the fact that these dimensions of the case were described, we are perhaps even further away from social science and nearer to some attempt to write a total history. All of these dimensions, however, could have been explored from a sociological perspective since the overarching framework could be sociological and the relevant economic, geographical and kinship data treated analytically from the perspective of the sociological questions being asked. Without such analytical direction, I would argue, the study will not advance social science knowledge and theory very far. Herein also lies important differences between sociohistorical work on ancient biblical social worlds and a sociological approach: the former remains at the level of description if the data is not interrogated through the systematic use of sociological ideas and theory. We need to distinguish the social sciences from each other and appreciate potential ontological and epistemological differences. It is important to elevate the analytical point of carrying out the research and this can be done by reference to the vocation and project of the individual social sciences which is most clear in sociology.

4. THE DIFFERENCES MADE BY AND TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCE USED AND THE NEED TO REPORT BACK In assessing anyone’s use of social science, especially of sociology (theory) it is always important to ask whether the findings could have been made without the concepts, ideal types, and theories alluded to or concretely utilised. In other words, do the sociological ideas make any difference to the reconstruction, exegesis or explanations offered in the final analysis? A further question should also be asked and this is how the user of the sociological ideas would now adjust the sociology in the light of the work they have done. The use of sociology in Biblical Studies needs to be a two-way sistance’, ‘space’, ‘body’ or ‘power’ and so on, within a body of theory or within a tradition or debate within the social sciences. See for example (as far as I can tell) Horsley 2010, where ‘resistance’ is hardly theorised.

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street; the use of sociology to study cases in the ancient biblical social worlds should generate data and findings that are of interest to sociology itself, and, if the study has proceeded as it ought, should recommend either confirmation or refinement of those ideas. These findings need to be reported. Even where there are few outlets or opportunities for such reports to be made, and hence there are difficulties in reaching the appropriate audiences I believe it will benefit the sociological research undertaken in Biblical Studies if researchers reflected and wrote as if the case were otherwise and include such reports in their published work. Similarly, whilst it is not feasible to carry out wide scale comparative work in Biblical Studies, where the biblical example is but one case study, it is important for biblical researchers to operate as if they were part of that enterprise: this means that the research can be framed as part of a wider sociological investigation into comparative historical work without the researcher then needing to carry out further case studies in different time periods for which they are not qualified to further extend the findings of the ancient biblical example.

5. THE BODY OF THEORY AND CREATIVITY Not only are the sociological ideas to be reviewed at the end of the study for the way they contribute to a body of theory or the comparative historical sociological investigation of a central analytical question they are also to be imaginatively manipulated and engaged with in the course of the study. Actually, the sociological ideas are to be creatively engaged with from the very beginning of the research (Morris 1977; Law 2004). Selecting appropriate theory is not about taking ‘things ready made from shelves’ and directly testing them against the data, whatever ‘testing’ might mean in this connection. ‘Theory’ can be selected and rejected prior to the interaction with data on ontological and epistemological grounds, or in the light of the debates within the discipline about those ideas. It is always important to place the theory or concept to be used to study ancient biblical social worlds within a body of theory, since to be unaware of that body of theory or to avoid it is to be unable to appreciate the range of issues involved. At worst it means that the biblical scholar is unable to say clearly and convincingly why this particular sociological book or theory is the one that is being utilised rather than another. A good example is provided by the case

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of approaching issues of power in ancient biblical social worlds utilising the work of Foucault (1977, 1979). In order for the significance of Foucault’s approach to emerge it is necessary to appreciate how his approach is radically different from other approaches in sociology. Hence using Foucault involves making a choice between alternative definitions and theories of power. What is important is not so much the need to rehearse all of these differences when reporting research methods and results, but to show that one is conscious of these differences. Moreover, the alternative sociological approaches to power in sociology provide the criticisms that would need to be confronted in the research itself, in the present application of Foucault. Further, and perhaps most daunting to the scholar new to sociology, is the fact that various concepts might be creatively fitted together in some synthesis or adjusted so as to dovetail effectively to proceed with the enquiry. This is something I have tried to do recently (Chalcraft 2010a) in relation to a sociological approach to the book of Chronicles in which I sought to make use of a range of concepts and theoretical ideas found in the sociology of disasters, the sociology of health and illness, and in the sociology of deviance (Cohen 2002). Further, these areas of sociology were brought together in relation to a more general concern with ontological security (Giddens 1990, 1991) in late modernity which is part of a broader concern with the nature of the risk society (Beck 1992, 2002). The latter theoretical concern with late modernity as a risk society, and especially its postulation that previous social forms experienced risk differently provides an attractive point of departure for comparative historical sociological enquiry in which these claims about late modernity could be viewed in a comparative perspective and in which ancient Israel would provide a valuable case study. Overall, these different concepts and theories enabled me to think about narratives and how societal responses to risk, disaster and threats to ontological security become embodied in texts. Such creative advancement, however, is of course hardly possible when the concepts, theories and perspectives depend upon a particular ontology or epistemology—for example, Freudian ontology (causes located within the subconscious) vies with Marxist ontology (causes located within the material base) although even here a form of synthesis for some later theorists is possible (Frankfurt School, the work of the later Parsons—see Cavalleto 2007).

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Similarly it might be difficult to effectively carry through a Weberian and Durkheimian approach to a set of sociological questions. What one might do is first use a Weberian perspective and then a Durkheimian one, but the differences between the approaches will not be settled given the in-commensurate nature of their sociologies (cf. Parsons 1937). Durkheim and Weber tell a different story about the rise of modernity, and about its nature. They give varying degrees of emphasis to the role of human agency and the constraining nature of social structure and are committed to differing sociological methods. If findings have been arrived at through using a research technique that the sociologist believes to be suspect in terms of validity and reliability then any theories or generalisations based on those findings will be difficult for the sociologist to work with. It is often the case that sociologists take this view of the findings of psychological research. We tend to talk of using ‘sociological theory’ in Biblical Studies whereas in fact we are variously making use of methodological approaches, concepts and definitions and utilising our sociological imaginations (Mills 1959). For sure, the role of sociology in Biblical Studies is not to be restricted to ‘theory’. It is true to say that sociology has very few theories if by theory we mean established generalisations or sets of predictive propositions that can be tested against the data (cf. Homans 1987). This latter conception of sociology has probably become popular in Biblical Studies precisely because of sociology being placed among the social sciences rather than scholars appreciating sociology’s humanistic and hermeneutical legacy and nature. I would argue that a non-positivistic approach to sociology and the cultivation of an informed sociological imagination are the best ways forward.

6. THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION AND GROUNDED THEORY There is much talk in Biblical Studies of the use of models and the application of theory but these ways of thinking seem to lead to a far too mechanical understanding of sociology and of sociological

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method. What is more important is learning how to ask sociological questions and learning how to uncover sociological answers: in short, there is a need to develop a sociological imagination (Bauman 1990, Lemert 2008).17 It is not possible to always neatly separate out theory and application of theory in the process of enquiry. It is perhaps important to know a range of sociological ideas and to draw on this knowledge from time to time as the data one is gathering or reading suggests questions, analogies, patterns and so on. It could well be that a better research design for sociological work on biblical materials is that of grounded theory (Robson 2002). This approach works less with theoretical ideas that are to be tested (or of immersion in a body of theory to determine which concepts or generalisations to work with), than with a notion of the gradual emergence of appropriate concepts and theories through a considered and ongoing analysis of data. Here the data itself leads the researcher to theorise and any initial orientations to the data will be continually revised much like the literary critic in hermeneutics will continually travel around the hermeneutical circle. According to Glaser and Strauss (1968)—who invented and labelled this approach—the observer develops sensitizing concepts on the basis of close observation and a constant comparative method. The approach is therefore inductive rather than deductive: it is not the testing of a hypothesis (derived from previous theory) against the data. For example, if we were interested in carrying out sociological research on conceptions of social inequality in ancient biblical social worlds it would be necessary to approach the text with a more or less open mind with regard to the possible range of inequalities that were experienced and recognised at different periods in anThe development of ideal types rather than models (Pilch 2001) would appear to be much better suited to work in Biblical Studies given the importance of questions of history and the need for sophisticated comparative analysis (Chalcraft, 2007b and d; 2010). In order for ideal typical enquiry to advance it will be necessary to distinguish ideal types from more positivistic model building. The differences do not seem to be as yet understood—for example, Aaarde (2001) speaks of ideal type models! 17

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cient Israel, if at all. On the other hand, without any orientating concepts, and indeed without having this question in mind at all, we would be likely to see very little and our reading could be characterised as ‘barking at print’. Already within my statement above about ‘a possible range of inequalities’ is the sociological idea, based on analysis of comparative cases, that inequality is best thought of as multidimensional (Payne 2000). By the same token, the historical consciousness of the sociologist is sufficiently advanced to appreciate that such multi-dimensionality may well be a feature of more open and modern societies: indeed, it is perhaps only with the civil rights movement and the shift from class politics to identity politics, that modern societies and the sociology that analyses modern society, has become attuned to these possibilities. On the other hand, unless the problem is approached from an avowedly Marxist perspective, it is sensible not to approach the analysis of the ancient world with notions of class uppermost. In other words, it is far more methodologically strategic to think in terms of social stratification rather than in terms of class since classes, from many perspectives, is a phenomenon of modern industrial societies and social inequalities revolving around the labour process are best described by different concepts. Therefore with notions of multidimensionality and of social stratification (rather than of a particular dimension of social stratification such as class) as orientating ideas, the researcher can adopt a grounded theory approach to the relevant biblical texts (themselves selected with prior knowledge of their potential for the research enquiry) and hence be open to see how the texts talk about age, gender, ethnicity, disability and economic difference and the extent to which a systematic sense of social inequality can be attributed to the authors and/or whether there was a system of social stratification in operation. In such an approach the text should be able to resist the imposition of theory at the same time as being capable of being read from an interested sociological perspective. Hence we can see that the problem of social inequality in ancient biblical social worlds cannot be approached naively. Sociology agrees with the New Testament scholar R. Bultmann’s view that there is no such thing as pre-suppositionless exegesis. We must not presume that we can empty our heads of all preconceptions and knowledge about the workings of society; this is especially hard for modern interpreters to achieve given the generally better informed

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nature of individuals today, who live, whether they like or not, in a world dominated by social science knowledge. Further, these individuals are trained to be reflexive. It is far better to operate with orientating notions that have a social scientific basis than work willy-nilly with more or less sophisticated notions of common sense, whose basis, moreover, is probably limited to one’s relatively narrow social experience. Therefore, it is advisable to approach the texts with certain social scientific principles in mind. Yet, the text must be given the space to more or less ‘speak for itself’: or rather, for the information it carries about social matters to be allowed to emerge and for generalisation to be formed through engagement with its own distinctions, themes and principles of inter-textuality. It is in this context that the emic/etic distinction can be discussed. This distinction is one familiar in Biblical Studies (Rogerson 1989), and it allows me to bring out some similarities and differences between anthropology and sociology in this regard, since, anthropology often is committed to the emic as a ‘truer’ representation of ethnographic reality, whereas sociology generally considers the etic to convey more comparative historical value. Emic refers to the ways in which the subjects of the research speak about themselves and their worlds; etic accounts, on the other hand, are the accounts written by outsiders about those worlds. Some research will seek to marry as closely as possible the emic and etice.g. having etic accounts checked for accuracy and meaning by the subjects/interviewees, but much sociological research will seek to distance itself for analytic reasons from relying on emic accounts. The reasons for this commitment to etic accounts illustrate some essential points about sociology. Reading the biblical texts with only orientating sociological concepts is meant to allow the texts’ own way of conceptualising reality to emerge. So for example, if the text has a conception of the ‘poor’ that is going to be of significance for research into social stratification in ancient biblical social worlds it is important for the sociological research to learn of its usage and its range. It will be important to be able to apply the term as used by the subjects correctly. This is to respect emic descriptions. If the sociological enquiry is to investigate perceptions of poverty, and is committed to delivering these descriptions in the voices of the subjects (as is an accepted and valuable dimension of sociological research; e.g. Ribbens and Edwards 1998; Elton-Chalcraft 2009) to the academic

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communities unfamiliar with these texts/this culture then the research can consider itself finished when it has achieved these aims. There is little need for further analysis. In other conceptions of sociological purpose such completion on the basis of emic reportage is not sufficient. We can turn to Giddens (1987) for some reasons here. For example, Giddens points out that sociology is a necessary form of study since individuals a) might not be able to give accounts of why they do what they do and how institutions work; b) they cannot always be conscious of the impact of their actions on others and on institutions since once the act is carried out (like the text that has been written) it takes on a life of its own and c) related to this is the phenomena of the unintended consequences of action. So an emic description is limited to its own field of vision. Compared to texts written at other times and places, or by members of social groups that occupy a different social position, the authors of the one text are not party to the views of the other. Only the sociologist, who is in the privileged position of being able to compare and contrast a variety of views from the one society, and from more than one society, is able to generalise. What is more, the sociologist is able to operate a hermeneutic of suspicion which is attuned to the rhetorical and ideological intent of social statements. Finally, the sociologist is able to describe the situation of the subject in ways not open to the subject themselves. However much we might wish to sympathise with the voice of the subject it is always possible that the subject is misinformed about their situation, its causes and its consequences. Nevertheless, the sociologist is still committed to hearing the subject’s voice and in learning how the world is perceived and classified through the texts being approached in a grounded theoretical way. The sociologist is ready to listen and to have their etic generalisations questioned and corrected, and appreciates the truth of Thomas’ dictum that if a situation is defined as real by the participants it is real in its consequences. The actor’s ‘definition of the situation’ provides the contexts and motivations for action (Thomas 1923:41–3). The aim of the Grounded theory approach then is not to see the biblical text as a datum to which established sociological models are to be applied. Rather, the text is seen to be the data which is to be treated as a case study which has an independence so that the data itself serves to interrogate the sociological assumptions, ideas

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and findings that are being utilised to gain deeper access into the social/ideological world of the text. Hence, sociology here is not a positivist enterprise where theories are tested against evidence, but an imaginative enterprise where data and grounded theory mutually interact to the benefit of both. Advances are made when we know how to ask interesting questions, and arriving at these questions is often dependent on immersion in a range of comparative and analogous cases. In the case of Grounded Theory this range of sociological knowledge is used to help orientate the researcher and is a body of work to which that researcher, emerging from immersion in the field (the text), can revisit to help understand the new visions being opened up to him/her.

7. THE SOCIOLOGICAL VOCATION Engaging with sociology in Biblical Studies is not to take from time to time, and often with limited enthusiasm, a sociological vacation, but should involve a commitment to engage with sociology as a vocation. Sociology is not merely a technique or a set of tools that one might take up and put down at random but a series of perspectives that might even add up to a world view. As with all world views, sociology is not without its normative elements which, in this case, involves a commitment to social justice in the guise of the amelioration of social inequalities and the improvement of the quality of life (Phillips 1986). It perhaps needs to be remembered that sociology is the social science that can be best understood as a secular form of religious vocations and of many religious and theological impulses: as sociology disenchanted the world it also disenchanted itself without loosing its sense of prophetic vision and criticism (Rex 1974). I do not think that the history of the other social sciences is of a similar trajectory although one might comment that are there affinities between a theological commitment to ministry and healing, and the vocation of social work, psychiatry (Capps 2008) and the therapeutic arts. One finds in sociology therefore that social reality and the structure of experience and life chances revolve around the variables of inequality. Sociology then is often preoccupied with issues of gender, ethnicity, age, disability and class to extents not characteristic of the other social sciences, and this continues even in late modernity (Walby 2009). Of course it is important to remember that there are differing conceptions of sociology, and these differing conceptions will bring

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sociology either nearer to or further away from other disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. A more positivistic and quantitative sociology may have more affinities with psychology than with anthropology for example, whereas a more humanistic, hermeneutic and qualitative sociology finds affinities with literary, cultural and historical approaches. The sociology promoted in this essay finds good company with comparative history but also with cultural studies in which text and discourse is a central concern. Further, the sociological reading of documents and data is a hermeneutical enterprise that can also benefit from the insights and style of psychoanalysis and elements of critical theory. In many ways I seek to develop a neo-Weberian approach to the study of ancient and modern social worlds, utilising ideal typical procedures and seeking to adapt Weber’s insights in relation to the study of texts and cultural forms. Sociology then is not one of the social sciences if by that inclusion is meant a unity of purpose: rather, sociology is concerned with its own set of issues and questions and these issues and questions are more or less unique to it when compared with the other social sciences. Sociology seeks to utilise insights where relevant from other disciplines, but it is also critical of the methods and hence of the findings of particular social sciences, especially the finds generated by certain forms of psychology and social psychology. I think that to date in Biblical Studies, especially in Old Testament studies, we have been reasonably well served by overviews of the use of sociology which provide valuable descriptions of various perspectives together with a review of work done by biblical scholars in the light of these ideas (e.g. Mayes 1989, 1989a; Esler 2005). What is lacking, in those treatments and overall, I would argue, is an understanding of the sociological project considered as a whole: that is, it is important to appreciate what common intellectual concerns drove the individual work of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Dubois, Gilman and other classical sociologists and the degree to which modern and contemporary sociology also shares these concerns. What were the analytical motivations of the sociologists? I think that once an answer is provided to this question, the sociological endeavour becomes clearer and hence the use of sociology in Biblical Studies, and the sociologist’s interest in ancient

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Biblical social worlds, is made easier to grasp. Appreciating the motivating questions that help to unify the various perspectives in sociology allows for a freer development of the sociological imagination on the part of all practitioners.

8. TWO ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 8.1. The Social as Significant Variable Perhaps the most important component of the sociological imagination is that the social is a variable of highly significant consequence and that it is the understanding of these social facts that constitutes the sociological contribution to the understanding of society and culture in history and in the present. In being committed to this approach the sociologist is not thereby committed to ignoring the life of individuals (and some sociological traditions are more individualistic than others), but does understand that the ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. That is, of course individuals are needed for a society to exist at all—it is individual actors on their own behalf and on behalf of the groups and institutions they represent, that act and discuss and implement—but it is the coming together of individuals, their varying forms of aggregation that creates the social and, as Durkheim taught, the social then becomes a reality not reducible to its individual components, to the psychologies of given individuals.18 There are many studies that are noteworthy in sociology precisely because of the ways in which they demonstrated the significance of the social variable, even in contexts where more psychological considerations and explanations would have appeared to be more telling.19 Sociology has been concerned throughout its history with finding a way of understanding the relation between individual and society and structure and agency, between the micro and the Amongst the classical sociologists Emile Durkheim perhaps gives the most forceful presentation of this case (Durkheim 1895, 1897) but see also Georg Simmel’s essay, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1903). 19 For example, George Brown and Tirril Harris 1978; see the discussion of Brown and Harris in Marshall 1990. 18

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macro. One of the most successful attempts to do so was achieved by Giddens (1984) when he moved from the conundrum of thinking about the dualism between structure and action by constituting the relation between action and structure as a duality. The theory of structuration, as his solution is known, describes how society creates individuals and individuals create society at one and the same time (thus altering notions of agency and power, etc. in the process). Yet the social remains, as is expected in a work of sociology, as having a reality not reducible to individual actions. Individual choices and actions, and indeed the actions of institutions as well, do not always achieve their intentions and the after-effects of their actions—creating new social forms—rumble on to the forth generation and beyond. One might say therefore, that the sociological imagination is very interested in the creative role of individuals and appreciates that social life is impossible without individuals coming together but it also appreciates that there is a disconnection between the actions and beliefs of individuals and the social structures their actions bring about. What is more, once those social structures have emerged and have a permanence the individual encounters a pre-existing set of roles, expectations, cultural practices, narratives and stories, and established social relations and norms that must be connected with. It is this social dimension of experience that sociology is interested in understanding and it appreciates and expects to find patterns of experience across time and space in a society in which social structures and institutions are operative. 8.2. The Nature of Modernity The second essential component of the sociological imagination is closely related to the former and in some ways can be seen as providing the evidence for holding to the importance of the social. This is the sociological concern with the nature of modernity. Sociology arose and became institutionalised as rapid social changes taking place in contemporary culture and society raised intellectual and practical questions about the causes of social change, the causes of modernity, the nature of modernity and how it differed from previous social forms. Sociologists were preoccupied with understanding the present and coming to terms with its felt uniqueness. Understanding the uniqueness was often postulated in relation to social life as existed before the full onset of modernity. Only a few sociologists welcomed modernity: many

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others were concerned with the damaging effect of modernity on social relationships and personality. Sociologists were concerned, should social trends continue, with how modernity might turn out: what were the possible futures of modernity. Hence Weber spoke of disenchantment, Durkheim of anomie, Marx of alienation, Dubois of the problem of the colour line and Gilman of andro-centric culture. This concern with modernity has remained in sociology even as sociologists began to theorise the emergence of new social forms in a postulated late and post-modernity. That is to say, the perceptions of a move to post-modernity have by necessity a perception of the modern against which new developments are measured. Sociology seeks to account for the rise of modern societies, to grasp and describe the key characteristics of modern societies, and to consider the negative and positive impacts of these social forms and their possible futures. This central problematic leads to an approach that continually asks: Under what type of social conditions do certain personal, social and cultural phenomena arise? What are the social impacts upon social relationships, personality and social and cultural change brought about by these emerging phenomena? Are there social and cultural phenomena that only arise during certain phases of social development, especially in modernity, which are dependent on prior and co-dependent social changes? And if so, then in the absence of these preceding and co-dependent variables is it likely that similar social phenomena might have arisen? Modernity was characterised by societies of great complexity evidencing high levels of division of labour, decline of community, secularisation, urbanisation, and capitalist labour relations, intensification of the class struggle, the rise of mass media, the spread of bureaucratic organisations and a range of social and personal problems that followed as a consequence. Modern social forms were unique or at least qualitatively and quantitatively different from previous social forms and their consequences were also unique. The decline of community and its religious supports, the rise of the metropolis and the emphasis on specialisation and education led to the emergence of forms of individualism (and personal anxiety) previously not encountered. The upshot of this concentration on modernity and the postulation of modernity as creating unique social forms is that sociolo-

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gists would be highly sceptical of any historical use of sociology that served to find modern social forms or their corollaries in times and places where those forms were absent. For sociology there needs to be something of a disconnection between the past and the present, between the modern and the pre-modern. Hence a whole range of concepts: division of labour, the city, individualism, the nuclear family, suicide, deviance, professionalisation, bureaucracy, sect, globalisation, risk, capitalism, class and stratification, slavery and so on need to be controlled for their meaning and scope when considered from the perspective of a sociology of modernity or an historical sociological application of them. This is not to say that these phenomena are absent: indeed, one of the concerns of historical sociology in its attempt to better understand the rise and nature of modernity, is precisely to locate which social forms are inherited from the past or indeed (in Weberian ideal typical mode) to appreciate the variety of incarnations of these specific institutions. It is in these ways that sociology avoids being anachronistic. It knows itself to be a (late) modernist discipline concerned with understanding modernity. It has built in to its world view that modernity is different from the past, but it needs to undertake research to refine that understanding and to account for continuity and discontinuity, to account for interweaving, and to explain social order and social change. Disconnections are explored to isolate variables, whilst the connections and the similarities serve to establish a similarity in phenomena that allows for the construction of ideal types in the first place and highlights the need to explain the persistence of these elements of the phenomena. The underlying theoretical point is that only under certain social conditions and in the light of certain types of social arrangements do social phenomena of a certain type occur. Sociology holds that it is not the case that there is ‘nothing new under the sun’ but the continual emergence of new social forms and characters.

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9. IDEAL TYPES, COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL RESEARCH AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF TEXTS: A NEO-WEBERIAN APPROACH The essential components of the sociological imagination, together with the procedural guidelines I have been describing above fit comfortably with, and to a large extent derive from, a neoWeberian approach to ancient and contemporary biblical social worlds. Here, I recap on some basic principles. One way of proceeding sociologically in Biblical Studies is to locate the set of issues we wish to explore into a wider sociological framework and this is achieved by subsuming the issues under a broader enquiry into comparative analysis that addresses questions which are central to the sociological project of accounting for the nature, rise and future of modern social forms. This broader enquiry also locates its concepts and generalisations in a body of theory as described above. For example, as we have already seen above, the sociologist will approach Jewish literature of the exile and Persian period from the perspective of a comparative historical sociological analysis of the nature of risk societies and the manner in which individuals, groups and institutions respond to disasters including defeat, deportation and repatriation. What is required is the formation of ideal types of societal response to risk which includes within its attributes the social contextual elements that link with those responses. Ideal types of such contextual matters and societal responses are required for those ‘critical instances’ from the historical record that can be utilised to answer questions of social change (Watkins 1973; Chalcraft 2007b and d; 2010). This is not of course the only way that a comparative sociological question can be asked, but it is essential to pose a question like this to guide the use of sociology in Biblical Studies. Similarly with respect to the nature of sectarianism in ancient biblical social worlds it is necessary to formulate the historical comparative enterprise in such a way that the existence of sects is not presumed (by definition) to have been a universal phenomena or a social process that leads to similar social and ideological formations in historical epochs where social structure and social processes operate in fundamentally different ways. In other words, there are social contexts where sects cannot and do not emerge. To

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this end, I have proposed that the analysis of sects in ancient Jewish society be seen as part of a wider sociological enquiry (where the Qumran case is a critical instance in the historical comparative enquiry) into the nature of social group formation, with an emphasis on the formation of exclusive social groups (Chalcraft 2010). The sociological task then becomes to explore ideal typically under what social conditions and by what social processes social groups are led to develop exclusive social formations and within that process, under what circumstances are religious beliefs and practices utilised as the means for exclusive group identity. Or, put less negatively: under what circumstances are religious beliefs and practices utilised to provide a sense of belonging and inclusion. One upshot of this type of approach is to appreciate the longer scale and more gradual nature, at times, of the formation of exclusive religious groups (sects) in Second Temple times. In all cases it is essential to ask what the implications were for social relations and for selfunderstanding, identity and character of those forms of exclusive group formation: the social has consequences for the individual and their relations with themselves, the world and others.20 In both of the cases just described the sociological approach is a neo Weberian one: it is Weberian because it understands that comparative historical sociological work can only be effectively undertaken if directed by an analytical question and that that analytical question is normally derived from the position of the interpreter in (late) modernity. The approach is Weberian also on account of its use of ideal typical procedure as the dominant method. This method is to be preferred since it takes seriously historical difference between societies and seeks to account for those differences in terms of social change. In other words, the ideal typical approach seeks to avoid at all costs a common-sensical and uncriti20 Hence if John Collins (2009) accepts (as he seems to do) the Weberian conceptualisation of ‘sect’ it is also necessary to trace through the implication of that approach for the analysis of identity and social relations at Qumran and beyond in Second Temple Judaism. To adopt the definition without the sociological corollaries suggests that the sociological task has not been understood and the contribution of sociology is, once again alas, reduced to taxonomy.

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cal comparison between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’, but worries about all the historical and sociological stages ‘in-between’. One limitation of the Weberian sociological approach to ancient biblical social worlds, and to social and cultural life in general, is its general lack of awareness of the role of texts and the formation of textual communities. In order to correct Weberian sociological theory in this dimension neo-Weberian theory seeks to integrate findings from the linguistic and cultural turns in sociology. To some extent, a linkage can be made between Weberian approaches and the Grounded Theory approach championed by Glaser and Strauss, where the orientating concepts are derived from Weber.21 However, it is also important to broaden the search for other areas of sociology and cultural studies to affect a marriage between neoWeberian sociology and the analysis of narratives, discourses, stories and textual communities. Given the nature of the case, a marriage between sociological accounts of resistance literature and Weberian sociology presents a very interesting situation since Weber’s own privileging of his culture’s question can be seen from this perspective, as born of empire and orientalism. In such situations, perhaps the non-colonial writing of his contemporary and acquaintance, William Dubois, offers a way forward from within classical sociology. It is sensible—given the predominant form of data in the Hebrew Bible and the textual nature of many archaeological data—to try and develop a sociology of texts and of textual communities (Fairclough 1992; Smith 1993, 1998; Boje 2008; Czarniawska 2004). The cultural and linguistic turns in sociology also help us to appreciate that sociology can see itself as a form of ‘creative writing’ and that sociological texts, not least the classical sociological texts (especially those of Weber and Dubois), need to be approached from textual, literary and hermeneutical perspectives (Chalcraft 1994, 2008).

Weber’s commitment to Verstehen is sufficient to locate his sociological approach within the trajectory of the interpretative tradition into which the scholars we have mentioned above—Glaser and Strauss, William Thomas—can also be placed. 21

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10. FINALLY… SOCIOLOGY AND RECEPTION HISTORY OF THE BIBLE I want to argue that the growing interest in the cultural reception of the Bible, the Bible in the cultural memory of nations and regions, and the Rezeptionsgeschichte and Wirkungsgeschichte approaches—as well as being of interest sociologically as an index of changing fashions within Biblical Studies itself (caused by social change and the rise of the social sciences)—are in fact sociological approaches or at least can be accommodated within sociology. And I think they can be accommodated more easily within sociology than perhaps some other paradigms. For example, an historical approach to the Hebrew Bible and its social worlds is dedicated to assessing evidence to arrive at the historical Israel or at least at the historical circumstances relevant to the creation of those texts in which an historical/biblical Israel is projected. The task of sociology is different since it constantly keeps in mind its concern with the nature of modernity and its continuities and discontinuities with past social and cultural forms, and past social ideas and material objects. Since, as I have argued, sociology is concerned with the nature of the interweaving of past and present in the understanding of modernity and hence with the legacies of the Bible in the modern world (together with the disconnections) it is already engaged in reception history as part of its investigations, and these investigations are a continuation of research into the ancient biblical social worlds and their texts. In all cases sociology works to understand the operating of textual communities and the transmission and reception, use and abuse of biblical ideas. Unlike history and anthropology therefore the very project of sociology involves it logically in reception history and it is also able to continue with its method developed in the analysis of ancient societies. The one thing, however, that sociology would insist upon is an empirical dimension, wherever possible, to the reception histories: it will not be satisfied with inter-textual relations divorced from social location or from the agents who carry the transmission, interpretation and dissemination of the Bible into various social and cultural forms. Hence in order to understand how biblical texts are used in cultural and social production sociology needs to observe and analyse the processes of discussion and meaning creation within a range of social groups working in specific social spheres,

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the processes of negotiation and control over the meaning and use of texts that goes on between people within particular institutional, public and private settings. This requires sociological analysis from ethnographies of small gatherings to the ideological state apparatus (Althusser 2008) itself, as well as utilising the cultural sociology of the circulation and meaning of cultural/material objects (Chalcraft 2009; Lash and Lury 2007; Urry 2007). Findings in the ethnographic examination of textual practice are then useful in the generation of ideal types for the conducting of comparative work and the generation of social theorising in relation to ancient and pre-modern biblical social worlds. Hence there is a continuity of method and purpose and a mutually beneficial sharing of data and findings between the analyses of ancient, premodern and of modern biblical social worlds. Reception history of the Bible therefore is a branch of historical sociology. I do not think that the same sympathetic affinity of sociology with reception history will be found as consistently among the other social sciences. Overall, sociology offers much to the various dimensions of research that currently attracts biblical scholars.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aaarde, Andries van 2001 Fatherless in Galilee: Jesus as Child of God (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International). Althusser, Louis 2008 “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)”, in L. Althusser, On Ideology (London: Verso), 1–60. Bainbridge, W. S. 2003 “The Future in the Social Sciences”, Futures 35, 633– 650. Barber, Nigel 2008 The Myth of Culture: Why We Need a Genuine Natural Science of Societies (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Bauman, Z. 1990 Thinking Sociologically (Oxford: Blackwell).

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The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage). “The Terrorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited”, Theory, Culture and Society 19/4, 39–55.

Blaikie, Norman 1993 Approaches to Social Enquiry (Cambridge: Polity Press). Boje, David M. 2008 Storytelling Organisations (London: Sage). Bottomore, Tom 1987 Sociology: A Guide to Problems and Literature (London: Allen and Unwin). Brown G. and Harris, T. 1978 The Social Origins of Depression (London: Tavistock). Bryman, Alan 1988 Quantity and Quality in Social Research (London: Unwin Hyman). Capps, D. 2008 Jesus the Village Psychiatrist (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press). Cavalletto, George 2007 Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide: Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias (Basingstoke: Ashgate). Chalcraft, David J. 1990 “Deviance and Legitimate Action in the Book of Judges”, in D. J. A Clines et al (eds.), The Bible in Three Dimensions, (JSOTSup, 87; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press), 177–201. 1994 “Bringing the Text Back In: On Ways of Reading the Iron Cage Metaphor in the Two Editions of the Protestant Ethic”, in L. Ray, and M. Reed (eds.) Organizing Modernity: New Weberian Perspectives on Work, Organization and Society (London: Routledge), 16–45. 1997 Social Scientific Old Testament Criticism: A Sheffield Reader (The Biblical Seminar, 47; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).

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“Max Weber on the Watchtower. On the Prophetic Use of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 102 in ‘Politics as a Vocation’”, in C. Rowland and J. Barton (eds.), Apocalyptic in History and Tradition (JSPSup, 43; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press), 253–270. “Comparative Sociology on Israel: Herbert Spencer’s Contribution”, in L. Lawrence and M. Aguilar (eds.), Anthropology and Biblical Studies: Avenues of Research (Leiden: Deo Publishing), 29–45. “Introduction: Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances? Some Critical Sociological Reflections”, in D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (BibleWorld; London: Equinox), 2–23. “The Development of Weber’s Sociology of Sects: Encouraging a New Fascination”, in D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (BibleWorld; London: Equinox), 26–51. “Weber’s Treatment of Sects in Ancient Judaism: The Pharisees and the Essenes”, in D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (BibleWorld; London: Equinox), 52–73. “Towards a Weberian Sociology of the Qumran Sects”, in D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (BibleWorld; London: Equinox), 74–105. “Why Hermeneutics, the Text (s) and the Biography of the Work Matter in Max Weber Studies”, in D. J. Chalcraft, F. Howell and M. Lopez-Menendez (eds.), Max Weber Matters: Interweaving Past and Present (Basingstoke: Ashgate), 17–40. “Towards a Sociology of Bible Promise Box Use”, in C. Evans and D. Zacharias (eds.), Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artefact and Canon (London: T&T Clark/Continuum), 280–297. (in press) “Is a Comparative historical sociology of (ancient Jewish) Sects Possible?”, in S. Stern (ed.), Sectarianism in Jewish History (Leiden: E.J. Brill). (forthcoming) “Sociology and the Book of Chronicles”, in D. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi (eds.), What is Authoritative for Chronicles? (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns).

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Chalmers, A. F. 1982 What is this Thing Called Science? (2nd edn; Milton Keynes: Open University Press). Cohen, Stanley 2002 Folk Devils and Moral Panics (3rd edn; London: Routledge). Collins, John 2009 Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Czarniawska, B. 2004 Narratives in Social Science Research (London: Sage). Delanty, G. 2005 Social Science: Philosophical and Methodological Foundations (2nd edn; Milton Keynes: Open University Press). Durkheim, Emile 1893 The Division of Labour (Basingstoke: Macmillan). 1895 The Rules of Sociological Method (Basingstoke: Macmillan). 1897 Suicide: A Sociological Study (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Elliott, John H. 1990 A Home for the Homeless: A Social Scientific Criticism of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy (Augsburg: Fortress Press). 1993 Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament (London: SPCK). Elton-Chalcraft, Sally 2009 It’s not just about Black and White, Miss: Children’s Awareness of Race (Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books). Esler, Philip F. 1994 The First Christians in Their Social Worlds: Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation (London: Routledge). 2005 (ed.), Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in its Social Context (London. SCM Press). 2005a “Social Scientific Models in Biblical Interpretation”, in P. F. Esler (ed.), Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in its Social Context (London: SCM Press), 3–14.

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Esler, Philip F. and Hagedorn, Anselm C. 2005 “Social Scientific Analysis of the Old Testament: A History and an Overview”, in P. F. Esler (ed.) Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in its Social Context (London: SCM Press), 15–32. Fairclough, Norman 1992 Discourse and Social Change (Oxford: Polity Press). Fay, Brian 1996 Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science (Oxford: Blackwell). Fenn, Richard 1992 The Death of Herod: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Flew, Antony 1991 Thinking about Social Thinking (2nd edn; London: Fontana Press). Foucault, Michel 1977 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Hammondsworth: Penguin). 1979 The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality 1 (Hammondsworth: Penguin). Frankl, George 1989 The Social History of the Unconscious (London: Open Gate Press). Giddens, Anthony 1984 The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press). 1987 Social Theory and Modern Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press). 1990 1991

The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press). Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. L. 1967 The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago: Aldine Press).

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Goldthorpe, J. E. 1985 An Introduction to Sociology (3rd edn; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gordon, Milton M. 1988 The Scope of Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gottwald, Norman. K. 1979 The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 BCE (London: SCM Press). Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. 1983 Ethnography: Principles in Practice (London: Routledge). Hampton, Simon Jonathan 2004 “The Instinct Debate and the Standard Social Science Model”, Sexualities, Evolution and Gender 6/1, 15–44. Harrington, Austin 2005 (ed.) Modern Social Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hollis, Martin 1994 The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Homans, George 1987 “Behaviourism and After”, in A. Giddens and J. Turner (eds.), Social Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press), 58– 81. Horsley, Richard A. 2010 Revolt of the Scribes: Resistance and Apocalyptic Origins (Augsburg: Fortress Press). Hughes, John 1990 The Philosophy of Social Research (2nd edn; London: Longman). Inkeles, Alex 1964 What is Sociology? An Introduction to the Discipline and Profession (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall). Kille, D. Andrew 2001 Psychological Biblical Criticism (Augsburg: Fortress Press).

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Lash, S. and Lury, C. 2007 Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things (Cambridge: Polity Press). Law, John 2004 After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (London: Routledge). Lawrence, Louise 2005 Reading with Anthropology. Exhibiting Aspects of New Testament Religion (Exeter: Paternoster). Lazar, David 1998 “Selected Issues in the Philosophy of Social Science”, in C. Seale (ed.), Researching Society and Culture (London: Sage), 7–22. Lee, R. M. L. 2006 “Reinventing Modernity. Reflexive Modernization vs. Liquid Modernity vs. Multiple Modernities”, European Journal of Social Theory 9/3, 355–368. Lemert, Charles 2008 Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life (4th edn; Rowman and Littlefield). Lopreato, J. and Crippen, T. 2002 Crisis in Sociology: The Need for Darwin (New Brunswick: Transaction). Luomanen, P., Pyysiainen, I. and Uro, R. 2007 (eds.) Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science (Leiden: E.J. Brill). MacKenzie, Norman (ed.) 1966 A Guide to the Social Sciences (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Marshall, Gordon 1990 In Praise of Sociology (London: Unwin Hyman). Martindale, Don 1961 The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

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Mayes, A. D. H. 1989 The Old Testament in Sociological Perspective (London: Harper Collins). 1989a “Sociology and the Old Testament”, in R. E. Clements (ed.), The World of Ancient Israel: Anthropological, Sociological and Political Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 39–63. McDonald, Lynn 1993 The Early Origins of the Social Sciences (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press). Meeks, Wayne 1983 The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press). Mills, C. W. 1959 The Sociological Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Morris, Monica B. 1977 An Excursion into Creative Sociology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Osiek, C. 1992 What Are They Saying about the Social Setting of the New Testament (Mahweh: Paulist Press). Overholt, T. 1996 Cultural Anthropology and the Old Testament (Augsburg: Fortress Press). Parsons, Talcott 1937 The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe: The Free Press). 1966 Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall). 1967 “Unity and Diversity in the Modern Intellectual Disciplines: the Role of the Social Sciences”, in T. Parsons, Sociological Theory and Modern Society (New York: The Free Press), 166–191. Payne, Geoff (ed.) 2000 Social Divisions (Basingstoke: Palgrave).

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Phillips, Derek 1986 Towards a Just Social Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Pilch, John J. (ed.) 2001 Social Scientific Models for Interpreting the Bible: Essays by the Context Group in Honor of Bruce J. Malina (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Rex, John 1974 Sociology and the Demystification of the Modern World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Ribbens, J. and Edwards, R. (eds.) 1998 Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Public Knowledge and Private Lives (London: Sage). Ridley, Matt 1993 The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (Hammondsworth: Penguin). Robson, Colin 2002 Real World Research. A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers (2nd edn; Oxford: Blackwell). Rogerson, J. W. 1989 “Anthropology and the Old Testament”, in R. E. Clements (ed.), The World of Ancient Israel. Anthropological, Sociological and Political Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 17–37. Root, Michael 1993 Philosophy of Social Science: The Methods, Ideals and Politics of Social Enquiry (Oxford: Blackwell). Rosenau, Pauline Marie 1992 Postmodernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Simmel, Georg 1903 “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, in G. Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms. Selected Writings (edited and with an Introduction by Donald N. Levine; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 324–339.

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Smith, Dorothy E. 1993 Texts, Facts and Femininity (London: Routledge). 1998 Writing the Social: Critique, Theory and Investigations (Toronto: Toronto University Press). Smith, Roger 1997 The Fontana History of the Human Sciences (London: Fontana). Stark, Rodney 1996 The Rise of Christianity (London: Harper Collins). Steinberg, N. 1995 “Social Scientific Criticism: Judges 9 and Issues of Kinship”, in G. Yee (ed.), Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (Augsburg: Fortress Press), 45–65. Strauss, Anselm L. 1987 Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Strauss, Anselm and Corbin, Juliet 1994 “Grounded Theory Methodology: An Overview”, in N. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (London: Sage), 273–285. Thomas, W. I. 1923 The Unadjusted Girl (Boston: Little Brown). Titscher, Stefan et al. (eds.) 2000 Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis (London: Sage). Toennies, Ferdinand 1882 Community and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Trigg, Roger 1985 Understanding Social Science (Oxford: Blackwell). Urry, John 2000 Beyond Societies (London: Routledge). 2007 Mobilities (London. Routledge). Walby, Sylvia 2009 Globalisation and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities (London: Sage).

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Watkins, J. W. N. 1973 “Ideal Types and Historical Explanation”, in A. Ryan (ed.), The Philosophy of Social Explanation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 82–104. Wilson, Robert R. 1984 Sociological Approaches to the Old Testament (Augsburg: Fortress Press). Weber, Max 1948 From Max Weber (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). 1952 Ancient Judaism (Glencoe: The Free Press). 1968 Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press). 1985 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tuebingen: Morh-Siebeck). Yee, Gale 1995 Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (Augsburg: Fortress Press).

MODES OF RELIGION: AN ALTERNATIVE TO ‘POPULAR/OFFICIAL’ RELIGION ANNE KATRINE DE HEMMER GUDME With this article I wish to propose an alternative to the dichotomy ‘popular’ and ‘official’ religion in Biblical studies, where ‘popular’ religion, ‘folk’ religion, ‘family’ religion, and the like are described as direct oppositions to or different from so called ‘official’ religion.1 ‘Popular’ religion, to pick the most common term among Author’s note: This article was first presented at the annual EABS meeting in Lincoln, UK, in 2009 as part of the session ‘Anthropology and the Bible’ and again in a slightly altered version at the annual meeting in the OTSEM network in Göttingen, Germany, in 2009. The present version is revised and slightly expanded. I would like to thank the participants in both sessions for useful feedback. Special thanks go to my respondent Dr. Martin Hallaschka and to Emanuel Pfoh without whom neither the session nor this volume would have come into being. 1 For an attempt to define ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion in religious studies in general see the programmatic introduction and conclusion by P. H. Vrijhof in Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies (edited by Pieter Hendrik Vrijhof and Jacques Wardenburg; The Hague, Paris, New York: University of Utrecht, Mouton Publishers, 1979); for a definition, or lack thereof, of ‘popular’ religion in Biblical scholarship, see Jacques Berlinerblau, ‘The “Popular Religion” Paradigm in Old Testament Research: A Sociological Critique’, JSOT 60 (1993), 3– 26. In an excellent volume edited by Saul M. Olyan and John Bodel, Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), the terms ‘household’ and/or ‘family’ religion are proposed as alternatives to ‘popular’ religion: ‘The term [family religion], used with increasing frequency in scholarship, competes with other contemporary scholarly terms such as popular religion, domestic cult, household religion, and individual piety to describe a constellation of religious practices not primarily associated with the sanctuaries and ideologies of offi-

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many, is usually understood to be the kind of religious practices that are either disapproved of or simply overlooked, consciously or unconsciously, by the authors of the Hebrew Bible. ‘Official’ religion on the other hand is often, more or less tacitly, assumed to be represented by the Hebrew Bible. I shall return to the disadvantages of this dichotomy and the assumptions it rests on below, but first I shall introduce what I would like to put in their stead, namely the modes of religion, an analytical typology developed by Stanley K. Stowers.2 I am going to outline two basic modes of religion here: 1) the religion of the everyday social exchange and 2) the religion of the literatre cultural producer. I will also discuss an overlay of the first mode, which is the religion of the state-sponsored temples and sanctuaries. The religion of everyday social exchange is based on a certain understanding of ‘supernatural’ beings, such as gods, demons and ghosts of the dead.3 In this mode of religion, religious practices and ritual actions are social actions directed towards gods and similar beings, who are perceived as person-like agents and interested parties in a system of reciprocal exchange.4 As person-like agents, percial cult’ (Saul M. Olyan, ‘Family Religion in Israel and the Wider Levant of the First Millennium BCE’, Olyan and Bodel, Household and Family Religion, 113–126, quote p. 113). 2 S. K. Stowers, ‘The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings Versus the Religion of Meanings, Essences and Textual Mysteries’, in J. Knust and Zsuzsanna Varhelyi (eds.), Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice: Images, Acts, Meanings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). The modes of religion developed by Stanley K. Stowers should not be confused with the modes of religiosity developed by Harvey Whitehouse, see Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek, Cal.: AltaMira Press, 2004). 3 In the following I will refer to them simply as ‘gods’. For a good and very brief introduction to the contribution of cognitive science to the study of religion and a description of human concepts of ‘supernatural agents’, see Justin L. Barrett, ‘Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4/1 (2000), 29–34. 4 Stowers, ‘The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings’. Cf. McCauley and Lawson’s description of ritual acts as ordinary actions that

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sons with some very special and unusual abilities but persons nonetheless, the gods have human-like minds in that they have beliefs and desires, preferences and personalities and it is possible to interact with them socially as one would with a person. These inferences about gods are the sense behind practices such as prayer, vow-making, oath-taking, divination and practices of social reciprocity such as sacrifices and offerings. These religious practices mirror social actions in that they are intended to motivate another’s actions or to change their disposition; gods can be petitioned, calmed, called upon to guarantee an oath or consulted about the future. The social context and the disposition and locality of the god in question and not highly rationalized belief systems, determine which actions are the appropriate ones to take; sometimes giving a normal gift is the right thing to do whereas a so called expiatory sacrifice or a display of humility can be necessary at other times. The most important kind of practices to this mode of religion is a modification of everyday practices, such as gift-giving, food-preparation, feasting, honouring and petitioning, and the know-how that is required is the kind of everyday knowledge and experience one needs to get on in the social world. The gods are, as mentioned above, considered interested parties and active participants in a system of social interaction and not as legislators and judges. Therefore it is a misunderstanding to construe the practices of this mode of religion as ‘theologies’ or rationalized thought systems that are thought to provide the ‘meaning’ for the practices performed. This is not to say, however, that these practices are meaningless. They are both meaningful and instrumental, but they are not dependent on any kind of official or systematized body of meaning.5 manipulate entities (and situations) in a world entertained within a conceptual scheme that includes culturally postulated superhuman agents: E. T. Lawson and R. N. McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 5ff. 5 Stowers, ‘The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings’; for an interesting elaboration on the relationship between ‘meaning’ and ritual actions, see C. Humphrey and J. Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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In this mode of religion of everyday social exchange uncertainty is an important factor: will I recover from this illness? Will my wife conceive? Will it rain? By making conditional vows or bringing sacrifices or saying prayers human beings attempt to control events and limit the uncertainties of everyday life by persuading the gods to act in one’s favour in the natural world or at least to ensure that they are on one’s side.6 This exchange of gifts or services is characterised by reciprocity which, unlike commercial exchange where things carry an exact exchange-value, a price, is based on voluntary requital. This means that the ‘rules’ of exchange are fuzzy: the time that passes between gift and counter-gift varies and there is no exact equivalence between exchanged commodities. Therefore, where commercial exchange merely creates a temporary relationship between objects, reciprocity creates a lasting relationship between people or between people and gods.7 The cult of the state-sponsored temples and sanctuaries is built upon and mirrors the religious mode of everyday social exchange only on a larger scale and in a more institutionalized form. This mode of religion does not require a literate specialist although a literate specialist can often be found in connection with its institutions. Ritual experts and ritual norms and conventions appear in both modes. The religion of everyday social exchange does not need the elaboration constituted by state-sponsored temples and sanctuaries and one could have the former without the latter. However, the religion of the state-sponsored temples and sanctuaries do not arise without the religion of everyday social exchange. One could say that the state-sponsored cult forms an overlay of the religious mode of everyday social exchange.

J. L. Barrett and E. T. Lawson, ‘Ritual Intuitions: Cognitive Contributions to Judgements of Ritual Efficacy’, Journal of Cognition and Culture 1/2 (2001), 183–201. 7 Stowers, ‘The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings’; Richard Seaford, ‘Introduction’, in C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (eds.), Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–11. 6

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The second mode of religion is the religion of the literate cultural producer. Whereas the religion of everyday social exchange is concerned with the life and welfare of the family, clan and friends, the health of children and animals and good crops, the religion of the literate cultural producer is concerned with products of the mind, correct beliefs, the true nature of things and with ascribing meanings to practices. The religion of the literate cultural producer or specialist bound as it is to literacy and textualization works towards a fixed text, a limited set of interpretations and a correct body of meanings.8 The literate cultural producers are at any given time in any given society a very small minority. As Philip R. Davies points out: ‘Even in modern societies with 90 percent literacy, fewer than 1 percent write books’.9 The percentage can only be assumed to be smaller in so-called pre-modern societies, where literacy is considerably less widespread. In monarchic Israel and Judah the literate cultural producers were most probably made up by small groups centred on the palace-temple and later on in the second temple period on the temple and administrative centres.10 We can not rule out the existence of more entrepreneurial versions of literate cultural producers, who were further removed from the centres of political power and who would produce what we usually refer to as ‘oppositional’ literature. However, due to obvious reasons of economic necessity if they did exist they must have been even fewer than the more established group of literate cultural producers. The religion of the literate cultural producer is to some extent ‘parasitic’ on the religion of everyday social exchange in that the specialists seek to harmonize and systematize this mode of religion and often criticize its practices claiming that the textually based knowledge of the specialist reveals the ‘true meaning’ of

Stowers, ‘The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings’. P. R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (LAI; London: SPCK, 1998), 82. 10 See Davies, Scribes and Schools, Chapters 4 and 5, and L. L. Grabbe, Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to Yavneh (London: Routledge: 2000), Chapter 8. 8 9

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these chiefly local, particular and mundane practices.11 Ritual practices are open to interpretations and ascriptions of meaning, ‘vulnerable’, because they do not carry or encode their own meaning.12 Because ritual actions mirror ordinary social actions they are usually intelligible, but because their objective is to bring about what Barrett and Lawson calls “non-natural consequences”, such as striking a clay pot in order to bring rain, they are also somehow removed from everyday acts whose objective it is to bring about natural consequences, such as striking a clay pot in order to break it.13 This, however, does not mean that ritual actions are not thought to be efficacious or instrumental. They only seem non-instrumental, because unlike mundane actions, where an action can be deduced into an almost unending hierarchy of actions and sub actions with corresponding goals and sub goals, in a ritual action the connection between action and goal stops at a much higher descriptive level: the mundane action of going to a restaurant for dinner has as its overall goal to have food prepared and served for you against payment. This action consists of a long list of sub actions such as getting to the restaurant on time, ordering, paying and each of these sub actions are intended to achieve a sub goal such as getting a table, getting the food you want and so on. In ritual on the other hand, the major goal can not be divided further: the goal of a baptism ritual is to baptize a baby, and the ritual act itself can not be divided in to smaller intentional units. A baptism is a baptism, no more, no less.14 According to Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw it is this closed and stipulated character of ritual actions that makes them seem to have an independent and objective existence that calls for interpretation. Ritual actions appear to the ritual actor 11 Stowers, ‘The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings’; for a concrete example of literate cultural producer’s criticism of religious practices, see D. Ullucci, The End of Animal Sacrifice (Brown University Dissertation 2009 [unpublished]), especially Chapter 3, and D. Ullucci, ‘Contesting the Meaning of Sacrifice’, in Knust and Varhelyi (eds.), Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice (forthcoming). 12 Ullucci, The End of Animal Sacrifice, 5–6. 13 Barrett and Lawson, ‘Ritual Intuitions’. 14 P. Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1994), 185ff.

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and observer alike to be stipulated, ready-made, object-like and irreducible entities and just like a painting or an artefact they invite interpretation.15 This is one explanation for why ritual actions are so apt to attract ascribed meanings and interpretations. Nancy Jay puts it as follows: ‘The meaning is not already there in the action, like the gin is in the bottle, in such a way that you can get it out, unadulterated, by performing certain operations on the action. For meaning is not a simple and direct product of action itself, but of reflection upon it. And the act of reflection is always another act, socially situated in its own way’.16 Thus with the religion of everyday social exchange and the religion of the literate cultural producer we are dealing with fundamentally different sets of practices: Practices of social interaction with the gods, perceived as person-like agents, and the practice of systematizing, textualizing and determining the meaning of these practices. Here it is important to keep in mind that the literate cultural producers, although they tend to target the practices of the religious mode of everyday social exchange, most likely are participants in both modes of religion and thus are performers of both sets of practices. The literate cultural producer operates in the cultural field of literate exchange and competes with other cultural producers in this field over cultural or symbolic capital.17 In this competitive social arena the struggle is over the right to define; to discern between correct interpretations and false interpretations and to separate ‘true’ religion from ‘false’ religion. Consequently, in this field ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘true’ and ‘false’ are predicates that are distributed relatively, since all participants in the field will claim their right to define truth against their opponents’ misconceptions. Every competitor will insist on his views as orthodox against the others’ C. Humphrey and J. Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 211ff. 16 N. Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 8. 17 Ullucci, The End of Animal Sacrifice, 4–5—see note 7 and 8 for Ullucci’s adaption of Pierre Bourdieu’s model of symbolic capital and social competition. 15

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‘heresies’.18 The paradox of this competition is that the only criterion of access to the field is the objective fact of creating effects within it. Therefore by deeming an opponent’s view as ‘heretic’ and false, one automatically allows this opponent to enter the field. As Pierre Bourdieu puts it: ‘polemics imply a form of recognition’.19 As mentioned above, the analytical typology of modes of religion focuses on practices and therefore it does not ask ‘whom?’ but rather ‘what?’ What practices are being performed? And basically this typology discerns between two sets of practices; the practice of social interaction with gods and the practice that goes on in the cultural field of literate exchange. Since the religious modes of the literate cultural producer and everyday social exchange and the latter’s overlay, the religion of state-sponsored temples and sanctuaries, to some extent seem to form a binary, it is tempting to abandon them as just another variety in the endless line of varieties of the theme ‘popular’ versus ‘official’ religion. I would like to stress, however, that this is not the case. The literate cultural producers do not equal ‘official’ or ‘elite’, although, as mentioned above, most of the practitioners of the religious mode of the literate cultural producers probably do belong to the elite, and the religious mode of everyday social exchange does not equal ‘popular’ or ‘mass’. At Pierre Bourdieu based his model of the interrelationship between orthodoxy and heterodoxy on societies in which one group actually did dominate the others within the cultural field: ‘Because religion, like all symbolic systems, is predisposed to fulfil a function of association and disassociation or better of distinction, a system of practices and beliefs is made to appear as magic or sorcery, an inferior religion, whenever it occupies a dominated position in the structure of relations of symbolic power, that is, in the system of relations between the systems of practices and beliefs belonging to a determined social formation’ (P. Bourdieu, ‘Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field’, Comparative Social Research 13 [1991], 1–44, quote p. 12) Nevertheless, the concept of competition within the field is equally valid in a society, where there is no dominating group. The point is that all competitors will claim the right to define truth, whether they have the actual ability to dominate or not. 19 P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (edited and introduced by Randal Johnson; Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 42. 18

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least not in the sense of ‘mass’ as non-elite. Rather, the practices of the religious mode of everyday social exchange are performed by everyone—slave and king alike—and also as mentioned above by the literate cultural producers. I shall return to this below. Now I would like to return to the problems caused by a dichotomy like ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion: When working with a binary pair like ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion a mutually opposed and antagonistic relationship between two monolithic entities that are most often thought to belong to different ends of the social spectre is assumed: ‘official’ religion is thought to be the religion of the literate elite, the wealthy and powerful upper-class, and ‘popular’ religion is thought to be the religion of the illiterate, the unprivileged, the oppressed and the powerless.20 Jacques Berlinerblau, who has been an active participant in the scholarly debate on ‘popular’ and ‘official’ religion in recent years, is aware of these difficulties and he tries to take them into account e.g. by replacing ‘popular’ religion with ‘popular religious groups’ to underline the diversity of this pole of the binary.21 Berlinerblau is also aware of the undesirability of presenting ‘popular’ and ‘official’ religion as antagonistic and as each other’s opposites and stresses the need for a relational approach that takes into account the interaction between groups that share a common social space.22 Nevertheless these assumptions of class difference, opposition and antagonism make their way back in and are reflected in Berlinerblau’s identification of the ‘Popular Religious Groups’ in ancient Israel as ‘Baalists, women

20 Berlinerblau, ‘Max Weber’s Useful Ambiguities and the Problem of Defining “Popular Religion”’, JAAR 69/3 (2001), 605–626. These assumptions are reflected in W. G. Dever’s list of binary pairs such as Literate/Popular, Mythology/Magic, Theology/Cult and Intellectual/Emotive to describe ‘State Religion’ and ‘Folk Religion’ respectively, in his Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 5–6. 21 Berlinerblau, ‘The “Popular Religion” Paradigm in Old Testament Research’, 18. 22 Berlinerblau, ‘The “Popular Religion” Paradigm in Old Testament Research’, 8–9.

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and the poor’ and as groups that are ‘denigrated by the authors of the Old Testament’.23 Naturally, the assumption of ‘popular’ and ‘official’ religion as two opposite and antagonistic entities belonging to different social layers is deeply dependent on the scholar’s perception of the Hebrew Bible text. By identifying ‘popular’ religion as groups “denigrated” by the authors of the Hebrew Bible we automatically assume that their views are synonymous with ‘official’ religion.24 The question is whether this is a correct assumption. Karel van der Toorn recommends the term ‘family religion’ instead of ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion, saying: ‘While such a distinction may be appropriate when applied to religions with an established body of doctrine, adherence to which is the hallmark of orthodoxy, it is of little use when we are dealing with religions that have no dogmatics. Both the Old Babylonian and the Early Israelite religion belong

23 Jacques Berlinerblau, The Vow and the “Popular Religious Groups” of Ancient Israel: A Philological Sociological Inquiry (JSOTSup, 210; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 33ff.; Berlinerblau, ‘The “Popular Religion” Paradigm in Old Testament Research’, 18. John S. Holladay, Jr. attempts to overcome these difficulties in a similar manner by referring to ‘nonconformist worship’ and ‘established worship’, but he recreates the dichotomy when he specifies the practitioners of ‘nonconformist worship’ as ‘women, “unclean” individuals, resident aliens, or the like’, in ‘Religion in Israel and Judah Under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach’, in P. D. Miller, Jr., P. D. Hanson and S. D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 249–299. 24 Berlinerblau does realize the difficulties of identifying ‘official’ religion within the Hebrew Bible: ‘I forwarded the possibility that Israelite “official religion” and the “official” Yahwism described in the Bible may not be synonyms. If this is the case, then scholars need to exert great caution in using biblical verses as means of gaining insight into “official religion”’ (‘Preliminary Remarks for the Sociological Study of Israelite “Official Religion”’, in R. Chazan, W. W. Hallo and L. H. Schiffman [eds.], Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999], 153–170, quote p. 165). However, this reservation does not influence his earlier work, such as The Vow and the “Popular Religious Groups” of Ancient Israel, published in 1993.

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to this class—as do most ancient religions’.25 Along the same lines Carol Meyer states: ‘Contrary to the perspective of the Hebrew Bible and of most of its interpreters, for much if not all of the period of the Hebrew Bible there was no commonly accepted cultic norm or praxis’.26 I wholeheartedly agree with these assessments. What we have in the Hebrew Bible is not two different sets of religious practices to be defined as ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion. We have the product of one set of religious practices, namely that of the literate cultural producers, in which the practices of the religious mode of everyday social exchange are presented to some extent to further the literate cultural producers in their mutual struggle to get the upper hand in their cultural field.27 We should not take the literate cultural producers’ word for it, when they claim to be the true religion or to promote their ascription of meanings to mundane religious practices; after all, this is only to be expected according to the rules of engagement in their cultural field. Van der Toorn goes on to say that rather than operating with the dichotomy ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion in the study of Near Eastern religions we should describe the internal religious diversity by its social setting, such as family/state and urban/rural.28 But if 25 K. van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life (SHANE, 7; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 2. 26 C. Meyers, Household and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 13. 27 Cf. Meyers, who argues against the trend in modern studies of religion that ‘tend to equate religion with theology’, Household and Holiness, 5. 28 Van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel, 2. In his 2004 article, ‘Religious Practices of the Individual and Family’, van der Toorn says ‘The religion of the individual and family functions within, and presupposes, the wider context of official religion. Also, its practices are not mere gestures, but are informed by notions and ideas adopted from the doctrines of the reigning religion’ (in S. I. Johnston [ed.], Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide [Cambridge, Ma. & London: The Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 423–429, quote p. 423). Unfortunately, van der Toorn does not elaborate on the dynamics of this interrelationship between ‘official’ and ‘family’ religion. For a critique of the urbanrural opposition in societies in the Levant in the first Millennium, see J. D. Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit

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we acknowledge that in Ancient Israel there was no such thing as an ‘official’ religion, in that there was no official or canonized body of religious beliefs and practices, and that the Hebrew Bible itself is not synonymous with religious practices, but is the product of the religious practices of the literate cultural producers, then a question presents itself: is the social setting really indicating a substantial difference in religious practices? I would argue that the practices of the religious mode of everyday social exchange remain basically the same even if they are performed by persons coming from different ends of the social spectrum. The geographic locus of the practices may vary from the house to the family tomb to the local or state-sponsored regional sanctuary, but the religious mode that these practices belong to does not; slave and king alike have houses and households and family tombs and sanctuaries to visit and worship at.29 A king may be able to bring extravagant gifts to the sanctuary—just think of King Keret, who promises to give large quantities of gold and silver to Athirat if he can take the lovely Huray as his wife—whereas his subjects have fewer financial means, but regardless of the quality and relative value of the gift the practice of giving it remains the same.30 I would like to illustrate this point with an example: Jer. 7:16–20 and 44:15–19, 25 in which the prophet Jeremiah rebukes the people of Judah and later the refugees in Egypt for worshipping the Queen of Heaven are often mentioned as an example of so called ‘popular’ religion, that is religious practices that are

and the Ancient Near East (SAHL, 2; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), Chapter 6. 29 For the different loci of family religion see Olyan, ‘Family Religion in Israel and the Wider Levant’. 30 For Keret’s vow see T. W. Cartledge, Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 108–111. The ritual laws in Leviticus have sacrificial animals to fit every budget, see J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: The Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1991), 167.

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scorned by the authors of the Hebrew Bible.31 In Jer. 44:17, 21 we get an interesting but sometimes overlooked piece of information: In verse 17 the Judeans in Egypt answer Jeremiah defiantly and say: ‘Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem’. And in verse 21 Jeremiah echoes this when he refers to ‘you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials, and the people of the land’. The practitioners of the ‘popular’ religion described in Jer. 44 are not only women and the poor, but the entire people or at least representatives from all social layers of the people, including kings and officials.32 According to the analytical typology presented above we have in Jer. 7 and 44 a representation of religious practices belonging to the mode of everyday social exchange, performed by members of the elite and non-elite alike, that are critiqued by a practitioner of the religious mode of the literate cultural producer.33 The notion that the Yahwism, or Yahwisms, promoted by the authors of the Hebrew Bible does not correspond with the actual religious practices of ancient Israel is neither new nor rare.34 There31 i.e. S. Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in SixthCentury Judah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 5–35; Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 190. 32 M. Smith, ‘The Veracity of Ezekiel, the Sins of Manasseh, and Jeremiah 44’, ZAW 87/1 (1975), 11–16. 33 Susan Ackerman points out that the rituals mentioned in Jeremiah 7 and 44, such as burning incense, bringing sacrifices and pouring out libations, are central not only to ancient Israelite household religion but to ancient Israelite religion in general as well as to all ancient Near Eastern worship (‘Household Religion, Family Religion, and Women’s Religion in Ancient Israel’ in Olyan and Bodel [eds.], Household and Family Religion, 127–158, particularly 143ff.) A high level of continuity between household religion and official religion is also supported by archaeological evidence, see Olyan, ‘Family Religion in Israel and the Wider Levant’, 113–126. 34 i.e. Dever: ‘Nevertheless popular religion may be somewhat misleading, since we do not actually know how widespread or popular this alternate vision of Israelite religion actually was. Did it appeal only to “the uneducated, the lower classes, the rustics, the unsophisticated,” as Acker-

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fore I propose that we take the consequences of this insight and cease working with categories that are not helpful. Instead of looking for a ‘popular’ religion that is popular only in the sense that it was the norm rather than the exception and instead of taking an ‘official’ religion for granted that was not official because it was the norm only for a very small group of people that did not have the ability to implement it in practice, I suggest that we abandon this binary pair and its related binary pairs altogether, and instead focus on practices and how they link together. This can be achieved by applying the analytical typology of modes of religion as outlined above.

man phrases the question? Or was such popular religion, far from being an aberrant minority version of official Yahwism, the actual religion of Israel – the norm, rather than the later Deuteronomistic version?’ (‘The Silence of the Text: An Archaeological Commentary on 2 Kings 23’, in M. D. Coogan and J. C. Exum [eds.], Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994], 143–168, quote 159–160) or Rainer Albertz’s definition of official religion: ‘The term “official” must not be misunderstood as the religion that is valid for the whole society, but only what claims to be or become valid for it’ (‘Family Religion in Ancient Israel and its Surroundings’, in Olyan and Bodel [eds.], Household and Family Religion, 89–122, quote p. 92).

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AVRAHAM FAUST, ISRAEL’S ETHNOGENESIS, AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY NIELS PETER LEMCHE Reading Avraham Faust’s recent book on Israel’s Ethnogenesis,1 reminds me of the old saying about the staff sergeant who never said anything positive to his soldiers. His captain took him aside and told him to change his manners: You must also say something to encourage them! After the next manoeuvre, the sergeant said good bye to his soldiers in this way: Nice of you to come. What you did was awful (well, he used a more military like expression), and it is nice of you to go home again. Praise-blame-praise! Faust intended by submitting his archaeological data to a social-anthropological control to create an image of early Israel in the process of becoming a ‘nation.’ Faust does not use that term but it is actually what he intended to demonstrate: the existence of a nation—he uses ‘ethnicity’—in central Palestine during the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Transition. The building blocks are meat consumption, pottery—decorated as well as imported—the fourroom house, circumcision, the egalitarian ethos, the ethnic borders between the Israelites and the Philistines, and Israelite selfidentification. He extensively discusses the importance of the Merneptah stele and Israel’s place in a world filled with Canaanites and Philistines.

1 A. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006).

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It is nice of Faust to make extensive use of social anthropology. In spite of a belated introduction of this enormous field of study in monographs on the Hebrew Bible from the last twentyfive years of the 20th century, most notably by Norman Gottwald, and this speaker,2 it is impossible to say that we have had a huge following. In general history, we talk about a period of sociological historical research that was dominant in the same period, but little happened within our field. Scholars have continued, and mostly continue with textual and historical studies which, from a purely historical point of view could be considered very primitive, and when sociological and anthropological theory was introduced, it often happened without regard for their standing within their own field. Just to mention a few examples: When preparing for my Early Israel from 1985 (Faust continuously refers to it as Ancient Israel, which was published in 19883—an understandable lapse of mind, although not very reassuring), I found it strange that no scholars in Old Testament studies ever referred to the technically most important element of the traditional family system in traditional societies, the lineage, although social-anthropological literature is constantly using this term. On the other hand, references to clans have been abundant, although a clan is not a lineage, as I explained back in 1985.4 That nobody ever referred to the system of patronage is less remarkable, as it is a much more elusive phenomenon, although politically far more important in traditional societies. Not much, however, is written about it, as patronage even in its commonplace meaning—excluding the criminal extensions in modern times—is not much talked about by the members of patronage groups displaying a clear conscience of omertà, the duty to remain

N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 BCE (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979); N. P. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies in the Israelite Society before the Monarchy (VTSup, 37; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985). 3 Cf. N. P. Lemche, Ancient Israel: A New History of Israelite Society (The Biblical Seminar, 5; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988). 4 Early Israel, 231–44: ‘The Exogamous Clan and Tribal Organization’. 2

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silent.5 The Old Testament, however, is permeated by patronage ideology; I only have to mention its covenant ideology, and the concept of ‫ ֶחסֶד‬, ‘grace,’ or much better ‘loyalty,’ i.e., the loyalty between patron and client. That Yahweh’s Luca Brasi, his hitman, is mentioned in Ex. 23:20–26 is common place, or should be.6 The issue of ethnicity provides another example of the neglect of biblical scholars when it comes to anthropological matters. Before 1985, the concept was hardly ever mentioned—not to say understood—and Fredrik Barth’s seminal introduction to the volume he published on Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) was unknown among biblical scholars.7 At this point Faust is to be recommended for the weight he puts on this concept and also for giving full credits to Fredrik Barth’s contribution. Another matter, however, is if he really understands Barth’s definition. I very much doubt it, as his agenda is totally in opposition to Barth’s definition of ethnicity: Let me quote from my The Israelites in History and Tradition: ‘According to Barth, ethnicity is a social way of organizing cultural difference. He says that ethnicity basically consists of two main elements, on the one hand a social group, and on the other a cultural unit. However, since both may develop independently, there is

I have referred to the concept of patronage in several publications, including ‘From Patronage Society to Patronage Society,’ in V. Fritz and P. R. Davies (eds.), The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States (JSOTSup, 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 106–120; ‘Justice in Western Asia in Antiquity, or: Why No Laws Were Needed!’ Chicago Kent Law Review 70 (1995), 1695–1716; ‘Kings and Clients: On the Loyalty between the Ruler and the Ruled in Ancient “Israel”’, in D. A. Knight (ed.), Ethics and Politics in the Hebrew Bible (Semeia, 66; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 119–132, but see now E. Pfoh, The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (CIS; London: Equinox, 2009), Chapter 4: ‘An Historical-Anthropological Approach,’ 113–60. 6 Luca Brasi, a character from Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969). On Exodus 23:20–26 cf. my The Old Testament between Theology and History: A Critical Survey (Louisvilly, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 192. 7 F. Barth, ‘Introduction’, in Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969), 9–37. 5

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no necessary connection between a certain culture and a certain group of people. The relations are dynamic and always changing’. Or simply: You are the person you think you are, and other people identify you as such.8 Boundary maintenance, which is a key subject in Faust’s discussion of ethnicity,9 is of extreme importance in Barth’s definition of ethnicity, but if you look closer at it, it might be a mental border rather than a physical one, and has to do with the system of ascription. A member of an ethic group makes his own boundaries, and other people make similar boundaries. It can be a rather dynamic phenomenon, as already mentioned, it is dynamic and always changing. Now Faust’s study has to do with archaeology and ethnicity, as he tries to change Barth’s definition of ethnicity into something useable for archaeology, meaning that you should be able to trace ethnicity in the material remains. Let it be stressed from the beginning, Barth’s definition of ethnicity as a social way of organizing cultural difference does not exclude material remains but its continuation says that cultural remains may present one angle on the question of ethnicity, people’s self-ascription another. This means that people considering themselves as belonging to different ethnic groups may share a common material culture. In this way, it should not be impossible to describe a material culture as a distinct phenomenon. We have been used to this in European archaeology for (I am tempted to say) centuries: Thus, to present an example, the Ertebølle culture: a Mesolithic material culture which existed between c. 5300 BC and 3950 BCE, and is named after a village in northern Jutland which superceded the Kongemose culture (c. 6000 BC–5200 BCA), which again superceded the Maglemose (or Maglemosian) culture lasting from ca. 7500 BCE–6000 BCE, and so on.10 Nobody will ascribe ethnic differences to these cultures, as they were certainly not lim8 N. P. Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (LAI; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 16. 9 Referred to in his index as ‘Boundary Maintenance,’ Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 285. 10 References to these ‘cultures’ can easily be found on the internet. For a recent authoritative description, see J. Jensen, Danmarks Oldtid: Stenalder 13.000–2.000 f.Kr. (København: Gyldendal, 2001).

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ited to Denmark but spread out over Scandinavia and Northern Europe. We may talk about distinctive material cultures but know nothing about how people in the Netherlands related ethnically to people living on the island of Rügen in the Baltic, or Scania in Sweden, all places where this material culture has been found. Another example taken not only from material culture, but from material culture linked with religious beliefs would be the case of the single grave people which was formerly supposed to have arrived in Northern Europe (and Denmark where the phenomenon was first identified) between 2800 and 2400 BCE. The style of burials changed from multiple burials in one grave to a single one. This change of burial types was formerly explained by referring to ethnic differences between the people who preferred common graves and a new immigrant group preferring single burials, thus in Johannes Brønsted, Danmark Oldtid.11 Brønsted’s three volumes were simply the standard reference in the 20th century to Danish archaeology and to a standard never found in any description of Palestinian archaeology.12 However, when it was substituted by the likewise authoritative Danmarks Oldtid by Jørgen Jensen, the idea of ethnic change was substituted by a theory of an internal religious development reflecting also social progress, including a new individualistic family structure.13 Material culture reflects material culture. It is as simple as this. Without any further evidence in the form of written sources, we are at loss when trying to identify anything but a material culture. Faust definitely knows this because his thesis is totally dependent on the existence of another source which in his eyes provides an ethnic identification of the material culture which he preJ. Brønsted, Danmark Oldtid (København: Gyldendal, 1938–40 [2nd edn 1957–60]), vol. I, 250–65. 12 It includes three massive volumes of about 1200 pages, written by Johannes Brønsted the director of the National Museum in Copenhagen (1890–1965). 13 Danmarks Oldtid, in four volumes expanded to c. 2000 pages. The period is described in the first volume, Stenalder 13.000–2.000 f.Kr., 458– 503. J. Jensen (1936–2008) was also director of the National Museum in Copenhagen. 11

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sents, the literature of the Old Testament. Here anthropology is of little help, at least at the beginning of the study of the integration of biblical documents and archaeological artefacts. Any such procedure must begin, not with anthropological analysis and Fredrik Bart and his colleagues; it must begin with ‘Droysen’ and the analysis of the documents in question. I put Droysen in quotation marks, using him as a symbol of the orientation towards the text of the Old Testament which must in one way or the other precede any use of this text in a discussion of history and religion. Here Faust’s lack of interest in the text of the Old Testament is devastating for his own subject which is to prove the existence of biblical Israel in the archaeological remains. What he presents is more a caricature of good old biblical archaeology displaying all the pitfalls of this type of a Bible and spade approach. He never comes to grips with any modern theory of the documents which he uses as the basis of his archaeological, and for that matter sociological analysis of the material remains. He makes the simple assumption that information included in biblical literature is simply referring to the time which he assumes it is referring to such as Israel’s hoary past. The literature of the Old Testament is not an archaeological artefact. Neither do we possess any edition or fragment of any biblical texts which goes back to the Iron Age I, the period of Israel’s ethnogenesis, as seen by Faust. As a physical fact, the literature of the Old Testament is no earlier than the 1st century BCE. It might be older, and probably is (the existence of multiple traditions of biblical manuscripts already among the Dead Sea Scrolls indicates a certain time of transmission), but this must rely among other things on historical analyses, and on memories. The Old Testament will not help us to understand a material culture which precedes it by almost a millennium; it is a testimony to the perception of the world shared by its authors and the community for whom they wrote. By applying the Old Testament in this very naïve fashion as it happens in Faust’s book about Israelite origins, Faust simply destroys any chance of getting closer to the people who created his material culture. This material culture should be studied on its own behalf, and here many disciplines might be of a help: Cognitive interpretation of archaeology, processual and post-processual, and post-post (add as you wish) theory, you name it. But there is no easy way to integrate into such an analysis of material remains the

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testimony of a literature which might—as I already said—be a thousand years later. Faust’s only response to this is to compare single elements included in the biblical narrative to single elements of his so-called Israelite material culture. This is absolutely similar to the methodology of Albright and his students, and no better than that, although Faust towards the end mentions Albright with respect.14 Already in his lecture at the IOSOT congress in Edinburgh in 1974, Norman Gottwald warned against the procedure so common among biblically oriented historians to concentrate on the idiosyncratic elements of a certain culture and trace it back to the origins of this culture.15 Faust’s procedure is rich in such domain assumptions. He isolates a number of elements current among later Jews and assumes in advance that there is an ethnic continuity—if not identity—between later day Jews of the Persian through Roman Period (and beyond?) and the people living in the central part of Palestine in the Late Bronze Iron Age transition. One such example is circumcision.16 Now I would like any defendant of Faust’s position to produce an Israelite man from the said period who is definitely circumcised. Of course he cannot, as skeleton remains will have no information bearing on this little problem. As a matter of fact, we do not know if it was the habit of those times. It certainly was at a later date, when the literature of the Old Testament was put together, but it is no more than an assumption that it existed among the inhabitants of the Palestinian mountains a thousand years before. The case of pork consumption is different, as the remains of the Early Iron cuisine show a very restricted consumption of pork among the villagers.17 This might be a cultural trait that has ethnic consequences. Menus have since eternity created such distinctions and still do. Why are the French referred to as ‘frogs’? And the association between Germans and sausages is renown: we say in Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 233. N. K. Gottwald, ‘Domain Assumptions and Societal Models in the Study of Pre-Monarchic Israel’, in J. A. Emerton (ed.), IOSOT Congress Volume – Edinburgh 1974 (VTSup, 28; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 80–100. 16 Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 85–90. 17 Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 35–40. 14 15

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Danish ‘pølsetysker’ meaning ‘sausage German.’ However, to explain the origins of such distinctions as part of a nation’s ethnogenesis is probably premature, as we may have little idea of how such differences arose. As to the pig and consumption of pigs among the mountaineers the easiest explanation is probably linked to the deforestation of the mountains of Palestine. Pigs love woodland. Without woods there would be no wild boars, and without wild boars there would be no tamed pigs. Wild boars are fairly robust animals who can survive a Palestinian winter even in the mountains. Tamed pigs, on the other hand, will have problems (although they can easily return to the status of a wild boar, as we sometimes see in modern agricultural societies). Pigs are in many ways luxury animals, as they can only be used for meat production. They can not be left in the open without shelters, fences and supervision (or they will slip away). They cannot be used in any other capacity like cows and oxen, they cannot carry burdens (or will not accept any), and they cannot graze on freeland. So in a deforested mountain area as found in Palestine in the Iron Age, there would be little space for the breeding of pigs, and definitely no economy to support such a luxury production. So now we are in a situation where we have to choose between the chicken and the egg: Did people avoid pig consumption because it was forbidden to them for religious reasons, or because of the status of their habitat, pared with economical considerations and lack of superregional trade? Well, our text—the OT—has one answer, but it is still a thousand years later and reflecting ideas belonging to a much later period. Other explanations such as health considerations are really not worth discussing. If that had been decisive, we may ask why Italy, Spain and Greece having a climate not very dissimilar from the Palestinian one, continue to enjoy their pork chops? One part of Faust’s discussion of ethnicity is simply hilarious, when he equates ethnicity with statehood. Thus he concludes this discussion with the following sentence: “We are left to conclude that ethnicity results, one way or the other, from statehood. This is not to say that a certain group must live within the physical

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boundaries of a state in order to have ethnic identity. It must, however, exist within the orbit of a state.”18 He mentions case studies from the Andes Mountains—the Incas—and from Malaya. This is strange. It would have been easier for him to take the modern Israel as a primary example: Ethnicity in modern Israel! Probably scores of ethnicities present, and crisscrossing between religious expressions of ethnicity and secular ones, including secular as well as religious Russians hardly able to speak a word of Hebrew, and not forgetting the issue of the Arab speaking minority—soon perhaps a majority, but again subdivided into a number of groupings. Any study of a modern multi-cultural western state will only confirm this impression. However, Faust’s decision to place ethnicity as a phenomenon within the context of a state may say something about how useful the concept is. Preparing for the book that ended as The Israelites in History and Tradition, I ran across an anthropological study that simply questioned the usefulness of the concept as such: if it explains everything, it explains nothing was the argument, and I am increasingly ready to accept this verdict.19 Looking into the discussion of ethnicity, we see it used in so many different contexts that it really explains nothing. Why does Faust, then, relate the existence of ethnicity with the presence of states? Because his definition of ethnicity is really only another way to express nationality (not that he is by force right even if so). The rise of nationalism had much to do with the disappearance of the old patronage state embodied in the persons of kings and rulers, and the appearance of people’s republics. It was a way to express what Faust probably calls ‘ethnicity’ in a changing context when the content of the new states of Europe was not yet defined. Here the involvement of the whole population in warfare as happened in Napoleon’s time created a fertile soil for such ‘nationalistic’ ideas, and it is hardly a coincidence that it is possible to pinpoint the date of the appearance of European nationalism to the time between 1805 and 1809. When the French entered Vienna in 1805, they and especially their emperor was re18 19

1996).

Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 137. M. Banks, Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions (London: Routledge,

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ceived enthusiastically by the local population, in spite of the French victory at Austerlitz (and other places). Four years later, in 1809, when they came back, there was no such reception but a hostile population talking about the nation and ‘das Vaterland.’ It was most likely the destruction and humiliation of Prussia in 1806–07 that created the conditions for an emerging German nationalism as a response to the totally superior French invasion force. Really, a study of ethnicity and a similar one of nationality will show how close these concepts are—in a modern discussion by people living in the ‘orbit of states.’ Faust explains the rise or at least intensification of Israelite ethnicity with the presence of the threat from the Philistines—absolutely in accordance with traditional biblical historiography.20 What he describes is not the ‘ethnogenesis’ of the Israelites but the appearance of the Israelite nation, or Israelite nationalism. He makes his concept of ethnicity far more comprehensive that just the ‘social organization of cultural difference’ to employ Barth’s definition. He makes it of fundamental importance for the establishment of the Israelite nation in ancient times. That it is somehow out of context is less important. Happily Faust presents us a case study for breaking into his agenda: In his discussion about the stele of Merneptah, he definitely sides with those who accept this mentioning as proof of Israel as a kind of organized society, although not yet an urbanized state.21 He also sees a direct link between this Israel and his biblical Israel, which is understandable in light of his idea of text studies. He never questions the general image of Israel’s past as created by biblical historiographers. In this way any opposition to an easy identification of Merneptah’s Israel with the biblical Israel is brushed aside as irrelevant. He never discusses (and I have so far seen only one scholar who does so22) the possibility that Merneptah was right, that he had really destroyed Israel leaving nothing beIsrael’s Ethnogenesis, 147–56. Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 159–66. 22 K. W. Whitelam, ‘“Israel is Laid Waste; His Seed is No More”: What if Merneptah’s Scribes Were Telling the Truth?’, in J. C. Exum (ed.), Virtual History and the Bible (Biblical Interpretation, 8/1-2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000), 8–22. 20 21

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hind. The reason is clearly the presumed link between Merneptah’s Israel and biblical Israel, making it more or less the same Israel. He is opposing my view that it might have been the memory of an Israel that bravely stood up against a foreign power that survived and was later adopted by people living in the same area where also Merneptah’s Israel was situated (on this point: the location of Merneptah’s Israel, I generally agree with Faust). This discussion has nothing to do with anthropological analysis of the concept of ethnicity. It is no more than the old agenda of biblical archaeology in a new disguise. Does Faust really reach his conclusion by applying sociological methodology? I do not think so. Of course social anthropology provides a rich field of comparison, and an immense number of alternatives for historical deductions. I should be the last to question this. However, when applying sociology, sociology must come first, not biblical studies. Faust uses social anthropology to support ideas about Israel’s past already embedded in his mind. It is not so that he, by using social anthropological approaches, gets closer to any historical truth. Anthropology is, as it has often been said, a useful tool, but it is not a magic book providing all answers. And I have never seen anything in anthropology which only points in one direction. On the contrary, the student often ends up in a situation where there are several options available. Even in the case that Faust is right—which I sincerely doubt—he has not shown anything but one possibility among others for the interpretation of the archaeological material. En route he has disregarded several issues to which every historian must pay attention, and that certainly also applies to a biblical archaeologist working with the Bible in one had and a so-called anthropological analysis of the material remains in the other, most notably a proper analysis of the literary remains which he carries in one hand. In his settlement with biblical archaeology the Norwegian archaeologist Terje Oestigaard mentions the reaction of his colleagues when he told them that he was spending time on the phenomenon of biblical archaeology.23 They hardly understood why he 23 T. Oestigaard, Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism: Archaeological Battles over the Bible and Land in Israel and Palestine from 1967–2000 (Gotarc

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was interested in this field which to them belonged in the dark basement of uninformed and primitive archaeology, evidently representing a kind of low life within the international archaeological fraternity. Oestigaard’s criticism is a cruel one, displaying how the ideology of some directions of the archaeological investigation of Palestinian soil seems dependent on the writings of Gustav Kossinna (1858–1931), again embedded in German ‘Blut und Boden’ ideology as popular in the Third Reich.24 Although intended as a provocation, we should perhaps pay more attention to Oestigaard’s study. Summing up and reverting to my old sergeant at the beginning of this paper: Faust did well by pointing to the importance of sociological approaches to Palestinian—including Israelite and Judean—history. There can be no doubt that much can be done within this field and that the possibilities were not exhausted by studies which appeared towards the end of the 20th century. So far so good! The execution of his project is not good. He turns the procedure upside down and begins with his preconceived version of biblical Israel which he turns into historical Israel, and then he uses social anthropology as the foundation for this edifice. He disregards every single rule of proper historical analysis pretending that we can escape from historical methodology through social anthropology. We cannot. However, in line with my petty officer I must end with a positive note: it is not a big book and it is easy reading.

Serie C, No. 67; Gothenburg: Göteborg University, Department of Archaeology, 2007), 7. 24 Oestigaard, Political Archaeology, 40–47.

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THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF PATRONAGE: DEBT PHILIPPE GUILLAUME To demonstrate how anthropology can cast new shadows on the walls of the dark cave of biblical exegesis, I choose debt. Most exegetes agree that debt was the source of misery for the biblical farmer. Bernhard Lang described exploitation as ‘based on the landowner’s or creditor’s interest in profit-making which excludes any personal loyalty to or reciprocity with the tenant or debtor’.1 Twenty five years later, William Domeris prefers to shift the date of the breakdown in reciprocity from the eighth century BCE to the fifth century BCE onwards.2 Nevertheless, debt is still accused of ‘playing a debilitating part in the lives of the peasants of Israel’ with interest rates having the ‘power to break the backs of the peasant poor’.3 To the so-called social-scientist exegetes4 the ancient Israelite farmers were the victims of three main enemies, each one more formidable than the other: the Mediterranean climate with its capricious rains, the king’s taxes and the money-lender’s usurious interest-rates. As the story goes, more than one harvest failure every four years or two successive bad harvests forced farmers to borrow 1 B. Lang, ‘The Social Organisation of Peasant Poverty in Biblical Israel’, JSOT 24 (1982), 47–63 (51), reprinted in B. Lang (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 83–99. See also B. Lang, ‘Peasant Poverty: Rent Capitalism in the Days of Amos’, in B. Lang, Hebrew Life and Literature (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 47–60. 2 W. R. Domeris, Touching the Heart of God (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 149–50. 3 Domeris, Touching the Heart of God, 108. 4 See J. Elliott, What is Social-Scientific Criticism? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).

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food and seeds to keep their families alive. As the king continued to extract crushing taxes and the money-lender imposed usurious interest-rates of 33% or more, an infernal spiral of debt (Lev. 25:25–55 and Neh. 5:2–5) gradually alienated the farmer from his land, his family and his own freedom, and sent him to swell the ranks of landless farmers and debt-slaves while the rich got richer, consolidating foreclosed land into latifundia while enjoying la dolce vita in urban palaces.5 A gallery of graphic passages is displayed as textual support. A widow about to lose her sons to her husband’s creditor (2 Kings 4:1–7), Naboth murdered by the king for refusing to sell his vineyard to the king (1 Kings 21). Amos, the all-time favourite of the champions of social justice presents the elite as doing nothing but feast (Isa. 5:11–2; 56:12; Am. 2:7–8; 3:9), lolling in beds inlaid in ivory (Am. 6:4) where father and son used the same girl (Am. 2:7).6 Cloaks pledged by the poor were used as picnic blankets while the rich drunk the wine of fines (Am. 2:8), levies of grain were taken from starving peasants (Am. 5:11) and the poor were sold for a pair of sandals (Am. 8:6). Landlord removed landmarks and joined field to field and house to house until they were alone in the country (Isa. 5:8). Networks of solidarity broke down completely. Children and women were oppressed (Isa. 3:12, widows and orphans were taken as spoil (Isa. 10:2), grain was hoarded in seasons of scarcity to be sold at exorbitant prices (Prov. 11:26). Before that, social historians tell us that Israel was a tribal society characterized by egalitarian relations. The rise of the monarchy destroyed the pristine egalitarianism through social stratification and asymmetry, evils fearlessly denounced by the eighth century BCE prophets,7 although it is admittedly difficult to date proLang, ‘Peasant Poverty’, 54. Lang, ‘Peasant Poverty’, 33–6. 7 Lang, ‘Peasant Poverty’, 49. M. L. Chaney, ‘Ancient Peasant Movements and the Formation of Premonarchic Israel’, in D. N. Freedman & D. F. Graf (eds) Palestine in Transition: the Emergence of Ancient Israel (Sheffield: Almond, 1983), 39–90; N. K. Gottwald, ‘The Participation of Free Agrarians in the Introduction of Monarchy to Ancient Israel: an Application of H. A. Landsberger’s Framework for the Analysis of Peasant Movements’, Semeia 37 (1986), 77–106 ; R. B. Coote and K. W. Whitelam, The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective (SWBAS, 5; Sheffield: 5 6

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phetic oracles.8 The conflict continued unabated in the following centuries as Nehemiah 5 shows. Hence, it was no episode, but a far-reaching and long-lasting social crisis which shook post-exilic Judah to the core. The creeping decline of increasing numbers of population, which at time became acute, to a level below the minimum needs of existence, grew to an abuse which could no longer be overlooked by anyone who held a position of responsibility in the community.9

Yet, the empires that ruled Palestine after Nehemiah continued overlooking the problem. A recent volume on peasant poverty concludes that the rise of commercial empires and the subsequent development of a market economy and of agricultural estates was causing deeper changes than ever in the traditional agrarian economy, changes that were entirely negative for the welfare of the peasants.10 All in all, the different studies on the subject present the biblical farmer enduring no less than a millennium of continuous Almond Press, 1987), 162; R. B. Coote, In Defense of Revolution (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 49–69; D. N. Premnath, ‘Latifundialization and Isaiah 5.8–10’, JSOT 40 (1988), 49–60 reprinted in D. J. Chalcraft (ed.), SocialScientific Old Testament Criticism: A Sheffield Reader (The Biblical Seminar, 47; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 301–312; H. Gossai, Justice, Righteousness and the Social Critique of the Eighth Century Prophets (New York: Lang, 1993); W. Zwickel, ‘Die Wirtschaftsreform des Hiskia und die Sozialkritik der Propheten des 8. Jahrhunderts’, EvTh 59 (1999), 356–377; J. L. Hoppe, There Shall Be No Poor Among You: Poverty in the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004); S. L. Cook, The Biblical Roots of Biblical Yahwism (Atlanta: SBL, 2004); R. Kessler, Sozialgeschichte des alten Israel: Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006). 8 R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period (London: SCM, 1994), 636 n. 13. See W. J. Houston, ‘Was there a Social Crisis in the Eighth Century?’ in J. Day (ed.), In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 130–149. 9 Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion, 497. 10 Domeris, Touching the Heart of God, 128–50. R. Albertz, ‘Zur Wirtschaftspolitik des Perserreiches’, in his Geschichte und Theologie: Studien zur Exegese des Alten Testaments und zur Religionsgeschichte Israels (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), 335–57 mentions no economic crisis.

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structural crisis. And no wonder. Instead of borrowing to invest in profitable ventures, the poor borrowed to survive until their meagre assets were seized by rapacious creditors who charged usurious interest rates ‘to multiply the debt and hasten the forfeiture’.11 Farmers the world over would approve this exegetical consensus and confirm that they are poor yokels crushed by relentless labour, unfavourable weather, inflation and taxes, never admitting that they are usually richer than city-dwellers. This very consensus is suspect but it rests comfortably upon deep foundations. The biblical sacralization of the poor, the Socialist notion of class struggle12 and the classical liberal notion of private property in land appear as strange bed-fellows. They mesh harmoniously in the modern depictions of Israel’s prophets said to clamour for the restoration of private ownership and personal freedom as the only way to overcome economic stagnation and the stifling of individual initiative by the infamous Oriental Despotism.13 The Israelite farmer was free, honest and happy like Rousseau’s Noble Savage until the Israelite monarchy marred the original state of nature.14 A convenient ‘garden of Eden’ anthropological perspective on the rise of inequality15 confirms the role of the Israelite monarchy in the destruction the original democratic ethos that once existed in

N. K. Gottwald, ‘The Expropriated and the Expropriators in Nehemiah 5’, in M. R. Sneed (ed.), Concepts of Class in Ancient Israel (Atlanta: Scholars, 1999), 1–20 (2 n. 1). 12 C. Levin, ‘The Poor in the Old Testament: Some Observations’, in Fortschreibungen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), 322–338 (327). 13 H. Islamoglu, ‘Modernities Compared’, Journal of Early Modern History 5 (2001), 353–386 (370). 14 ‘Le premier qui ayant enclos un terrain s’avisa de dire, Ceci est à moi, et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la société civile’. See C. E. Vaughan, The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau I (Cambridge: 1915), 11. 15 See D. R. Yesner, ‘Life in the ‘Garden of Eden’: Causes and Consequences of the Adoption of Marine Diets by Human Societies’, in M. Harris and E. Ross (eds.), Food and Evolution (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1987), 285–310, and the critique in G. M. Feinman, ‘The Emergence of Inequality’, in T. D. Price and G. M. Feinman (eds), Foundations of Social Inequality (New York: Plenum, 1995), 255–280. 11

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the egalitarian nomadic Israelite society.16 During the period of the Judges (a historical era!), a primitive democracy must have existed in Israel and it was never formally abolished since ‘through the Bible it entered the fabric of western civilization’.17 Alas, the monarchy destroyed inalienability of land, individual autonomy and social justice, ideals later espoused by Henry George (1839–1897), an American activist steeped in the prophetic literature of the bible.18 As the medieval church was well aware, money cannot yield fruit, and the accumulation of wealth must be a zero-sum process.19 Hence, the material gain of a certain group signifies a bigger loss for the whole of society,20 since ‘it was virtually impossible to increase one’s wealth without taking the possessions of someone else’.21 To make things worse, the rise of the Israelite monarchy had 16 A. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006), 92–107. The notion of a primitive egalitarian Israelite society goes back to A. Causse, Du groupe ethnique à la communauté religieuse: Le problème sociologique de la religion d’Israël (Études d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 33; Paris: Alcan, 1937). According to Causse, the original pastoral nomadic community lost its organic solidarity as it settled down. The original bond between society and religion was severed, collective responsibility dissolved into private interests. See F. S. Frick, ‘Response: Reconstructing Ancient Israel’s Social World’, Semeia 87 (1999), 233–254 (237). Sir Arthur Evans projected similar values on Minoan archaeology, see C. Gere, Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 17 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 95–96. 18 J. M. Sasson, ‘On Choosing Models for Recreating Israelite PreMonarchic History’, JSOT 21 (1981), 3–24. See E. J. Rose, Henry George (New York: Twayne, 1968). 19 Pecunia pecuniam parere non potest. The doctrine of the sterility of money goes back to Aristotle’s Politics I, iii, 16 (1257b). See R. Zimmermann, The Law of Obligations Mutuum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 170. 20 G. Fischer, ‘How Can the Rich Love the Poor?’, in K. Pandikattu and A. Vonach (eds), in Religion, Society and Economics. Eastern and Western Perspectives in Dialogue (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2003), 15–22 (20). 21 J. D. Pleins, The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 173. Compare H. George, Progress and Poverty. An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy (reprint New York: Cosimo, 2005), 14: ‘I

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turned the ‘demographic faucet’ on.22 The limits of the marginal areas available for agriculture were reached during the Iron Age II and overpopulation caused the closure of the highland frontier.23 No wonder the bible paints such a dark picture of the life of the Israelite farmer. Such depictions of life in ancient Israel involve a range of religious traits that formulate conceptions of a general order clothed with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.24 It is a rather complicated tangle to sort before a more likely picture of the actual life of Palestinian farmers may be drawn. The aim here is to show how patronage turned debt into a blessing rather than a curse. Before demonstrating the goodness of debt two points must be clarified.

ANTICHRESIS Because ancient farmers had no source of revenues other than what they grew, the credit system was geared to land that served as security for loans.25 Mesopotamian contracts distinguished two types of pledges. In possessory pledge, the lender used the land in question rent-free in exchange for an interest free loan.26 When the propose to seek the law which associates poverty with progress, and increases want with advancing wealth’. 22 Coote and Whitelam, The Emergence of Early Israel, 134 and 362. 23 L. E. Stager, ‘The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel’, BASOR 260 (1985), 1–35. A notion accepted uncritically by S. Shalom Brooks, Saul and the Monarchy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 38, but rejected by M. Broshi, ‘Demographic Changes in Ancient Eretz-Israel’, in A. Kasher, A. Oppenheim & U. Rapaport (eds.), Man and Land in Eretz Israel in Antiquity (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Izhaq, 1986), 20–48. 24 C. Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in M. Banton (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock, 2004), 1– 46. 25 C. Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest, Pledges and Forfeiture in the NeoBabylonian and Early Achaemenid Period: The Evidence from Private Archives’, in M. Hudson and M. van De Mieroop (eds), Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East (Baltimore: CDL, 2002), 221–253 (238– 44). 26 R. Westbrook, ‘Old Babylonian Period’, in R. Westbrook and R. Jasnow (eds.), Security for Debt in Ancient Near Eastern Law (Leiden: E.J.

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borrower defaulted, the land remained under the control of the lender, unless it was redeemed by the borrower’s kin. In a hypothecary pledge, the land was surety for a loan with interest; its use remained in the hand of the borrower unless he defaulted. At that moment only, the creditor took control of the pledged item. A hybrid form was often practised as the lender asked the borrower to work the pledged land in exchange for a portion of the yield. In the same way, pledged animals and persons usually went to work for the creditor when he needed them and otherwise stayed at home.

PLENTIFUL LAND Land availability determines the impact of the formation of agricultural estates on the life of small-holders. The social-scientific doctrine on the matter is that the growth of large estates was inversely proportional to the size of the landowning class,27 and that commercial crops required extensive plantations that adversely affect the production of staple crops.28 None of this is true due to the simple facts that land was over-plentiful29 and that the whole point of establishing large estates was to develop wasteland to increase tax-revenues rather than depriving local farmers. In the early Islamic era, when population was much larger than ever before, agricultural estates (qaṭ’āi‘ ) were emphyteutic grants, i.e. made so that holders would improve the grant by putting unused land into production. A clause stipulated that the grant would be revoked if the land was not cultivated within two years. When villages were included within the estate’s territory, the rights of existing property

Brill, 2001), 63–92 (66). Antichretic pledge does not appear to be used for commercial loans; see K. Veenhof, ‘Old Assyrian Period’, in R. Westbrook and R. Jasnow (eds.), Security for Debt in Ancient Near Eastern Law (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 93–160 (100, 133). Examples from Ugarit are discussed in I. Marquez Rowe, ‘The King’s Men at Ugarit’, JESHO 41 (2002), 1–19. 27 Premnath, ‘Latifundialization’, 302. 28 Premnath, ‘Latifundialization’, 303. 29 See L. L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period (London: T & T Clark International, 2004), 205–7.

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holders had to be respected.30 This means that when an entire region was granted, the status of land already farmed did not change. The local farmers continued to work their land as before and got additional employment opportunities on the estate. When land is in greater supply than the demand, as was the case across the ancient world,31 there is no pressure to secure exclusive ownership. Abundance of land fosters inalienability, discourages the parcelling of commons and offsets the negative effects related to the lack of land stewardship in systems based on usufruct.32 As much as in Medieval Europe, in many Japanese provinces before the Meiji land tax reforms (1873 CE)33 and in Russian peasant communes (mir and obshchina),34 open field systems remained in operation in Palestine until the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms started dismantling common land regimes.35 30 H. Kennedy, ‘Elite Incomes in the Early Islamic State’, in J. Haldon and L. I. Conrad (eds.), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East (Princeton: Darwin, 2004), 13–28 (19). These investments were apparently very profitable during the first century of Islamic domination, the estates being a major source of income for the elite. In the next century, presumably when the amount of dead land that could be brought under the plough with minimal investment decreased sharply, tax-farming became more profitable than farming. These changing circumstances are relevant for the evolution of élite revenues during the Persian and early Hellenistic era in Yehud. 31 On the abundance of land in Mesopotamia see G. Van Driel, ‘Land in Ancient Mesopotamia’, in B. Haring and R. de Maaijer (eds), Landless and Hungry? (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1998), 19–49. 32 R. C. Ellickson, ‘Property in Land’, The Yale Law Journal 102 (1993), 1315–1400. 33 P. C. Brown, ‘Land redistribution schemes in Tokugawa Japan’, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New York, December 28, 1985 accessed 26 March 2009. . The redistribution was done by lottery, at a variable periodicity, or following natural disasters. 34 R. Bartlett (ed.), Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia (Basinstoke: Macmillan, 1990); D. Atkinson, The End of the Russian Land Commune 1905–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983). 35 See my Credit, Debt and Crisis: Agrarian Finance in the Hebrew Bible (London: Equinox, forthcoming).

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The plantation of olive trees for the production of oil, the main export good in Palestine, did not adversely affect the production of staple food because olive groves offer plenty of space for the growth of staple crops between and under the trees.36 Any of these crops mature well before the olive harvest in the autumn. Olive groves produced fuel and food from the pruning and from olive pressings. Local farmers with their families and beasts gained fresh employment opportunities for ploughing the groves, pruning, harvesting, transporting and pressing the olives. Local potters produced containers that others had to transport. Because planting large amounts of trees is a long term investment, the estate holder and the central administration that taxed him were bound to invest resources to permanently protect the assets against raiders. Hence, extensive plantations had many positive spin-off effects for the small farmers that gravitated around the estate—as much as rain, security and stability are essential to successful farming since assets are spread across open fields for months and years at a time. What was gained thanks to stability offset what was extracted in the form of corvée and shares of produce. Even in the absence of a central government the small farmer has to forfeit a portion of his produce to the tribes who fill in the power vacuum and whose methods to extract produce from farmers are less predictable but no less violent than those of regular tax-collectors. Therefore, the development of agricultural estates and the integration of Palestinian agriculture in imperial markets neither deprived small-holders nor impoverished them, to the contrary.

ILLUSORY USURY In its original sense, usury referred to all lending at interest. The definition of usury was narrowed in the late Middle Ages when, despite biblical prohibitions, the wholesale condemnation of charging interest was challenged and moderate rates became morally ac-

36 For a Mesopotamian example, see M. W. Stolper, ‘Fifth Century Nippur: Texts of the Murašûs and from their Surroundings’, JCS 53 (2001), 83–132 (101) CDS 7961:7–10.

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ceptable. Now, usury only designates exorbitant interest.37 Given this focus on the level of the interest rate as determining the presence or absence of usury, the frequent mentions of usury in exegetical literature is surprising. One would need precise data to identify usurious practices, but the state of the existing documentation and the complexity of credit practices rarely allow the evaluation of actual rates. The common rates between 33% and 50% can only be considered usurious in isolation of economic realities. In light of the small amounts borrowed and of the shortness of the terms, such rates are less crushing than they appear to modern eyes when rendered in annual percentages.38 Interest rates currently applied by micro-finance systems are equally ‘usurious’. Yet, they are praised by development agencies as an effective way of empowering small and micro-enterprises or sole market traders.39 Despite their usurious rates, these systems are certainly very effective, as their development shows, and demonstrate the invalidity of placing limits on interest rates. High interest rates, in actual practice, are necessary to cover the high transaction costs of small size loans.40 Hence the P. Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens (Cambridge: UP, 1991), 180. 38 J. Renger, ‘Comment on: On Economic Structures in Ancient Mesopotamia’, Orientalia 63 (1994), 157–208 (195). P. Vargyas, ‘Babylonian Interest Rates: Weren’t they Annual?’, in S. Graziani (ed.), Studi sul Vicino Oriente Antico (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 2000), 1095– 1105 (1102). Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest’, 230, M. Van de Mieroop, ‘A History of Near Eastern Debt?’, in M. Hudson and M. Van De Mieroop (eds.), Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East (Baltimore: CDL, 2002), 59–94 (85). 39 For instance the Grameen Bank in India and Pakistan where interest levels are extremely high but is nevertheless praised by R. J. Sider, ‘Evaluating the Triumph of the Market’, in H. Ucko (ed.), The Jubilee Challenge. Utopia or Possibility? (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1997), 112–133 (120). The Grameen Bank was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize. 40 Transaction costs are ‘the costs of specifiying and enforcing contracts and other relations upon which exchange and other forms of economic organization are based. They include resources used for obtaining and disseminating information, measuring of goods and staples, and the conclusion as well as the enforcement of contracts and the specification 37

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rough principle that interest rate is in inverse correlation to the size of the loan.41 Instead of imagining a state of economic equilibrium in farming characterized by the absence of loans, biblical exegetes may realize that “permanent over-indebtedness” that they see as characteristic of the situation of biblical farmers from the eighth century BCE until Nehemiah and later has in fact always been the norm, more so today, and that it constitutes the mark of a healthy economy rather than the sign of a structural crisis.42 “Permanent over-indebtedness”, of course, is a contradiction in terms. If overindebtedness is permanent, it cannot be considered excessive by the simple fact that both parties concerned survive it. Permanent indebtedness is more correct as it is the norm for ancient and modern agriculture and reflects the dependence of farming on rural credit. There is therefore little truth in the common depiction of biblical farmers as sinking ever deeper into debt until their few assets, their land, their children and their own persons were seized by their rapacious creditors who charged usurious interest rates ‘to multiply the debt and hasten the forfeiture’.43 In fact, foreclosure upon land and people was not the aim of lenders. Moreover, loans were not granted to the poor. Rather than making the producers poorer and the lenders richer, lending to farmers smoothed the fluctuations of production but it was not a very profitable venture in itself. It must be considered in the broader context of patronage.

and guaranteeing of property rights’: J. Renger, ‘Comments on Economic Structures in Ancient Mesopotamia’, Orientalia 63 (1994), 157–208 (159– 60). 41 A principle suggested for Roman endowments by R. P. DuncanJones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 134. 42 See R. Kessler, Sozialgeschichte des alten Israel, 120, who coins the expression ‘permanenten Überschuldung’. 43 Lang, ‘Peasant Poverty’, 99; Gottwald, ‘The Expropriated and the Expropriators in Nehemiah 5’, 2 n. 1. For another classical presentation, see M. L. Chaney, ‘Whose Sour Grapes? The Addressees of Isaiah 5:1–7 in the Light of Political Economy’, in Semeia 87 (1999), 105–22.

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PATRONAGE Patronage is often presented as part of the system of alienation of farmers because it structures economic inequalities.44 Ronald Simkins defines patronage as ‘a system of social relations that are rooted in an unequal distribution of power and goods... Patrons are those who have access to goods and the centers of power, whereas clients are in need of such access’.45 If inequality is indeed basic to patronage, patronage seems an obstacle to freedom and social development. Relating to equals and kin offers a range of important but limited benefits. Establishing relations with social superiors gave access to resources unavailable to equals. This crucial aspect of patronage is obscured when paraphrases of prophetic oracles are passed as descriptions of the plight of biblical peasants seen as a passive mass of helpless brutes. If destitute people are indeed present in every society, farmers and peasants cannot be automatically considered poor. Yet, it is hard to break the spell of prophetic social critiques to recover a taste of the economic reality of ancient Israel because ethnographic material relative to the economic situation prevailing in the Levant at the beginning of the twentieth century CE seems to confirm that the biblical reality prevailed unchanged until the Mandates.

DEBT: THE ETHNOGRAPHIC VIEW European observers wrote many reports about Palestinian farmers who knew what the foreigners wanted to hear and gladly obliged by providing confirmation of the reporter’s preconceptions. Transfers of land ownership is a case in point. Gottlieb Schumacher, who spent most of his life in Palestine, reports that thanks to improved security conditions after the transfer of the seat of the Governor of the Hauran from Bosra to Sheikh Sa’ad, farmers risk further settlement and the Bedouin settle and build stone houses in which they store their grain. Somewhat contradicting himself, Schumacher adds that ‘unscrupulous speculation in the 44 R. A. Simkins, ‘Patronage and Monarchic Israel’, Semeia 87 (1999), 123–144 (125). 45 Simkins, ‘Patronage’, 127.

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grain crops’ on the part of the Syrian merchants has already ruined all agricultural improvements in Syria. The existing laws against usury should be quickly enforced to prohibit feudal tenure and prevent the property of the Fellahin from passing into the hands of ‘these unprincipled speculators’.46 In a similar tone, Claude Conder who mapped out Palestine for the British army painted another grim picture of the Hauran. Conder’s main focus is the denunciation of French and Russian intrigues and of Islamic fanaticism. Conder mentions having ‘more than once been offered a village and its land for sale, the peasants being no longer able to pay the taxes or meet the demands of usurers, Jewish, Greek, or Armenian, into which clutches they were falling, after paying 60 to 70 per cent for many years for money borrowed to pay the Government’.47 As a consequence, Conder explains that the population gradually dies out because men are unable to marry and illicit relations are rare, or ‘the elders of the village, with the consent of the rest of the men, sell themselves and their lands into the hands of some capitalist, or of the usurer who has lent the most money to the community’.48 What happens next is not told. Conder shifts his gaze towards a hypothetical capitalist willing to spend money on the rich soil of the Sharon plains. This would reap a good interest if, Conder advises, he might employ the native labour and ‘better the physical and moral condition of his serfs by judicious liberality in bad seasons’.49 Typical pages of Europeans quicker to give advice than to understand the situation. They cannot be blamed for being children of their times, but their claims should not be taken at face value. Farmers were happy to feed the ajnabis with horror stories that may yield a little pity and money. Conder duly noted that ‘The cry of the people is the same throughout Syria, whatever their sect or stock: “Give us British rule, French rule, nay even a Russian, or a Greek, 46

G. Schumacher, Across the Jordan (London: A. P. Watt, 1889), 22–

47

C. R. Conder, Heth and Moab (London: R. Bentley & Sons, 1883),

48

Conder, Heth, 367. Conder, Heth, 368.

23. 367. 49

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or a Jew to govern us, but save us from the Sultan and the Turk!’”50 As Conder reports, missionaries were glad to indulge with funds to further the spread of the Gospel51 and the members of the churches they established were duly dumbed ‘floor Christians’ (masihiye al-ṭahin) by their neighbours. In these conditions, which ˘ ˘ farmer was going to sing the praises of the merchants and of the government?

DEBT: AN ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT OF PATRONAGE What happened to the unfortunate village bought by the usurer mentioned by Conder. Grain merchants did become the nominal owners of entire villages.52 And what difference did it make to the villagers? Little difference. Life went on, and Conder shifts to some new story. Did the usurer wait for the enlightened advice of the foreigner to better the condition of his ‘serfs’ by judicious liberality in bad seasons? Indeed not. We have attestations from various periods (Nehemiah 5) that the reimbursement of loans was cancelled or delayed in times of dearth or after the ravages of war. Significantly, Conder admits that the peasant and the capitalist were in fact in equally grievous plight and that even the Turkish Government was not better off.53 If, despite his biased views, Conder was able to see that the usurers were in no better shape than the farmers they exploited, the notion that usurers made quick and easy money on the back of poor farmers is wrong. The cause of the farmers’ misery is to be found in a much more complicated combination of factors and Conder mentioned the war with Russia as well the intrigues of the European powers as the main causes of the hardships he saw. Conder, Heth, 374. ‘Saved’ from the Turks by the French, the Haurani rebelled immediately afterwards. The Palestinians were saved by the British and are still dealing with the consequences. 51 Conder, Heth, 370. 52 D. Warriner, ‘Land Tenure in the Fertile Crescent in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in C. Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of the Middle East 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 71–78 (77). 53 Conder, Heth, 368–69. 50

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Although the usurer was in no better position than the Sultan and the peasant, the fallacy of usury remained the official dogma during the Mandate when the British tried to lift the peasantry out of poverty by eliminating ‘exploitative’ money-lenders and introduce a rural banking system that offered loans at low interest rates.54 With great dismay, the administration had to admit that farmers showed little interest in the bank and continued borrowing at usurious rates from the grain merchants. Does this confirm that farmers were unable to see to their own interest or that the power of the rich was so strong that farmers could not escape their clutches? Of course not. The majority of people in any society is able to pursue its own interest or the society in question collapses. While the British postulated that a bank would be fairer than a money-lender because of the impersonality of the relationship, it is precisely the impersonality of the bank that farmers did not trust. The personalized relation to a patron offered greater guarantees, a difference reflected in the Islamic banking system where the theoretical ban on interests turns the lender into an associate who shares the risk in a far greater proportion than would a western banking institution. Biblical exegetes have not yet learnt from the errors of the British. Debt remains the bête noire. It seems so obvious that farmers who borrowed grain at the standard rate of 33% a year could not possibly prosper? Worse, the farmers showed no interest in repaying the loans. Were they too overwhelmed to free themselves from such an unbearable burden as quickly as possible? From ancient Mesopotamia to Mandate Palestine, agricultural lending has always resulted in long-standing debt, the repayment of the debt being ‘a matter of wishful thinking rather than economic reality’.55 The interest rate was remarkably stable across the centuries because banking, i.e. borrowing money to lend it at a higher rate,

A. Nadan, ‘Colonial Misunderstanding of an Efficient Peasant Institution’, JESHO 46 (2003), 320–354; J. Metzer, ‘The Palestinian Peasant Economy Under the Mandate: a Story of Colonial Bungling By Amos Nadan’, The Economic History Review 60/2 (2007), 432–434. 55 Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest’, 240. 54

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was non-existent.56 Despite the standard yearly rates of 33% for grain and 20% for silver, the only way to make significant profits was commercial ventures (the so-called ḥarrānu partnerships), although, of course, the risk was proportional to the returns that could be expected.57 In such conditions, it is legitimate to ask why merchants lent money to farmers at all? Social-scientific exegetes have a ready answer. The rich lent grain to the poor at usurious rates in order to foreclose land and persons, extend their own land and build latifundia for themselves. As Chaney summarizes the process: Absentee landlordism proliferated. Many peasants were left no alternative to survival loans at de facto interest rates usurious by any standards. Foreclosure upon family land and family members pledged as collateral was often at the discretion of the creditor.58

A number of problems is concentrated in these lines. First of all, it is clear from Roman sources that absentee landlords did not make much money. Had money poured into the coffers of great estate holders from the simple fact that their estates were large, Pliny and others would have enjoyed a life of idle luxury instead of writing treatises advising latifundists how not to lose money. Second, great landlords were not in a position to lend a significant amount of money to farmers because the crops on large farms were as much at risk as the crops on small farms. The notion that rich farmers gradually improved their position as creditors is doubtful.59 The advantage gained by a larger investment in a good year was offset by greater losses during bad years. To spread the

Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest’, 247. Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest’, 237–38. 58 Chaney, ‘Sour Grapes’, 107. 59 Coote and Whitelam, The Emergence of Early Israel, 365, explain the socio-economic stratification of the egalitarian Israelite society through richer farmers who grew increasingly for the market and thus improved their position as creditors. 56 57

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risk, large estate holders spread their holdings across distant regions. Third, the comparative merit of the hoe versus plough cultivation is now recognized. The absence of a ploughing team, usually interpreted as a sign of poverty, in fact enabled small farmers to save on the high feeding costs of draft animals and to produce higher yields per acre than farmers who cultivated greater surfaces. Two hectares were sufficient to feed a Roman family working with spade and hoe while five hectares were needed if work animals were kept.60 Expenses increased proportionally to the size of an estate while the yield per acre decreased. Fourth, absentee lordism was the worst recipe to make a fortune at the expense of one’s modest neighbours. Estate holders needed to share the risks and reduce supervision costs, especially if they did not reside locally. The economic viability of the estate was directly affected by the number of farmers living nearby who could rent estate land besides their own land. To make the latifundia productive, manpower was the crucial factor. In Scotland and later in Ireland, the system of enclosures starved the local population because it took away existing land instead of developing new tracts. However, the same effect cannot be inferred from the ancient Orient characterized by a much lower demography and large surfaces of wasteland. Free peasants always outnumbered agricultural slaves, even in Italy of the late Republic when slave numbers were at their highest.61 With little or no supervision, tenants were always more profitable than slaves because, as sharecroppers, they had a direct interest in the yield. Due to the close supervision necessary to prevent idleness, Columella considered tenants as the best method to run a farm when the landlord is unable to till the land himself

60 P. Halstead, ‘Traditional and Ancient Rural Economy in Mediterranean Europe: plus ça change ?’, in W. Scheidel and S. von Reden (eds.), The Ancient Economy (Edinburgh: UP, 2002) 53–70 (65–66). 61 J. S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 305, quoting P. Garnsey, ‘Non-Slave Labour in the Roman World’, in P. Garnsey (ed.), Non-Slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: UP, 1980), 34–47 (35–36).

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(I.7).62 Even on the large latifundia of nineteenth century CE Southern Italy, latifundisti granted some land to the inhabitants of their social territory as a means to improve under-developed areas, to keep wages low by providing land as the major source of subsistence, and to maintain traditions and loyalty to the master.63 If great landlords were as much in need of credit as smallholders, who else offered agricultural credit? Grain-merchants did. Long distance trade is best known from the Bronze Age Assyrian colony at Kanesh. Biblical grain-merchants appear in hostile references to false scales (Am. 8:5; Mi. 6:11).64 Although the returns from commercial ventures were always much better than rural lending,65 merchants lent to farmers because the success of commercial ventures depended partly on the ability of the merchant to secure access to a cheap supply directly from the producers. Merchants lend to farmers not to make money or to take their land but to secure produce as part of a broader commercial strategy that integrated production and distribution. Merchants accepted lending at little profit to help farmers keep afloat by paying their taxes and delaying repayments in exchange for produce to trade on the market. As farmers did not have the resources to venture in long distance trade, the merchant was the only one who could turn into valuable assets surplus grain that would go wasted if it remained where it was produced. Foreclosure of pledges taken from agricultural credit operations was the least of the parties’ interest. The aim of agricultural credit was to obtain interest in the form of the debtor’s labour.66

62 See R. Martin, Recherches sur les agronomes latins (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1971), 343–74. 63 M. Petrusewicz, Latifundium: Moral Economy and Material Life in a European Periphery (Ann Harbor: University of Michigan, 1996), 188. 64 T. Özgüç, Kültepe Kaniš/Neša: The Earliest International Trade Center and the Oldest Capital City of the Hittites (Tokyo, MECCJ, 2003). 65 S. Faroqhi, ‘Indebtedness in the Bursa Area, 1730–1740’, in M. Afifi et al. (eds.), Sociétés rurales ottomanes (Cairo: IFAO, 2005), 197–213 (203). 66 Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest’, 250. There is evidence from eighteenth century Ottoman court records of debtors complaining that money-

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As the legal and practical distinction between debt-slavery and ordinary pledge remains unclear, if it existed at all,67 there is plenty of leeway for modern readers to indulge their preconceptions and perpetuate the clichés of the usurious merchant.68 The truth of the matter, however, is that debt was a form of subsistence insurance.69 Debt was the price of survival in times of dearth. After a good harvest, the merchant took grain from his debtors at a price well below market price which never enabled the farmer to pay back his debt fully. But after a bad harvest, the merchant supplied grain to keep his debtors alive. For this reason, most observers of rural credit report that neither lenders nor borrowers were eager to break the cycle of debt.70 Both sides kept the debt alive because both sides benefited. In societies where the state apparatus is unable or unwilling to offer adequate social care, farmers need enduring relations with patrons, relations involving both exploitation and protection. A merchant was less inclined to supply seeds and food to hungry farmers if they did not owe him money. For this reason, the Palestinian farmers shunned the British banks.71 With this in mind, the answer to the following question is clear: [W]hat would happen in an agrarian economy if loans without enforceable repayment were the only ones available. If loans could be defaulted without penalty, repayment being indefilenders refused to take back the capital when it was offered to them. See Faroqhi, ‘Indebtedness’, 208. 67 J. N. Postgate, ‘Employer, Employee and Employment in the NeoAssyrian Empire’, in M. A. Powell (ed.), Labor in the Ancient Near East (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1987), 257–270 (263). 68 Wunsch, ‘Debt, Interest’, 221–55 (223). 69 J. C. Scott, ‘Patronage or exploitation?’, in E. Gellner and J. Waterbury (eds.), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London: Duckworth, 1977), 21–40; M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge: University Press, 1983), 32; R. E Seavoy, Famine in Peasant Societies (Westport: Greenwood, 1986); Nadan, ‘Advantage’, 1–39. 70 In 20th century Iran, the taqavī was a form of advance whose main purpose was to tie farmers to the soil and ensure cultivation: A. K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London: Tauris, 1991), 382–83. 71 Nadan, ‘Advantage’, 1–39.

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Both merchants and farmers were interested in these loans because loans maintained the relation between two parties that needed each other in order to survive.

INEQUALITY AND RECIPROCITY Therefore, the inequality implied by patronage did not exclude reciprocity. Often presented as a mere ideological foil concealing the exploitation of the client,73 the unbalance in the exchange between merchant and fellahin was a kind of subsistence insurance. Attachment to men of wealth and power afforded access to external supplies. In times of dearth access to these resources made the difference between life and death. This brutal fact rendered the asymmetry of patronage relations acceptable and even desirable. The client may have given more, more often and repeatedly but, as long as the patron gave a little at the right time, the exploitation was bearable. Patronage is not charity, or it is charity of a less degrading kind because it is based on reciprocity. Both parties are exploited while they both get benefits. The superior position of the patron enables him to grant access to material goods the clients needs while the clients provide less obvious contributions, less tangible benefits like political and military support, religious legitimacy or material surplus that are useless to the client if the patron does not convert them into assets. Hence, the generosity which is used by both parties to couch the terms of the exchange is real in spite of the patron’s superior position. The exploitative aspect of patronage is a two way process.

72 73

Gottwald, ‘Expropriated’, 7. As claimed by Simkins, ‘Patronage and Monarchic Israel’, 134.

DAVID AS A TRIBAL HERO: RESHAPING ORAL TRADITIONS EVELINE J. VAN DER STEEN The possible oral traditions that lay at the root of Old Testament literature have been subject to investigation since Hermann Gunkel in the 19th century. From the reconstruction of ‘original sources’ these investigations have moved on to interpretations that incorporate the different versions and variations of the text, taking into account the social context in which they were formulated. The watershed study by Lord and Parry (1960) has played a significant role in this development, which is summed up concisely by Niditch (2003). It is not easy to discern different sources and origins for the stories, poetry and discourses that make up the Old Testament, and I will make no attempt to do so. This paper focuses on the story cycle of David, in light of oral traditions from one specific cultural group, the bedouin Arabs. Arabs had and have a plethora of vernacular traditions: various forms of poetry, genealogies, epic legends and tribal histories. Oral traditions are a rich source of information, provided they are eventually written down and preserved. With the exception of (part of) the elite, people over most of the Arab world were largely illiterate until the 20th century, and their literary traditions have been oral, transmitted by storytelling, citing or singing. Andrew Shryock (1991) has explored the present-day importance of oral traditions in two tribes of Jordan, the Adwan and the Abbadi, and he found that they are still (or were in the 1980s) vital for the continuation of tribal loyalty, asabiyyeh. Over time, but mostly in recent years, much of this oral heritage has been written down, sometimes by the poets and storytellers themselves, often by others—travellers, historiographers and anthropologists. In pre-Islamic times there were akhbar, short stories, recounting the adventures and battles of the various bedouin 127

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tribes. They featured in storytelling competitions between tribes, an ancient pre-Islamic tradition. These akhbar often focused on one tribal hero, and eventually they grew into tribal heroic cycles: the Sirat Antar, the Sirat Beni Hilal, the Sirat Baybars. Others were used in the Hadith. These stories were recited by professional storytellers, in the desert tents as well as in the coffeehouses of the towns and villages. They were told or chanted in prose or rhyming prose, interspersed with poetry. Every Arab knew parts of these stories: they were, and still are, part of the national culture. Edward Lane (1871:380) describes the storytellers in 19th century Cairo. They came to the coffee house in the evening to recite or chant (usually a combination of both) their stories about tribal heroes, such as Antar, hero of the Beni Abs, or Abu Zayd, hero of the Beni Hilal. When he had reached a suitable cliffhanger, the storyteller would stop for the evening, ensuring himself of an audience for the next day. That way a story session could last well over a year. The storyteller would develop the story as he went along, drawing from his collection of formulas and short stories, adapting it to the audience and the situation (Lord and Parry 1960:13). In this creative process the audience played an active part: they expressed their approval or disapproval, and discussed the story with the narrator. In town the stories reflected life in the town, in bedouin camps the context would be the camp. Only the main storylines, and the heroes remained the same. This continuing process of adaptation and borrowing is responsible for the lack of final form and coherence of the stories. It can also contribute to the creation or confirmation of an ethnic identity, expressed in the stories and their social context, or even become the voice of the silent underclasses, crossing both conventional and political boundaries (Connelly 1986:162, 167), and it can voice political views and veiled criticisms, which is why it was, in various periods, viewed with ambivalence by the ruling classes (Connelly 1986:17). A bedouin epic provides a narrative framework in which a hero has his adventures. The narrative framework of the Sirat Beni Hilal was the exodus of the tribe from hunger-stricken Arabia into the Maghreb in the 9th and 10th century, led by the hero of the epic, Abu Zayd. Baybars was the Mamluk Sultan who fought Mongols,

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Persians and Crusaders. Antar was the black hero of the Beni Abs, in continual conflict with the Beni Fazara, and in love with Abla. Within these frameworks an ever varying complex of intrigues was woven. Many of the stories were eventually written up, often at the initiative of a local or national ruler. This, however, did not result in a ‘final version’ because storytellers and audience continued to weave their own epic. These tales and stories about ancient heroes were also freely borrowed and transferred to modern heroes. William Palgrave (1873:84) visited Hayil in 1862, some 13 years after the death of Abdallah Ibn Rashid, legendary first ruler of the emirate of Hayil. He records stories about Abdallah that reflect the classic legendary epics in their contents: Once, when Abdallah was lying helpless and wounded on the battlefield, a swarm of locusts came and hovered over him to protect him from the stinging sun. While the elite in the towns had their own traditions and narrative culture, in the epic stories this divide was less clear. The Arabian Nights are a mixture of cultural traditions from India, Persia, Bedouin Arabia and Egypt, in a story frame that is decidedly urban. The story cycle of Hatem Tay, which stems from a desert environment, has elements with an urban flavour (Forbes 1830). Prince Munir has fallen in love with Princess Husn Banu. She, however, will only marry the man who can solve seven riddles. His friend Hatem, of the bedouin tribe of Tay, undertakes to find the answers to these riddles for Munir, who then marries the princess. Hatem himself returns to the desert and becomes paramount Sheikh of the Tay. As a result of this free traffic in tales and legends the history and historicity of many classic heroes has become blurred. Nevertheless, some of the most famous story cycles had a traceable historical core: the sirat Baybars focused on the famous Mamluk sultan, the Sirat Beni Hilal on the exodus of the Beni Hilal tribe into Egypt and eventually into north Africa, both episodes in history that are well documented. Peter Heath (1996:22–23) likewise believes that Antara ibn Shaddad was a historic figure. He was the son of a member of the north Arabian tribe of Beni Abs and a black slave woman. He gained his freedom through courage in battle, and died of a ripe old age early in the 7th century, possibly in a sand storm.

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The historical Antara was overshadowed quickly by the legendary Antar, subject of the Sirat Antar, according to Heath possibly already during his lifetime. The stories eventually grew into one of the great epics of the region. Sirat Antar was more crystallized than other epic narratives. There was even an ‘official’ written version, consisting of 59 books. Heath (1996:68) recognises several central themes that reoccur in these heroic epics, some of which are, in fact, universal in oral traditions worldwide. First, The Rise of the Hero. The birth and early youth of a prospective hero are surrounded with magic, misunderstanding, and omens. A hero’s start in life is usually troubled: a barrier to overcome on his way to heroism. He is either of low descent, a slave like Antar, or, as in the case of Abu Zayd, hero of the Beni Hilal, his real parentage is hidden from him. When Abu Zayd’s mother was pregnant, she had a vision. As a result the hero was born black, with dire consequences for his mother and himself. They were expelled from the tribe, and he grew up in an enemy tribe, unaware of his high parentage. On the other hand, during his youth the hero usually reveals qualities that foretell his special destination. He is unusually big, strong, ferocious and intelligent. This was the case with both Antar and Abu Zayd, and with numerous other tribal heroes. Abu Zayd had mastered the arts of astrology, magic, alchemy, and a variety of other branches of knowledge before he was twelve years old. In order to achieve his destiny, the hero has to perform deeds and show skills that earn him recognition, not only of his enemies, but especially of his own tribe and family. In many cases the hero leaves the tribe, performs heroic deeds, and finally comes back to claim acceptance. Antar does this on several occasions. During that time the hero collects followers, often outcasts, disenfranchised men, with whom he goes raiding, and who form the basis of his later power. Antar becomes expert in all the fighting skills; he obtains certain accoutrements with an almost magical value: his horse al-Abjar, and his sword ez-Zami (the Thirsty). His half-brother Shaibub becomes his bosom friend. Then there are the love stories. In heroic epics love and marriage rarely follow a smooth path. The hero has to win his beloved by performing heroic deeds, and fighting rivals or unwilling fathersin-law.

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The impossible dowry is a common theme. The obvious purpose of a dowry for which highly dangerous expeditions have to be undertaken is to bring the hero into a dangerous situation in which he is likely to perish. Antar himself has to steal one thousand camels from the king of all Arabs, as a dowry for Abla. One of Antar’s sons (although neither of them is aware of the fact at the time) is asked by his future father-in-law to capture Abla, Antar’s beloved wife, as a fitting attendant at his daughter’s wedding. Accidental encounters in unusual places and circumstances is another favourite feature, giving a decidedly erotic flavour to some of the episodes, something the audience loved. Sometimes a description of the beauty of a woman is enough to infatuate the hero. Once the hero has been recognized, his main purpose in life is to protect and serve the society that has proclaimed him their champion. In practice the activities of the hero change little: he fights, rescues, raids, attacks, defends and celebrates victories. But the main goal has changed: the hero serves his people. In the Sirat Beni Hilal Abu Zayd leads his people into the promised land of north Africa. Antar protects his tribe and family against the Fazara and other tribes by noble and brave deeds. Poetic skill was another important trait. Abu Zayd often disguised himself as a professional poet, and astonished everyone with his skill. Antar was a famous poet, often seen as the poet par excellence, the Arabian Shakespeare, by bedouin. One of his poems was included in the mu’allaqat, the seven classic poems of pre-Islamic times. In actual fact the surviving poetry that can be ascribed to Antar does not exceed 300 lines, and even those are not entirely certain. Of course, for our purpose, this is immaterial. The point is that Antar was seen as a great poet. A Hero could transgress accepted tribal codes of honour. In general the hero conformed to what was expected of him: loyalty to his clan and tribe, defending and revenging where necessary, honorable behaviour in general. In those cases the main difference between a ‘normal’ warrior and a hero is one of scale: a warrior fights one opponent, a hero takes on a hundred at a time. But there are also situations where a conflict arises between the laws of society and the code of honour, in which the hero will follow his own code: he will protect strangers, even against his own

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tribe if necessary, and he will give up the duty of revenge out of mercy. Finally: the death of a hero. A hero is seldom granted a natural death of old age. Sometimes he is killed in battle, but more often through an accident, an act of fate, magic or cunning by an enemy. The death scene, mourning and burial are expanded upon, but the most important is that the death of the hero gives rise to the theme of revenge, and the opportunity of more narrative. The narrative cycle of David, in 1 and 2 Samuel, contains themes that are widespread in oral traditions in various cultures, including western cultures. The same can be said for the Sirat Antar, and many other heroic epics. But beyond these universal themes, the pattern of both narrative cycles is strikingly similar. Which poses the question whether the oral traditions that lie at the root of the stories in the books of Samuel, are rooted in a heroic epic comparable to the Siras. It is generally accepted that these stories are heavily edited for theological or nationalistic propaganda, something that in recent years has also been done with various bedouin epics (Connelly 1986:167; http://www.peplums.info/pep04.htm1). Sirat Antar has been turned into numerous movies, some of which have little or no connection with the original narrative anymore. Three of the main themes from the Sirat Antar appear in the David story: the rise of the hero, the love stories, and the heroic service. David starts at a disadvantage: he is the youngest son in the family, and his father makes quite clear that he is of no importance whatsoever. On the other hand, Samuel predicts for him a heroic future. During his youth David distinguished himself, killing lions with his bare hands, and fighting a giant. David acquires the sword of Goliath, which, in the original version, may well have had magic qualities. Like Antar, David forges a life-long friendship with his spiritual half-brother, Jonathan. The friendship with Jonathan points at something else as well: the fight for acceptance by his own group, that is part of the ‘rise of the hero’ theme is lifted to the royal circle, the circle of Saul. 1

Last accessed October 25, 2009.

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The group that he needs to gain acceptance in has become larger than his own family, it is the new social circle that is to be his destiny: the royal court. This relationship is ambivalent, and will stay tenuous until the end, well after the death of Saul and Jonathan. Part of this process of abandonment and reconciliation is that the hero goes off and collects his own followers, with whom he fights himself a way in. There are numerous examples of this in the tribal history of the past centuries. When Antar is at a loose end, and because of his charisma and success as a warrior, he attracts a band of followers with whom he goes raiding. In the 1830s Abdallah Ibn Rashid, founder of the Emirate of Ibn Rashid did the same, when he was expelled from Hayil by his cousin. Later, as ruler of the Shammar, he transformed this band into his personal bodyguard and standing army, adding elements from other tribes, slaves and even foreigners (mainly deserters from the Egyptian army), and shifting the primary objective of the armed force from raiding and conquest to policing and enforcing justice (al-Rasheed 1991:133–39). Akila Agha, 19th century hero of the Galilee, served as commander in Ibrahim Pasha’s army, but after the defeat of the Egyptian pasha Akila collected a band of followers with whom he raided, mostly east of the Jordan, before he became one of the main tribal leaders in the Galilee.2 David, when he was cut off from the house of Saul, also collected a band of disenfranchised men, and lived as a raider in the wild. When David becomes king, the tension between him and the house of Saul changes again. Here we see the remnants of a tribal struggle for power, common in tribal society: the competition between the tribes of Juda and Benjamin. The love stories in David’s life are no less romantic than those of Antar and other Arab heroes. His courtship of Michal includes the theme of the impossible dowry, that is frequently found in the epics. Abigail was the brave and wise woman who came to apologize for the fact that her foolish husband Nabal had refused 2 Sources for the history of Akila Agha: Oppenheim 1943:30–34; Macalister 1906:221ff, 286ff; Lynch 1849; Finn 1878:411–433; Hepworth Dixon 1885:109–116.

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to give in to one of Davids protection rackets. The laws of heroic romance dictate that David and Abigail should fall in love when they meet, and conveniently, Nabal died a few days later so they could marry. Bathseba was the manipulative beauty, who arranged a surprise erotic encounter, bathing on the roof. Once king, David served his people by delivering them from their enemies and expanding the country. His power is challenged time and again, but he always overcomes his enemies. Stories of other heroes are interwoven with that of the main hero: Saul and Absalom are heroes in their own right. The story of Goliath may have been ‘borrowed’ from another story cycle, which featured a hero named Elhanan. David’s personal code of heroic honour regularly transcends, even violates the tribal code of conduct of the times, when he refuses to kill Saul, and when he protects and revenges Saul’s family and followers, against the accepted codes of the tribe. And finally, David’s reputation as a poet was such that practically all the poetry in the bible has been ascribed either to him, or to his no less heroic son Solomon. There are certain themes, among the general, universal stories that make up the narrative, that, on comparison, point to a tribal, possibly bedouin, but certainly not urban, origin for at least parts of the epic. The political organization of society is tribal and largely predatory. Raiding and robbing, with a band of predatory outlaws, and protection practices were seen as perfectly legitimate and respectable in bedouin society until well into the 20th century. They were a means to establish power relations. The custom of single combat to precede or replace a full-blown battle between tribes, is a prominent theme in tribal competition. And finally, the competition over the leadership of the confederation between Benjamin and Judah reflects the common way of doing politics in the region until World War I. True to the nature of oral tradition, the various stories that made up the epic were flexible, fluid, changing in the telling, through the personal perspective of the narrator and the interaction with the audience. This made it possible for the ‘final’, edited version to create a world that was recognizable to a very different audience: in which the hero was the king of an established kingdom,

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with a well-defined power and territory, but in which the tribes that constituted it still played a major role. Through retelling and reinventing the narrative cycle became a symbol, an expression of the Israelite identity, in the various periods in which the realization of such an identity was vital for the unity of the group. By adapting the context of the stories the audience could identify with its past, and ‘reconstruct’ it. By emphasising the role of the deity in the interaction with David, the editors added a normative function to the epic, which is a vital part of cultural memory: proscribing a code of conduct through memories of a shared past.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Connelly, B. 1986 Arab Folk Epic and Identity (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press). Finn, J. 1878

Stirring Times, or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856 (London: C. Kegan Paul).

Forbes D. 1830 The Adventures of Hatim Tai: A Romance (transl. by D. Forbes; London: Oriental Translation Fund). Heath, P. 1996 The Thirsty Sword. Sirat Antar and the Arabic Popular Epic (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press). Hepworth Dixon W. 1885 The Holy Land (London: Bickers & Son). Lane E. W. 1871 An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Written in Egypt during the Years 1833, -34 and 35 (London: John Murray). Lord A. B. 1960 The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).

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Lynch W. F. 1849 Narrative of the US Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard). Macalister R. A. S. and E. W. G. Masterman 1906 Occasional Papers on the Modern Inhabitants of Palestine, Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 33–50, 110–114, 221–225, 286–291. Niditch, Susan 2003 “Oral Tradition and Biblical Scholarship”, Oral Tradition 18/1, 43–44. Oppenheim, M. 1943 Die Beduinen (Band II; Leipzig: Harrassowitz). Palgrave, W. G. 1866 Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63) (London: MacMillan & Co.). Rasheed, M. al-. 1991 Politics in an Arabian Oasis. The Rashidis of Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Tauris). Shryock, A. 1997 Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley: University of California Press).

JACOB AND DAVID, THE BIBLE’S LITERARY TWINS PHILIPPE WAJDENBAUM From James George Frazer’s Folklore in the Old Testament1 to Mary Douglas’ Leviticus as Literature,2 anthropologists have shown an interest in the Bible. For a long time, cultural evolutionism oriented the discipline. Some aspects of a given culture were thought to be survivals of a previous stage in the evolution of that society. Concerning the Old Testament, it was believed that the world of the ancient Israelites could be comprehended in comparison with societies that supposedly showed the same level of development. Frazer’s Golden Bough (1922) is filled with comparisons between the Old Testament and rituals and myths from societies once thought to be ‘primitive’. Starting from the 1950s, a shift was made with the rise of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology. For Lévi-Strauss, rituals or myths from a defined culture should not be analysed according to an evolutionary pattern (nor a functionalist one), but rather as part of an inner system of significances.3 Structural analysis of myths draws on the model of structural linguistics, for which a language must be analysed in comparison with other languages from the same linguistic group. Therefore, the first principle of structural analysis of myths is that: ‘Any myth consists in all of its variants’.4 Myths of a defined society should be analysed in com1 Sir J. G. Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend & Law (London: MacMillan, 1918). 2 M. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 3 C. Lévi-Strauss, ‘La structure des mythes’, in Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon, 1958), 235–65. 4 Lévi-Strauss, ‘La structure des mythes’, 249.

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parison with other myths from that same society, and afterwards with related myths from the neighbouring societies. As linguistics speaks of morphemes, phonemes and semantemes, which constitute language, Lévi-Strauss considers that a myth is constituted by small narrative units, which he calls mythemes. The structural analyst’s task is to try to identify these ‘mythemes’ as recurrent elements within the myths and their variants. During twenty years, Lévi-Strauss applied these methodological principles to the myths of the Native Americans. The results of his analysis were published in his four volume series, Les Mythologiques.5 Starting from Brazil, he was able to discover variants of a narrative called ‘The bird nester’ throughout both parts of the American continent. Lévi-Strauss demonstrated, in an extent that had not been reached by previous cultural studies, that all the Native Americans shared a cultural background that was widespread and pertained through the millennia of diffusion of this people—starting from the Bering Straight to the very ends of Patagonia. At the end of this long survey, Lévi-Strauss concludes that any myth is always derived from another version, which comes most of the time from another culture and from another language. A myth is always a ‘translation’ of a previous version, and it is also a perspective on another culture.6 Philosopher Paul Ricoeur believed that structural analysis was only valid for the myths of the Native Americans, whereas Western thought, either Greco-Roman or Judeo-Christian, was supposed to be characterised by hermeneutics—meaning that ‘our’ myths have always been interpreted by philosophers.7 In other words, Ricoeur maintained the evolutionist border between a so-called primitive thought, opposed to a sophisticated Western thought. Lévi-Strauss succeeded in proving Ricoeur and his fellow philosophers to be wrong. Any re-telling of a myth is an interpretation of it, and any interpretation of a myth is a 5 C. Lévi-Strauss, Mythologiques I: Le Cru et le Cuit (Paris: Plon, 1964); idem, Mythologiques II: Du miel aux cendres (Paris: Plon, 1966); idem, Mythologiques III: L’origine des manières de table (Paris: Plon, 1968); idem, Mythologiques IV: L’homme nu (Paris: Plon, 1971). 6 Lévi-Strauss, Mythologiques IV, 575. 7 P. Ricoeur, ‘Structure et herméneutique’, Esprit 322 (1963), 596– 626.

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new version of it as well. Therefore, all the philosophical (or even psychoanalytical) interpretations of myths are considered by LéviStrauss to be only new versions of these myths.8 Interpreting a myth, as do the philosophers, is only re-telling this myth—as do the successive narrators of every myth. Lévi-Strauss believes that only structural analysis can break this logical circle and avoid being a mere new version of a myth, since its role is to make explicit the relationships between the different variants of that myth. Once the structural analyst has demonstrated how a certain myth is derived from another one, and related several versions of this myth into a ‘group of transformations’,9 his task is over. Hence, the structural analyst will refrain in trying to find the supposed ‘hidden meaning’ of a myth. Lévi-Strauss believes that myths, although they are made of language, constitute a form of expression of the human mind that is beyond language, and that is somehow closer to music, which has no ‘meaning’ per se. Therefore, Lévi-Strauss suggests using not only linguistics but also music as a model in analysing myths.10 A full score sheet of a music orchestra can be read from the left to the right, showing the melody played by each instrument. From the top to the bottom, one reads what all instruments play together, the harmony. Melody and harmony are respectively the diachronic and synchronic dimensions of music. Lévi-Strauss proposes to read a myth in both its diachronic and synchronic dimensions, trying to identify ‘packs of relations’ that constitute the structure of the myth. When similar ‘mythemes’ are noticed—either between several variants of a myth or within the same myth—the analyst will have to compare them; which will allow him to understand the ‘pack of relations’. In this paper, I will apply Lévi-Strauss’ principles in comparing two characters of the Bible, Jacob and David, in order both to illustrate the method and try to demonstrate its relevance.11 Even though these Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, 249. Lévi-Strauss borrows this concept of a group of transformations or permutations from mathematics. 10 Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale. 11 The anthropologist Edmund Leach (from the functionalist school) was probably the first scholar to apply these principles to the Bible. The present article will in fact come to accordance with Leach’s observations 8 9

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biblical characters could have existed—it is not my purpose to discuss historicity in this paper—I will consider that the narratives about them may contain mythical elements. Jacob’s story is narrated in chapters 25 to 50 of Genesis (although the story focuses on Joseph starting from chapter 37). David’s story is related from 1 Sam. 16 to 1 Kings 2.12 In order to compare these books, one needs to consider the theories about their authorship. Jewish and Christian traditions attribute the writing of Genesis and the four legislative books of the Pentateuch to Moses; whereas Samuel would have written the book named after him. Although the character of Samuel dies before the end of the first volume, the tradition holds that his disciples would have finished his work.13 The modern ‘documentary hypothesis’, born in the nineteenth century, believes that several literary strata of the Pentateuch were written along the centuries of the history of Israel and Judah. Martin Noth’s theory—built in the 1940s—supposes that books from Deuteronomy to Kings were written by the same ‘Deuteronomistic writer’, whereas the ‘Tetrateuch’ was the edited collection of the J, E and P sources.14 If it were indeed the case, a comparison between Jacob and David should take into consideration how the chapters and verses of Genesis concerning Jacob are attributed to these three sources. It should be considered that the ‘Deuteronomistic History’ could result as well from several literary strata. Both the traditional religious view and the modern theological view suppose that several writers wrote the books from Genesis to Kings, throughout the centuries of ancient Israel’s history. However, another and unusual position was held by B. Spinoza, in the sevenconcerning the issue of David and Solomon’s legitimacy. See Edmund Leach, ‘The Legitimacy of Solomon: Some Structural Aspects of Old Testament History’ (1964), in his Genesis as Myth, and Other Essays (London, Jonathan Cape: 1969), 25–84. 12 And also in 1 Chronicles, but I will limit this comparison to what is referred to as the ‘Primary History’. 13 For the Jewish tradition, see the Talmud of Babylon, Baba Bathra, 15a. 14 M. Noth, The Deuteronomic History (JSOTSup, 15, Sheffield, 2nd edn, 1991).

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teenth century. Books from Genesis to Kings, including Ruth,15 could well be a unified piece of literature, written by one single author. Spinoza believed that the language, style and purpose of the whole narrative is fluent and coherent, therefore it could not have been written by Moses or any of the Israelite prophets that lived before the period described in the end of 2 Kings—the sixth century B.C. Spinoza believed that the scribe Ezra was the one who wrote the nine books from Genesis to Kings, based on previous documents—somewhere in the fifth century B.C., during the Persian domination of Judea.16 Spinoza also thought that another single writer had written the books of Daniel, Esther, Ezra and Nehemiah, during the times of the Maccabees.17 Although it has often regarded Spinoza as its patron, modern biblical scholarship has rarely considered his hypothesis of a single writer to be plausible— until the recent work of Prof. Jan-Wim Wesselius. Wesselius argues that Genesis-Kings is indeed a unified work, written by a single writer, who used Herodotus’ Histories as a major source of inspiration for both content and structure.18 Wesselius is the first scholar to theorize a direct dependence of the Bible upon a classical Greek source. My PhD dissertation was aimed to show that GenesisKings is indeed a unitary piece of work, inspired not only by Herodotus’ Histories but also by other major Greek writings, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Plato’s Laws.19

15 Following the Catholic canon of the Bible, the Book of Ruth is placed between Judges and I Samuel. Jewish and Protestant Bibles place it among the Writings (Ketuvim). 16 B. Spinoza, Theological and Political Treatise (1670), Chapter VIII. 17 Spinoza, Theological and Political Treatise, Chapter X. 18 J.-W. Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible (JSOTSup, 345; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). 19 P. Wajdenbaum, Analyse structurale de la Bible hébraïque – Les Argonautes du désert (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2008), to be published in English as Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible (CIS; London: Equinox, in press).

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Wesselius shows that similar stories appear in Genesis-Kings, either in close or remote chapters.20 For instance, there are two stories of Abraham pretending that his wife is his sister, in Gen. 12 and 20. In the Book of Samuel, we are told twice how David spared the life of Saul (1 Sam. 24 and 26), or twice how Saul committed suicide (1 Sam. 31 and 2 Sam. 1). These similar yet different narratives are often used as an argument for the documentary hypothesis: they would be the obvious remnants of several literary strata that were edited. Yet, some similar stories appear in GenesisKings separated by several volumes. Such is the case of the story of Loth and the angels in Sodom, in Gen. 19, which shows many common details with the story of the Levite and his concubine in Gibeah, in Judg. 19. For Wesselius, these doubled stories are part of what he calls a ‘linear literary dossier’, meaning that the writer(s) of Genesis-Kings deliberately tried to create an assembling of similar stories that were meant to echo and reflect each other, in order to create the illusion of a collection of genuine stories. As Herodotus himself often gives several versions of a story which he claims to have collected—in order to bolster the credibility of his own work21—the biblical writer is thought to have emulated this technique, yet leaving many clues for the reader to understand that his work should be read in regard of its Greek source(s) of inspiration. With this very brief overview of the different theories about the Bible’s authorship, I may now start the comparison between Jacob and David, by paying attention to similar narrative structures and their details. I will first review their stories separately, then will emphasise their similarities and differences. Jacob is the son of Isaac and Rebecca. For long, their union remained childless, until Rebecca became pregnant of twins. She could feel that the babes were fighting inside of her, and God told her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall 20 J.-W. Wesselius, God’s Election and Rejection, The Litterary Strategy of the Historical Books at the Beginning of the Bible, available in PDF on the author’s personal homepage: http://www.jwwesselius.nl/. 21 See K. M. Stott, Why Did They Write This Way? Reflections on References to Written Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature (LHB/OTS, 495; London: T & T Clark, 2008).

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serve the younger’ (Gen. 25:23). The first born son of Isaac and Rebecca is named Esau, meaning ‘hairy’ or ‘hirsute’. His hair is red—Hebrew admoni—(Gen. 25:25). After Esau, comes Jacob, holding his brother’s heel, thus he is named Yaakov, from Hebrew ekev—heel (Gen. 25:26). Growing up, Esau became a hunter, whereas Jacob was a simple man living under the tents. Isaac preferred Esau, and Rebecca preferred Jacob. One day, Esau came back famished from the fields, and begged his brother to give him some of the lentil stew he was cooking. Jacob accepted in exchange of Esau giving up his birthright to him. Esau was so starved that he despised his birthright for a lentil stew. Therefore, Esau was called Edom—‘reddish’, as the lentil stew—(Gen. 25:27–34). As Isaac got older, he decided to bless his elder son in order to make him his sole heir. He sent Esau to hunt some game and promised that he would give him his blessing. But Rebecca overheard this, and decided to send Jacob instead of Esau. Isaac was blind, but Jacob feared that his father would recognise him as he would touch his arms, which were not as hairy as Esau’s. Rebecca told Jacob to select two goats from the flock. With their hair, she covered Jacob’s arms; with their meat, she cooked a meal for Isaac. As Jacob entered his father’s tent with Esau’s clothes, the fake hair and the meal, Isaac asked who was coming in. As Jacob answered, Isaac seemed to recognise his voice. He then touched his arms, and was fooled. Isaac blessed Jacob, thinking he was Esau. Isaac said that his brothers would be submitted to him. Right after Isaac had blessed Jacob, Esau arrived with the game, and they both understood that Jacob had tricked them. Isaac could not undo his word, thus he granted Esau with a minor blessing. Esau was angry at his brother, and waited for Isaac to die soon, in order to kill Jacob (Gen. 27). Isaac and Rebecca decided to send Jacob to live with Rebecca’s brother, Laban, so that he could marry one of his daughters. Jacob asked Laban to marry his younger daughter Rachel. Laban accepted at the condition that Jacob would work seven years for Rachel’s hand. After the seven years, the marriage was celebrated, but Laban ordered his elder daughter, Leah, to enter Jacob’s tent. Jacob spent the night with Leah, thinking she was Rachel. In the morning, he complained to Laban, who explained that the younger daughter could not be married before the elder. Therefore, Jacob could marry Rachel a week later, but had to work another seven years for

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Laban (Gen. 29). From his two wives and their two servants, Bilha and Zilpah, Jacob begot twelve sons, who were the eponymous ancestors of Israel’s twelve tribes, and a daughter, Dinah. Leah gave birth to Judah, notably, and Rachel, to Benjamin (Gen. 30 and 35). After twenty years of working for Laban, Jacob decided to go back to Canaan, with his wives, children and cattle. Rachel stole the teraphim (the household gods) of her father. Laban pursued Jacob, and asked him why he had stolen his gods. Jacob ignored what Rachel had done, and promised to kill the one possessing the idols. Laban inspected Jacob’s camp. Rachel hid the teraphim under her camel’s saddle and pretended that she had her period, so that she would not stand up in front of her father. Laban renounced finding his teraphim, and made an oath with Jacob. A landmark called Mizpah would separate their respective lands (Gen. 31:49). As he was entering the land of Canaan, Jacob feared to meet his brother again, and sent messengers ahead of him. Jacob was informed that Esau was coming towards him with four hundred men. Jacob placed his wives and children in a safe place, and spent the night alone, awake. A mysterious man—God’s messenger— fought with him until dawn. As the man could not defeat him, he broke Jacob’s hip. The man tried to escape, but Jacob asked him to bless him. The man changed Jacob’s name into Israel, for he had fought with men and with God, and had prevailed (Gen. 32:29). In the morning, Jacob was limping because of his hip (Gen. 32:31). Jacob met his brother Esau, and bowed himself to the ground seven times. Esau ran to him, embraced him, and they wept. Jacob settled in Sechem. Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, was ravished by prince Sechem, son of Hamor. Sechem asked Jacob to marry his daughter, and Jacob accepted under the condition that the Sechemites would circumcise themselves. Although the Sechemites accepted Jacob’s request, Simeon and Levi, Jacob’s second and third sons, decided to avenge their sister’s honour, and massacred all the Sechemites (Genesis 34). Afterwards, Rachel died in delivering Benjamin (Gen. 35:16–20). Soon after, Ruben, Jacob’s elder son, raped his father’s concubine, Bilha (Gen. 35:22). Isaac died, Jacob and Esau buried him together. The reconciled brothers shared their father’s land. Jacob would keep Canaan, and Esau would keep the land of Seir (Gen. 36:6–8). From thereon, Genesis focuses on the character of Joseph. The rivalry between Jacob and Esau seems to set the framework

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for the future rivalry between the kingdoms of Israel and Edom. Jacob has stolen Esau’s birthright and Isaac’s blessing by treachery. He tried to impersonate his brother by covering his arms with the hair of a goat, yet Isaac seemed to recognise his voice. Esau was red-haired, and Jacob walked with a limp after his fight with God’s angel. All these details will now find accurate—and sometimes inverted—echoes in the Book of Samuel. As any myth consists in all its variants, we shall not try to understand the story of Jacob for itself, but rather in regard of what appears to be its counterpart, the story of David. Twelve generations after Jacob, Israel has become a country of twelve tribes, who are the descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons. The land of Canaan has been conquered by Joshua’s army, and divided according to a pattern that was given to Moses by God (Num. 26 and Josh. 14–19). The Book of Judges relates how the lack of national unity between the tribes would eventually bring Israel to a civil war against the tribe of Benjamin (Judg. 19–21). After this troubled era, the Israelites asked the prophet Samuel to install a king upon them. Although Samuel warned them—upon God’s words—that a king would behave as a tyrant (1 Sam. 8:8–18), he granted their request and anointed Saul of Benjamin as the first king of Israel, during a private ceremony. Afterwards, Samuel gathered all the tribes of Israel in Mizpah to anoint the king publically, and the lot designated Benjamin’s tribe, the family of Matri, and Saul son of Kish. Samuel sent men to search for him, and Saul arose from the baggage where he hid himself (1 Sam. 10:22). As he disobeyed God’s orders, Saul lost kingship over Israel and was to be replaced by another (1 Sam. 15). Samuel went to Bethlehem, to the family of Jesse, to find God’s new chosen one. It was Jesse’s youngest son, David. ‘Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one’ (1 Sam. 16:12). Samuel anointed David as the new king of Israel, but yet Saul remained in place. David became Saul’s private musician, since an evil spirit sent by God tormented him. David’s lyre would appease Saul’s soul. David defeated the giant Philistine warrior Goliath, and he became a popular hero in Israel (1 Sam. 17–18). Saul grew jealous of David’s success. First, he proposed him the hand of his elder daughter Merab, but he eventually gave her to another man (1 Sam. 18:17–19). Saul planed to have David killed by the Philistines. He challenged David to bring a hundred

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foreskins of Philistines in exchange for the hand of his youngest daughter, Michal. David succeeded in this challenge and even brought two hundred foreskins of Philistines (1 Sam. 18:27).22 David married Michal, but Saul planned to kill him. Michal was informed of it, and helped her new husband in escaping her father’s wrath. She put the teraphim in their bed, covered them with a blanket, and fashioned a pillow of goat hair to resemble David’s head, and pretended that he was lying sick in bed. Meanwhile, David ran away. Saul’s men entered Michal and David’s room and discovered the trick (1 Sam. 19:11–17). David made an alliance with the Philistines, and simulated some attacks on the Israelites (1 Sam. 20–24). As the war went on between Israel and the Philistines, Saul was killed on the battlefield with three of his sons, including Jonathan, David’s best friend (1 Sam. 31). The second part of the Book of Samuel relates how the house of David and the house of Saul fought for the kingship over Israel. Ishbaal,23 Saul’s son, had the support of Abner, Saul’s mighty general. David had the support of his nephews the sons of Zeruyah, Joab, Abishai and Asahel. Ishbaal quarrelled with Abner about his relation with Saul’s concubine, and Abner decided to make an alliance with David. Israel and Judah acclaimed David as the new king, thanks to the precious support of Abner. But soon after, Joab murdered Abner, as a revenge for the death of his brother Asahel, whom Abner had loyally killed during a battle. David organized national funerals for Abner, and condemned this murder; yet Joab was not punished (2 Sam. 1–3). Ishbaal was in turn murdered by two men of the tribe of Benjamin, but David executed them (2 Sam. 4). Once all his rivals from the house of Saul were dead, David conquered Jerusalem, which was by then inhabited by the Jebusites, and made it his capital. In the following chapters, David stretched the borders of his kingdom, by submitting his 22 Some manuscripts of the Septuagint mention one hundred. We will see further why two hundred, as in the Massoretic text, is most likely the right lesson. 23 Ishbaal and Mephibaal are called Ishboshet and Mephiboshet in the Massoretic Bibles. In this case, we should follow the Septuagint, since it appears that the Massoretes wanted to remove the name of Canaanite god Baal, replacing it by ‘boshet’, meaning shame.

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neighbours: the Philistines, the Moabites, the Arameans, the Ammonites, the Amalecites, and the Edomites. ‘David won a name for himself. When he returned, he killed eighteen thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt. He put garrisons in Edom; throughout all Edom he put garrisons, and all the Edomites became David’s servants’ (2 Sam. 8:13–14). Afterwards, David inquired whether Saul had left an heir, whom he would like to honour for the sake of Jonathan. Ziba, a former servant of Saul, told him about the crippled son of Jonathan, Mephibaal. This character was introduced to the reader in the previous chapters: ‘Saul’s son Jonathan had a son who was crippled in his feet. He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled; and, in her haste to flee, it happened that he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibaal’ (2 Sam. 4:4). David asked for this man to be brought in front of him. David offered Mephibaal the lands that belonged to Saul, and the privilege to eat everyday at the king’s table (2 Sam. 9). Further, David committed a crime. He fell in love with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, a brave Hittite soldier who was fighting in David’s army in a war against the Ammonites. Bathsheba became pregnant from her union with David. David had Uriah sent back by Joab to Jerusalem, in order to make him sleep with his wife, but Uriah refused and preferred to sleep outside, as an act of solidarity with his fellows left on the battlefield. As Bathsheba’s pregnancy would be discovered, she would have been accused of adultery by her husband, thus David decided to have Uriah killed. He trusted Uriah with a sealed letter meant for Joab, in which David told his general to let Uriah alone in the forefront of the hardest fighting, so that he would die (2 Sam. 11:15). Uriah died according to David’s plan. After the period of mourning, David married Bathsheba. But God was displeased by this act of David, and he cursed him, through the words of the prophet Nathan. ‘Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun’ (2 Sam. 12:11). David and Bathsheba’s first child died aged seven days. David lamented, then had a second son from Bathsheba, Solomon. Later, Amnon, David’s elder son, fell in love with his halfsister, Tamar. He invited her to his place, and raped her. David was

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informed of it, became angry, yet he did not punish Amnon (2 Sam. 13:22). Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, decided to avenge his sister’s honour. He invited Amnon and all the princes to a banquet, and had Amnon killed. From thereon, started Absalom’s rebellion against David. Absalom first fled to his maternal grandfather, and came back to Jerusalem after three years. He then waged a campaign against David, and gained the people’s support, so much that David had to flee from Jerusalem with his personal guard. ‘Ahithophel said to Absalom, “Go in to your father’s concubines, the ones he has left to look after the house; and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself odious to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened”. So they pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel’ (2 Sam. 16:21–22). So was Nathan’s prophecy fulfilled. David’s army defeated Absalom’s army, and Absalom escaped on his mule. His long hair got entangled in the branches of an oak-tree, and his mule left him hanging. Joab and his men killed him, although David had asked them to spare his son’s life (2 Sam. 18:9–15). David took back possession of his palace, but mourned his son, for he knew that he was paying the price for Uriah’s assassination. I have summarised Jacob and David’s cycles, emphasising their similar aspects. I shall now compare them. After seven years of work, Jacob married Leah, Laban’s elder daughter, instead of Rachel, the youngest one, because of Laban’s treachery. He married Rachel the next week, but had to work another seven years for her hand. David was to marry Saul’s elder daughter Merab, but she was given to another man. Then he was to marry Michal, the youngest one, for the price of one hundred foreskins of Philistines, but he brought two hundred foreskins. As Jacob who worked fourteen years instead of seven, David paid the double price to his treacherous father-in-law to gain the hand of his youngest daughter.24 The difference is that Jacob married the two sisters while they were both alive, which is forbidden by Leviticus 18:18. Moreover, Leah was the mother of Judah, David’s ancestor, and Rachel was the 24 This comparison suggests that the Massoretic mention of two hundred foreskins is thus correct.

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mother of Benjamin, Saul’s ancestor. The rivalry between Leah and Rachel in giving children to Jacob (Gen. 30) seems to be reflected in the tribes of Judah and Benjamin’s rivalry over Israel’s kingship. Jacob left Laban after twenty years at his service, and Rachel stole her father’s teraphim. She hid them under her camel’s saddle and pretended to have her period, so she would not have to stand up in front of her father. Michal helped her husband David to flee from her father Saul, by hiding the teraphim in their bed, with a pillow of goat hair on top of it, pretending that David was ill. Laban renounced finding his teraphim, while they were hidden in the baggage of Jacob’s camp, right in Rachel’s tent. During Saul’s public ceremony of anointment, as Samuel was looking for him, he hid himself in the baggage. Therefore, it cannot be a coincidence if the places where both scenes took place bear the same name, Mizpah (Gen. 31:49; 1 Sam. 10:17). Rachel simulating to have her period and sitting on the teraphim, can be considered as metaphorically brooding them. She later died in delivering Benjamin, the ancestor of Saul. On the other hand, Michal lying in bed with the teraphim replacing her husband, seems to suggest a sexual symbolism for the statue. We come to understand that both stories reflect each other, possibly bearing a subtle significance, through a series of substitutions: the king requested by Israel is himself an idol, represented by the teraphim. Indeed, the speech of Samuel (1 Sam. 8:8–18) insists on the catastrophe that kingship will be for Israel. Applying LéviStrauss’ synchronic reading, we may consider that the teraphim hidden under Rachel, which Laban gave up, somehow surface again in the form of Saul himself, hidden in the luggage in Mizpah.25 Saul incarnates at the same time the teraphim of Rachel, but he also plays a new Laban, as he is a treacherous father-in-law for David. Thus, as Saul’s men enter his daughter’s room, they recover—at last—Laban’s long searched-for teraphim. We have here a first example of how a myth can be read in both its diachronic and synchronic dimensions, like a full score sheet of music. The ‘pack of relations’, which Lévi-Strauss suggests to find, appears in 25 Although one could argue that Mizpah in Genesis and in Samuel are two different places, I believe that the occurrence of that same name in both stories is significant.

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the thread of the stolen and hidden teraphim. But we must compare the stories further to understand the complete framework. David’s rivals all died: First Saul and three of his sons were killed by the Philistines, then Abner was killed by Joab, and at last Ishbaal was murdered by his own men. All of this served David’s accession to kingship over Israel. As David grew stronger, he conquered and submitted the neighbouring lands, including Edom. David won a name for himself and installed garrisons in Edom (2 Sam. 8:13–14). Shortly after, he welcomed the crippled son of Jonathan at his court. Although it seems that David wanted to show his generosity and mercy, the reader may also think that David wanted to keep a close eye on Saul’s last inheritor. He invited Mephibaal to eat at his table everyday, exactly as Saul used to invite David. A few days of absence would be interpreted as a rebellion (1 Sam. 21). David’s legitimacy on the throne of Israel was rather fragile. The people did not witness David’s unction by Samuel, and they accepted David as their king because of Abner’s support. But Abner was murdered by Joab, David’s nephew and general. As Saul had left an heir to the throne, David saw him as a threat. After Absalom’s revolt, Sheba son of Bikri, a man of Benjamin, accused David of being a usurper of the throne (2 Sam. 20). The conflict between the house of Saul and the house of David resides thus in the fact that David has robbed Mephibaal of his right to the kingship over Israel. Let us pay attention to their respective physical characteristics. David is first described as admoni, ruddy or red-haired (1 Sam. 16:12), as was Esau (Gen. 25:25). Both texts use the same precise word. On the other hand, Mephibaal walked with a limp (2 Sam. 4:4), as did Jacob (Gen. 32:31)—although Jacob was hurt at his hip, whereas Mephibaal was crippled in his two feet. In Genesis, the rival twin-brothers fight for their birthright and their father’s blessing. One of them was red-haired, the other walked with a limp after fighting with God. In the Book of Samuel, David, who incarnates a new Jacob, was red-haired himself, and he defeated Edom, thus fulfilling God’s promise to Rebecca (Gen. 25:23) and Isaac’s blessing (Gen. 27:28–29). Soon after, David robbed his rival Mephibaal, who walked with a limp, of his right to the throne. It appears that the rivals have exchanged their physical attributes. In Genesis, Jacob feared his brother, and tried to impersonate him, precisely by covering his arms with goat hair (Gen. 27:16). The goat hair ap-

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pears again in David’s story, when Michal placed a pillow of goat hair on top of the teraphim (1 Sam. 19:13) in order to simulate David’s hair—which was as red as Esau’s. It seems like David is a new incarnation of Jacob—rather of Israel—who has managed to acquire Esau’s strength, symbolised by his red hair, and to reject Jacob’s limping onto his rival Mephibaal—a limp that seemed to disqualify him to any pretension to the throne. The initial rivalry between the twin brothers of Genesis was transposed into the rivalry between the houses of Saul and David, between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, with an inversion of the physical characteristics. The comparison between Jacob and David stretches further. Both their daughters were raped, Dinah and Tamar, and both Jacob and David did not punish the assaulter. Therefore, the brother(s) decided to avenge their sister’s honour. As Simeon and Levi massacred the Sechemites and prince Sechem (Gen. 34), Absalom murdered his brother Amnon (2 Sam. 13). A story that opposed Jacob and his family with the Canaanites in Genesis, was reproduced in 2 Samuel within David’s family. At last, as Ruben raped his father’s concubine, Bilha (Gen. 35:22), Absalom defiled the ten concubines of David, in the sight of all Israel (2 Sam. 16:22). Jacob and David’s story mirror each other. Even though they take place in different chronological frameworks, some significant similar details seem to have been left in order for the reader to compare them. The level of accuracy of these similarities could hardly result from the coincidences of an oral transmission. Rather, they seem to stem from a conscious and deliberate literary strategy—the same that Wesselius points out: the creation of doubled narratives that reflect each other within Genesis-Kings. LéviStrauss’ reading of a myth in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions appears to be relevant for the Bible. Jacob, Laban and Rachel are mirrored by their counterparts, David, Saul and Michal. Yet, this symmetry is punctuated with some inversions: the red hair and the limp were exchanged between the hero and his rival—from Jacob and Esau, i.e. Israel and Edom, to David and Mephibaal, i.e. Judah and Benjamin. By a game of substitutions, the teraphim seem to impersonate Israel’s idolatrous will of becoming as the other nations—therefore rejecting God’s election (1 Sam. 8:7). Kingship was a fatal request that lead the ideal State of twelve

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tribes founded by Joshua to its eventual downfall. Israel was initially meant to remain kingless and depending solely upon its sacred Law, given to Moses in the wilderness. But the Book of Kings relates how the kings of Israel and Judah grew unfaithful to Moses’ Law, from Solomon’s apostasy (1 Kings 11) to Manasseh’s outrages (2 Kings 21); all of which caused Yahweh to destroy both Israel and Judah. Lévi-Strauss’ method suggests comparing a group of myths from a cultural area with another group of myths, from a close cultural area in contact with the first one. The symmetry between Jacob and David could well result from a concerted and conscious intention of the biblical writer(s). In order to prove or disprove this thesis, we now have to consider—briefly—a cultural and literary tradition that may have had an impact on the biblical writing— Greek mythology. Indeed, Jacob’s story shows several similar points with the cycle of Heracles and his ancestors. The twins Acrisius and Proetus fought each other in their mother’s womb. As they grew up, they were enemies for long, but eventually reconciled and shared their father’s land (Apollodorus, Library, 2, 2, 1). Acrisius was the grandfather of Perseus. Perseus was himself the grandfather of Alcmene, who was Zeus’ lover. As Alcmene was about to give birth to Heracles, Zeus told the gods that this son of his would have dominion over all the others. Zeus’ wife Hera, jealous of her husband’s infidelity, made him swear by the oath of the gods what he had just said. She then asked Ilithya, the goddess helping women in labour, to delay Alcmene’s delivery, and to hasten Eurystheus’ birth, he who was also a descendant of Perseus, hence of Zeus. Therefore, Heracles was submitted to the orders of Eurystheus, and had to perform his famous twelve labours for him. Zeus was thus fooled by his wife so that he gave the supremacy to an heir he had not chosen, but he could not undo his word (Homer, Iliad XIX, 90–125; Apollodorus, Library, 2, 4, 5). We see a resemblance of these narratives with Jacob and Esau fighting in their mother’s womb (Gen. 25:22), being rivals, until their eventual reconciliation and sharing of their father’s land. Moreover, Rebecca’s helping of Jacob to receive Isaac’s blessing instead of Esau

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(Gen. 27) strongly resembles Hera’s treachery towards Zeus.26 During his youth, Heracles met king Thestius, who offered the hero to sleep with one of his fifty daughters, as a reward for having killed a fierce lion. By treachery, Thestius sent each night another of his daughters in Heracles’ bed, until he slept with all of them, thinking it was always the same woman (Apollodorus, Library, 2, 4, 9; Diodorus Siculus, Library, IV, 29, 4). This recalls how Jacob slept with Leah, thinking that she was Rachel, because of Laban’s deception. Quite surprisingly, Gen. 25–28 seems to follow the same course of events as in Heracles and his ancestors’ story—as found in Roman era ‘handbooks’ of Greek mythology, such as Apollodorus and Diodorus Siculus’ Libraries. Indeed, these books relate Heracles’ complete cycle in its chronological order. However, this mythical cycle is known through various isolated episodes from much earlier sources, such as Homer. The rest of Heracles’ cycle can be related with accuracy to another part of Genesis-Kings, precisely the chapters concerning Samson (Judg. 13–16)—but we cannot analyse them here. Yet another theme of Heracles and his ancestor’s cycle appears in the biblical chapters that we have analysed. Proetus, Acrisius’ rival twin-brother, welcomed the hero Bellerophon. Proetus’ wife, Antea, fell in love with Bellerophon, but he refused to lie with her. She then accused Bellerophon of trying to seduce her.27 Proetus could not kill Bellerophon because of the sacred rules of hospitality, so he sent him to his father-in-law, bearing a sealed letter that contained orders for its receiver to kill Bellerophon (Homer, Iliad, VI, 150–160, Apollodorus, Library, 2, 3, 1). This theme appears in 2 Sam. 11, when David got rid of the embarrassing Uriah. Even though this theme of the fatal letter appears as well in the NeoAssyrian text about King Sargon of Akkad,28 from the seventh century B.C., the relationship between Genesis-Kings and the Greek 26 Both these similarities were noticed by Martin L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 441 n. 7. 27 A well-known motif in Greek tragedies, appearing as well in the story of Joseph, Gen. 39:7–20, and in the Egyptian tale of the Two Brothers. 28 See W. W. Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scripture, I: Canonical Compositions for the Biblical World (Leiden & New York: E.J. Brill, 1997).

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tradition seems to show more connections—what Lévi-Strauss would identify as a pack of relations. I have tried to demonstrate the strong similarities between Jacob in Genesis and David in the Book of Samuel. We could either think that the writer(s) of Samuel deliberately tried to echo Genesis, or that the writer(s) of Genesis and Samuel were the same person(s). An internal comparison of the biblical books may not be sufficient to answer that question. Yet a careful comparison with Greek literature may offer us a key. Indeed, the Greek tradition stretches from earliest written sources such as Homer and Hesiod, to late Roman era authors—plus an immense iconographic tradition. The history of Greek literature can be traced along the centuries, while the Bible is a corpus whose date and authorship are still heatedly disputed. As Greece colonized Judea during two centuries, it is likely that Greek culture may have had a strong impact on the writing of the Bible—bearing in mind that there is no historical evidence of its existence before the Qumran scrolls.29 A biblical influence on Greek literature—such as the Church Fathers held—seems unlikely. However, a WestSemitic influence on the early formation of Greek mythology is quite certain. In this chicken-or-the-egg situation, structural analysis may be a logical tool helping us define who borrowed from whom. It seems to me that in creating a diptych comprising Jacob and David, the biblical author(s) dispatched several themes from Heracles and his ancestors’ cycle between Genesis and Samuel. It seems that he used the motifs of the fighting twins (1), the wife favouring one son against the father’s choice (2), and the man sleeping with different sisters because of the father-in-law’s deception (3)—to create episodes of Jacob in Genesis, while he used the motif of the fatal letter (4) for David in 2 Samuel; a motif which he found in the Greek sources, right between motifs (1) and (2). Although we know motifs (1) and (3) from Roman era writings, motifs (2) and (4) are both narrated in Homer’s Iliad. Therefore we may infer that N. P. Lemche, ‘The Old Testament – a Hellenistic Book ?’, in L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? (JSOTSup, 317 / ESHM, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 287–318; T. L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 29

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the biblical writer(s), if living either during the Persian or Hellenistic eras, may have had knowledge of Heracles’ full cycle. Moreover, one can find many other common motifs in the Book of Samuel and the Iliad. For instance, Mephibaal’s limping, caused by an accident in his youth, reminds of Hephaistos’ fall from Mount Olympus, causing him to be lame (Iliad XVIII, 395–400). Absalom’s rebellion against his father and the raping of David’s concubines (reflected in Genesis in Ruben’s raping of Bilha) finds an accurate echo in the story of Phoenix, who, under his mother’s advice, raped the concubine of his father King Amyntor, and fled into exile (Iliad, XI, 440–480). The possibility of a direct dependence of Genesis-Kings upon Greek sources can only be demonstrated through an extensive analysis of all their similarities. This was the aim of my complete PhD dissertation, in which I explained how the major Greek mythical cycles—such as Heracles, the Argonauts, the Trojan War, the Theban cycle—were used by the author(s) of Genesis-Kings as literary sources of inspiration in order to give life, in the form of a national epic, to the Ideal State conceived by Plato in his Laws. As we cannot discuss all these points in this paper, let us focus on the chapters we have analysed. By distorting the biblical narrative through a synchronic reading, we have come to understand that Jacob and David were conceived as ‘literary twins’. Jacob’s redhaired twin brother is indeed Esau, in Genesis, yet in Samuel, appears the red-haired descendant of Jacob, King David. Jacob’s story ends up happily, since he found back the son whom he thought was dead, Joseph. David, on the other hand, lost many of his sons for the sin he committed, Uriah’s assassination. It is significant that this element appears only in David’s cycle, and is not reflected in Jacob’s. Although Jacob and David share many events of their lives in common, David failed where Jacob succeeded, and vice-versa. David defeated the kingdom of Edom, gaining Esau’s coveted strength, symbolised by the redness of his hair—whereas Jacob still feared his brother and bowed to him on the ground for his forgiveness. The reign of David seems to be the acme of Israel’s glory. But it can be seen as well as the beginning of Israel’s downfall. Michal, for she despised her husband, never delivered a legitimate heir to the throne of Israel, as he would have been the descendant of both Saul and David (2 Sam. 6:20–23). Instead of an heir,

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Michal metaphorically gave birth to the inert teraphim found in her bed, symbolising Israel’s idolatrous worship of its own king. The quarrels of legitimacy brought Solomon to the throne, he who murdered his own brother Adonijah (1 Kings 2); he who in his old days built temples to foreign gods (1 Kings 11), bringing upon Israel the divine sentence of schism—leading to the inexorable downfalls of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Contrastively, Jacob has achieved Israel’s unity, through the reconciliation of his twelve sons in Egypt, they who represent the future twelve tribes of biblical Israel. The cruel war of succession after Saul’s death, leading to the many assassinations between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, is inversely reflected in Judah imploring Joseph— disguised as an Egyptian—to kill him instead of Benjamin (Gen. 44:18–34). Genesis’ happy ending, showing a merciful Joseph who renounces his vengeance against his brothers who tried to kill him, is the inverted image of Israel’s tragic demise in the Books of Samuel and Kings. One message seems to surface from this complex play of mirrors. The Bible strongly criticizes monarchy as the eventual cause of Israel’s destruction. The twelve tribes should have prevailed without a king upon them, as Samuel warned them. By electing a king, Israel rejected God and its sacred Law.30 It seems that what the supporters of the documentary hypothesis would identify as redundancies in the biblical narrative— as the remnants of the editing of several literary traditions31—may in fact result from a deliberate strategy of the biblical author(s) of Genesis-Kings. A careful analysis of the details tends to reveal that the books of Genesis and Samuel were conceived together, possibly based on Greek sources of inspiration—but this latter assertion needs considerable further arguments. The documentary hypotheFor the idea of Genesis–Kings as a unified work meant to criticize Israel’s will of power, see J. Cazeaux, Le refus de la guerre sainte – Josué, les Juges et Ruth (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998); Saül, David et Salomon (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2003); Le partage de minuit, essai sur la Genèse (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006); La contre épopée du désert – L’Exode, le Lévitique, les Nombres (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2007). 31 See J. Van Seters, The Edited Bible. The Curious History of the ‘Editor’ in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006). Van Seters demonstrates how this model owes its principles to Homeric criticism. 30

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sis, in all its irreconcilable variants,32 can be closely related to the evolutionist paradigm of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, it supposes that the faith, traditions, and sacred texts of Israel would have evolved along the centuries, and that this evolution would have left apparent traces within the alleged strata of the biblical text itself. As cultural anthropology does not hold the evolutionist paradigm as valid anymore, we may ask why does a great part of biblical scholarship still give credit to such a hypothesis. The evolutionist reading undermines the possibility that the Bible is a fine piece of literature, which means efficiently what it means—in other words, that there was the will of a conscious author behind it. We saw in the introduction that according to Lévi-Strauss, any interpretation of a myth is necessarily a new version of that myth. In this regard, the documentary hypothesis—say in Noth’s version, still the most influential one—can be seen as a modern version of the religious tradition that holds biblical characters as the successive authors of biblical books. In fact, believing that King Josiah published Deuteronomy is not so remote from believing that Moses wrote it, since both Josiah and Moses are biblical characters. Even Spinoza, who was first to suggest a single author for GenesisKings, believed him to be Ezra, himself a biblical character. Both the religious tradition and modern theories share in common the belief that the writing of the Bible spread along several centuries. This belief implicitly serves a purpose: bearing a single author for the most important biblical books seems in turn to undermine the possibility of a divine inspiration—which is at the core of Jewish and Christian faiths. Structural analysis not only offers us a tool to apprehend given myths, it also stretches our conception of what is a myth. With the example discussed here, we have first seen that a biblical story can be analysed in regard of another biblical story. Jacob and David’s stories seem to have been conceived simultaneously. On a second level, we noticed that these biblical stories can be related to another See F. A. J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup, 251 / CIS, 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). For Nielsen, the very fact that all these variants are irreconcilable makes the whole theory not scientific. 32

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cultural tradition, that of ancient Greece. A complete demonstration is needed to prove this point. And on a third level, we come to understand that the modern theories about the emergence of the Bible may be themselves part of the biblical myth. Thus, the Bible, what we refer to as ‘Greek mythology’—which we still hold as part of our ‘Western culture’—and theological hypotheses born in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, all form together what LéviStrauss would call a ‘group of transformations’. The ensemble can be stretched further, as mythologies from the ancient Near East and the Indo-European world should be taken into consideration. In conclusion, we may understand that the reflection between Jacob and David was constructed in order to illustrate that Israel is at the same time a person (Jacob), a State (the twelve tribes) and its king. Being the reflection of his ancestor Jacob-Israel, David is himself Israel. Such a mimetic consideration is at the core of the political thinking of Plato in his Republic. The State is a soul on a wider scale (Plato, Republic, 368 a-e)—hence Jacob becoming a twelve tribe State through his twelve sons. That biblical Israel seems to be modelled after Plato’s utopia in his Laws (see Plato, Laws 745 b-c for the division of the land into twelve tribes by lottery—each lot divided by paternal families and meant to remain immutable, quite exactly as in Lev. 25, Num. 26 and Josh. 14–19). A king enslaved by his own erotic instincts—such as David in love with Bathsheba—would commit the foulest crimes—as killing her husband—and would be a tyrant for his own people (Republic, 575a). By extending the structural analysis of the Bible to what I believe to be its platonic roots, we may come to understand its highly political message. By extending this structural analysis to biblical laws, one could see the important links with Plato’s political utopia created in his Laws. Therefore, the creation of the diptych opposing Jacob and David, the Bible’s literary twins, seems to frame the core of the Bible, the legislative books, with two characters that both incarnate Israel.

INDEX OF AUTHORS Aarde, A. van, 51 Abu El-Haj, N., 31 Ackerman, S., 89 Albera, D., 23 Albertz, R., 7, 27, 90, 109 Althusser, L., 65 Ariès, P., 29 Atkinson, D., 114 Aunger, R., 16 Avalos, H., 31 Bainbridge, W.S., 43 Banks, M., 101 Barber, N., 40 Barth, F., 10, 95, 96, 102 Barrett, J.L., 78, 80, 82 Bartlett, R., 114 Bauman, Z., 51 Beck, U., 49 Benjamin, D.C., 6 Berlinerblau, J., 32, 77, 85, 86 Blaikie, N., 45 Blok, A., 23 Bodel, J., 77 Boer, R., 32 Boje, D.M., 63 Bottomore, T., 37 Bourdieu, P., 3, 15, 83, 84 Boyer, P., 82 Bromberger, C., 23 Brønsted, J., 97 Brooks, S.S., 112 Broshi, M., 112

Brown, G., 57 Brown, P.C., 114 Bryman, A., 45 Burguière, A., 16 Burke, P., 17 Candau, J., 34 Capps, D., 55 Carter, C.E., 7 Cartledge, T.W., 88 Causse, A., 5, 111 Cavalletto, G., 37 Cazeaux, J., 156 Chalcraft, D.J., 4, 5, 10, 26, 39, 49, 51, 61–63, 65, 109 Chalmers, A.F., 37 Chamboredon, J.-C., 3 Chaney, M.L., 108, 117, 122 Clifford, J., 16 Cohen, S., 49 Collins, J.J., 62 Conder, C.R., 119, 120 Connelly, B., 128, 132 Cook, S.L., 109 Coote, R.B., 108, 109, 112, 122 Crippen, T., 40 Crook, Z., 6 Crossley, J.G., 6 Cryer, F.H., 23 Czarniawska, B., 63 Davies, P.R., 23, 30, 81 159

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Delanty, G., 37 deMaris, R., 6 Destro, A., 17, 18, 23 Dever, W.G., 85, 89 Dixon, W. Hepworth, 133 Domeris, W.R., 107, 109 Douglas, M., 6, 28, 137 Duncan-Jones, R.P., 117 Durkheim, É., 41, 44, 50, 56, 57, 59 Duby, G., 29 Edwards, R., 53 Elayi, J., 24 Ellickson, R.C., 114 Elliott, J.H., 6, 39, 107 Elton-Chalcraft, S., 53 Eriksen, T.H., 26 Esler, P.F., 7, 39, 56 Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 16, 33 Fairclough, N., 63 Faroqhi, S., 124, 125 Faust, A., 10, 26, 93-104, 111 Fay, B., 37 Fenn, R., 40 Feinman, G.M., 110 Finley, M.I., 125 Finn, J., 133 Fischer, G., 111 Flew, A., 37 Forbes, D., 129 Foucault, M., 8, 49 Frankl, George, 42 Frazer, J.G., 137 Frick, F.S., 111 Garbini, G., 22 Garnsey, P., 123 Geertz, C., 16, 17, 21, 112 George, H., 111 Gere, C., 111 Giddens, A., 49, 54, 58

Glaser, B., 51, 63 Goldthorpe, J.E., 37 Goody, J., 22 Gordon, M.M., 37 Gossai, H., 109 Gottwald, N.K., 5, 7, 19, 38, 94, 99, 108, 110, 117, 126 Grabbe, L.L., 28, 81, 113 Gudme, A.K. de Hemmer, 10 Guillaume, P., 10-11, 114 Hagedorn, A., 39 Halbawchs, M., 29 Hallo, W.W., 153 Halstead, P., 123 Hampton, S.J., 38 Handy, L.K., 29 Harrington, A., 41 Harris, M., 20 Harris, T., 57 Harris, W.V., 23 Hartog, F., 35 Heath, P., 129, 130 Heffelfinger, K.M., 21 Hobsbawm, E.J., 25 Holladay, J.S., Jr., 86 Hollis, M., 37 Homans, G., 50 Hoppe, J.L., 109 Horsley, R.A., 47 Houston, W.J., 109 Hughes, J., 37 Humphrey, C., 79, 82, 83 Inkeles, A., 37 Islamoglu, H., 110 Jay, N., 83 Jensen, H.J. Lundager, 28 Jensen, J., 96, 97 Jones, S., 26

INDEX OF AUTHORS Kaiser, W.C., Jr., 20 Keel, O., 27 Kennedy, H., 114 Kessler, R., 24, 109, 117 Kloppenborg, J.S., 123 Knauf, E.A., 20 Kohl, P.L., 32 Laidlaw, J., 79, 82, 83 Lambton, A.K.S., 125 Lane, E., 128 Lang, B., 6, 107, 108, 117 Lash, S., 65 Law, J., 48 Lawson, E.T., 78-80, 82 Lazar, D., 37 Leach, E., 6, 139, 140 Lee, R.M.L., 42 Le Goff, J., 16 Lemche, N.P., 7, 10, 11, 16, 19, 20, 24, 26, 27, 30, 94, 96, 154 Lemert, C., 51 Lévi-Strauss, C., 11, 18, 32, 137-139, 149, 151, 152, 154, 157, 158 Levin, C., 110 Liverani, M., 18, 20, 22, 28, 30 Long, V.P., 20 Longman, T., III, 20 Lopreato, J., 40 Lord, A.B., 127, 128 Luomanen, P., 43 Lury, C., 65 Lynch, W.F., 133 Macalister, R.A.S., 133 MacKenzie, N., 37 Malina, Bruce J., 5, 6, 16, 23, 31 Malinowski, B., 15

161

Marcus, G.E., 16 Márquez Rowe, I., 113 Marshall, G., 57 Martin, R., 124 Martindale, D., 37 Marx, K., 46, 56, 59 Masalha, N., 32, 34 Matthews, V.H., 6 Mayes, A.D.H., 39 McCauley, R.N., 78 McDonald, L., 43 McNutt, P., 21 Meeks, W.H., 6, 38 Mendenhall, G.E., 5 Meyers, C.E., 7, 87 Milgrom, J., 88 Millet, P., 116 Mills, C.W., 50 Morris, M.B., 48 Nadan, A., 121, 125 Neufeld, D., 6 Neyrey, J.H., 6, 16 Niditch, S., 127 Niehr, H., 27 Nielsen, F.A.J., 157 Nietzsche, F., 15 Noth, M., 140 Oestigaard, T., 23, 26, 32, 103, 104 Oggiano, I., 27 Olyan, S.M., 9, 28, 77, 78, 88, 89 Oppenheim, A., 112 Oppenheim, M., 133 Osiek, C., 39 Overholt, T., 39 Özgüç, T., 124 Palgrave, W., 129 Parry, M., 127, 128 Parsons, T., 37, 49, 50

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Passeron, J.-C., 3 Patlagean, É., 29 Payne, G., 52 Peri, C., 27 Pesce, M., 17, 18, 23 Petrusewicz, M., 124 Pfoh, E., 9, 11, 19, 22, 24-27, 32, 95 Phillips, D., 55 Pilch, J.J., 39, 51 Pina-Cabral, J. de, 23 Pink, S., 17 Pitt-Rivers, J., 6 Pleins, J.D., 111 Postgate, J.N., 125 Poutignat, P., 26 Premnath, D.N., 109, 113 Prior, M., 32, 34 Provan, I.W., 20 Rasheed, M. al-, 133 Renger, J., 116, 117 Rex, J., 55 Ribbens, J., 53 Ricoeur, P., 138 Ridley, M., 44 Robertson Smith, W., 5 Robson, C., 51 Rogerson, J.W., 6, 39, 53 Rohrbaugh, R., 6 Root, M., 37 Rose, E.J., 111 Sabbagh, K., 34 Sahlins, M.D., 16, 23 Sand, S., 34 Sapin, J., 24 Sasson, J.M., 111 Schloen, J.D., 87 Schmidt, B.B., 27 Schumacher, G., 118 Scott, J.C., 125

Seaford, R., 80 Seavoy, R.E., 125 Shryock, A., 127 Sider, R.J., 116 Simkins, R.A., 118, 126 Simmel, G., 56 Skocpol, T., 16 Smith, D.E., 63 Smith, M.S., 89 Smith, R., 43 Spinoza, B., 140, 141 Stager, L.E., 112 Stark, R., 40 Steinberg, N., 39 Stolper, M.W., 115 Stott, K.M., 142 Stowers, S.K., 78-82 Strauss, A.L., 51, 63 Streiff-Fenart, J., 26 Thiesse, A.-M., 25 Thomas, W.I., 54, 63 Thompson, T.L., 20, 30, 32, 34, 154 Toennies, F., 41 Trigg, R., 37 Trigger, B.G., 32 Tozy, M., 24 Uehlinger, C., 27 Ullucci, D., 82, 83 Urry, J., 40, 65 Van de Mieroop, M., 112 Van der Steen, E.J., 11 Van der Toorn, K., 24, 86, 87 Van Driel, G., 114 Van Seters, J., 8, 156 Vargyas, P., 116 Vaughan, C.E., 110 Veenhof, K., 113 Viazzo, P.P., 15, 16

INDEX OF AUTHORS Vrijhof, P.H., 77 Wacquant, L., 15 Wajdenbaum, P., 11, 141 Walby, S., 55 Warriner, D., 120 Watkins, J.W.N., 61 Weber, M., 5, 42, 50, 56, 59, 63 Wesselius, J.-W., 141 West, M.L., 153 Westbrook, R., 112 Whitehouse, H., 78

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Whitelam, K.W., 31, 32, 102, 108, 112, 122 Wilson, R.R., 6, 28, 39 Wunsch, C., 112, 116, 121, 122, 124, 125 Wyatt, N., 23 Yee, G., 39 Yesner, D.R., 110 Zerubavel, Y., 34 Zimmermann, R., 111 Zwickel, W., 109

INDEX OF REFERENCES Old Testament/Hebrew Bible

Exodus 23:20-26, 95

Genesis 12, 142 19, 142 20, 142 25, 140 25:22, 152 25:23, 143, 150 25:25, 143, 150 25:26, 143 25:27-34, 143 25-28, 153 27, 143, 153 27:16, 150 27:28-29, 150 29, 144 30, 144, 149 31:49, 144, 149 32:29, 144 32:31, 144, 150 34, 144, 151 35, 144 35:16-20, 144 35:22, 144, 151 36:6-8, 144 37, 140 39:7-20, 153 44:18-34, 156 50, 140

Leviticus 18:18, 148 25, 158 25:25-55, 108 Numbers 26, 145, 158 Joshua 14-19, 145, 158 Judges 13-16, 153 19, 142 19-21, 145 1 Samuel 8:7, 151 8:8-18, 145, 149 10:17, 149 10:22, 145 15, 145 16, 140 16:12, 145, 150 17-18, 145 18:17-19, 145 18:27, 146 19:11-17, 146 19:13, 151 165

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ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE BIBLE

20-24, 146 24, 142 26, 142 31, 142, 146 2 Samuel 1, 142 1-3, 146 4, 146 4:4, 147, 150 6:20-23, 155 8:13-14, 147, 150 9, 147 11, 153 11:15, 147 12:11, 147 13, 151 13:22, 148 16:21-22, 148 16:22, 151 18:9-15, 148 20, 150 21, 150 1 Kings 2, 140, 156 11, 152, 156 21, 109 2 Kings 4:1-7, 108 21, 152 Isaiah 3:12, 108 5:11-12, 108 5:8, 108 10:2, 108 56:12, 108

Jeremiah 7, 89 7:16-20, 88 44, 89 44:15-19, 88 44:17, 89 44:21, 89 44:25, 88 Amos 2:7, 108 2:7-8, 108 2:8, 108 3:9, 108 5:11, 108 6:4, 108 8:5, 124 8:6, 108 Micah 6:11, 124 Proverbs 11:26, 108 Nehemiah 5, 109, 120 5:2-5, 108 Post-biblical Jewish Sources Rabbinica b. B. Bat. 15a, 140 Other Ancient Sources Apollodorus Library 2.2.1, 152

INDEX OF REFERENCES 2.3.1, 153 2.4.5, 152 2.4.9, 153 Aristotle Politics I, iii, 16 (1257b), 111 Diodorus Siculus Library IV, 29, 4, 153

Homer Illiad VI, 150-160, 153 XI, 440-480, 155 XVIII, 395-400, 155 XIX, 90-125, 152 Plato Laws 745b-c, 158 Republic 368a-e, 158 575a, 158

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