Enquire of the Former Age: Ancient Historiography and Writing the History of Israel 9781472550392, 9780567098238, 9780567575302

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Dedicated to the memory of Professor J. Alberto Soggin (1926–2010) and Martin Noth born in Dresden whose historical work still inspires us

ABBREVIATIONS AASOR AB ABD ADPV AfO AGAJU AJA ALGHJ AnBib ANET ASOR ATD BA BAIAS BAR BASOR BBB B.C.E. BETL Bib BibOr BJRL BN BO BWANT BZ BZAW CBC CBQ CBQMS ConBOT CRAIBL CR:BS DtrH

Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York, 1992 Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins Archiv für Orientforschung Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums American Journal of Archaeology Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums Analecta biblica Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by J. B. Pritchard. 3d ed. Princeton, 1969 American Schools of Oriental Research Das Alte Testament Deutsch Biblical Archeologist Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bonner biblische Beiträge Before the Common Era Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Biblica Biblica et orientalia Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Biblische Notizen Bibliotheca Orientalis Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament Biblische Zeitschrift Beihefte zur ZAW Century Bible Commentary Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series Conjectanea biblica, Old Testament Comptes rendus de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres Currents in Research: Biblical Studies Deuteronomistic History

xii ESHM EsIr ET

FAT FRLANT HAT HdA HSM HSS HTR HUCA ICC IEJ JANES JAOS JBL JCS JEA JNES JNSL JQR JSOT JSOTSup JSS JTS KAT LSTS LXX MT

OBO Or OTL OTS PEQ RB SANE SBL SBT SEL SHANE SHCANE SJOT SWBA TA TRu 1

Abbreviations European Seminar in Historical Methodology Eretz-Israel English translation Forschungen zum Alten Testament Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Handbuch zum Alten Testament Handbuch der Archäologie Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Semitic Studies Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual International Critical Commentary Israel Exploration Journal Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements to Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal of Semitic Studies Journal of Theological Studies Kommentar zum Alten Testament Library of Second Temple Studies Septuagint version of the Old Testament Masoretic text Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Orientalia Old Testament Library Oudtestamentische Studiën Palestine Exploration Quarterly Revue Biblique Studies on the Ancient Near East Society of Biblical Literature Studies in Biblical Theology Studi epigrafici e linguistici Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Social World of Biblical Antiquity Tel Aviv Theologische Rundshau

Abbreviations TZ UF VT VTSup WBC WMANT ZA ZAH ZAR ZAW ZDPV

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Theologische Zeitschrift Ugarit-Forschungen Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Word Bible Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für Assyrologie Zeitschrift für Althebräistik Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte Zeitschrift für die attestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Rainer Albertz is Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. Bob Becking is Senior Research Professor for Bible, Religion and Identity at the University of Utrecht. Ehud Ben Zvi is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. Joseph Blenkinsopp is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Philip R. Davies is Research Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Shefeld. William G. Dever is Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania. Lester L. Grabbe is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull. Baruch Halpern holds the Chaiken Family Chair in Jewish Studies and is Professor of Ancient History, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Ernst Axel Knauf is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Biblical Archaeology at the University of Bern. Jens Bruun Kofoed is Associate Professor in Old Testament at the Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology. Niels Peter Lemche is Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen.

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Mario Liverani is Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at La Sapienza University, Rome. V. Philips Long is Professor of Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver. Tremper Longman, III is Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Steven L. McKenzie is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Christine Mitchell is Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon. ukasz Niesioowski-Spanò is Assistant Professor in the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw. Iain Provan is Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies (Old Testament) at Regent College in Vancouver. The late Alberto Soggin was Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew at La Sapienza University, Rome.

INTRODUCTION Lester L. Grabbe

This volume has been a long time in the making. A number of papers here were rst discussed in the sessions of the European Seminar in Historical Methodology (ESHM) that met in conjunction with the European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS) in Copenhagen in August 2003. The ESHM sessions (again, with the EABS) in Dresden in 2005 were devoted to reviews of some recent works relating to the history of Israel and Judah. After that conference, further reviews were solicited. Also, it seemed only fair to invite the authors of books being reviewed to give a response, if they wished. Most accepted this invitation, and their responses are included here. It is unfortunate that some of the studies in this volume are appearing rather belatedly, for which I apologize. There are various reasons: as noted, a number of contributions were invited, and it has taken time to secure all these contributions; another factor is that for various reasons (especially to satisfy the requirements of sponsors providing conference funding) it was important that some volumes associated with later conferences took precedence; and not least was the impediment of many internal university duties required of the editor. Yet in the end I believe that the collection of essays before you will make an interesting and worthwhile contribution to the current debates on historiography relating to ancient Israel and the ancient Near East. The essays here make a coherent collection and all contribute to the continuing discussion on methodology in writing the history of Palestine in antiquity. This volume is dedicated to Martin Noth, who was born in Dresden where some of these studies were read, and J. Alberto Soggin, news of whose death reached me just as this volume was going to press.

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Summaries of Research Papers Essays Ehud Ben Zvi makes some “General Observations on Ancient Israelite Histories in Their Ancient Contexts,” especially with reference to the current debate on whether the Israelites (and also other ancient Near Eastern peoples) wrote history or not. If we are to nd history writing in the ancient Near East, we shall have to look for something different from Herodotus, Thucydides, or Xenophon, since a literary genre (such as “history”) is a construct relating to a particular reading community. There was nothing in the social discourses of the communities producing the Deuteronomistic History or Chronicles to allow them to discuss critical history. Yet comparative studies still have heuristic value, especially showing comparable solutions to historiographical problems in diverse writings. They can also show the social and ideological processes involved in appropriating the same story (or even the same genre) by a different culture. Ancient writers tended to see the drivers of events in the actions of individuals or the gods, rather than social or economic factors. The social groups making up the literati also sought to control how the past was remembered. Various biblical texts communicated events of the past interpreted through a particular view of cause and effect that shaped the meaning of the past. In spite of different genres (and the readers would have recognized differences between the different biblical books), it is unlikely that some were considered more trustworthy about the past than others. So how could one dene “historywriting” for those in Persian Yehud? Four contemporary denitions are considered: J. Van Seters, M. Z. Brettler, B. Halpern, and D. V. Edelman. They are considered in the light of two issues raised by Y. Amit: the question of whether history has to be in narrative form and the place of other genres (law, poetry) which are an integral part of some biblical narratives (e.g. law in the Pentateuchal narrative). The preceding considerations tend to undermine clear-cut distinctions between historical narrative and ctional narrative. There was a core of “facts” agreed by the community about its past, and any narrative deviating markedly from them would have been rejected; indeed, we have no such deviant narratives preserved. That still does not answer the question of history vs. ction, but the concept of clusters of common features rather than a sharp divide between the two is probably a more helpful approach.

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Philip R. Davies (“The Origins of Biblical Israel”) points out that the Neo-Babylonian province of “Judah” was in fact administered from Benjamin (specically Mizpah rather than Jerusalem). For more than a century the political life of Judah centred on territory that had belonged to the Kingdom of Israel. Also, archaeology supports the notion that Mizpah, and probably also Gibeon and Bethel, were active as religious centres. As Blenkinsopp has argued Bethel was pre-eminent but was also a long-time rival of Jerusalem. We nd both anti-Benjaminite and proBenjaminite material in the biblical text, including a Benjaminite as the rst king of Israel. A long-standing puzzle is why Judah appropriated the name “Israel” for itself. There are several possible events which might have led to adoption of the name, but there are problems with most of them (e.g. appealing to the “United Monarchy” is no longer tenable because of considerable objections to its existence). The best attested reason is the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods when Judah was under Benjaminite domination. At that time, “Israel” was a social and religious term rather than a political one. Bethel was the symbolic home of Israel or “Jacob,” and the many Judahites living (and worshipping) in its sphere were “sons of Jacob.” The name Jacob occurs at least 40 times in Isaiah, especially in Isa 40–55 (which is specically about the return of Jerusalem exiles but does not exclude the indigenous population). The rare juxtaposition of Jacob and Judah is found in such signicant passages as Isa 48:1 and 65:9, and passages in Jeremiah where “Jacob” seems to mean “Judah” (such as 5:20; 30:10; 31:7, 11; 33:26; 46:27–28). The Persian period thus marks the rise of “biblical Israel.” Ernst Axel Knauf (“Against Historiography—in Defence of History”) asserts that he is a historian but has migrated from histories and sources to data and theories. Although he might present results in narrative form, he is not conned to narrative. Stories about the past might provide data for the historian but their perspective should not determine or provide the historian’s theory. There is objectivity in the sense of taking full account of empirical data and not to make statements that cannot be tested or repeat statements that have failed the test. Objective data are not restricted to chronological ones. Using data from historiographical texts depends on how well they t the framework established by more reliable data. Ancient historiography only represents outmoded theories and should not be respected simply because they are old. It tends to ascribe too much to human agents and not enough to non-human (geography, climate, etc.). 1

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Christine Mitchell (“Why the Hebrew Bible Might Be All Greek to Me: On the Use of the Xenophontic Corpus in Discussions of Biblical Literature”) writes as a literary critic. She makes use of a Bakhtinian understanding of genre and the works of Xenophon to grapple with the question of historiography in the biblical context. The specic points of Bakhtin include (a) the “archaic” elements of genre are preserved because the genre is renewed and made present at each stage in the development of literature, (b) genres are socially contextual utterances so that each unique situation brings forth a unique genre, (c) small rhetorical units lose their direct connection with reality and take on a new reality when used in a larger genre (e.g. a novel), (d) any utterance has an addressee in mind, (e) a literary work might belong to more than one genre. Mitchell notes that by form alone it is not possible to distinguish the difference between, for example, historiography and novella. Xenophon does not give an introduction to his historical works the way Herodotus and Thucydides do, suggesting that he was already playing with the new genre of historiography. In the novelistic Cyropaedia the expression “it is said” (MFHFUBJ) is used when he gives one version of an event when he knows there are other versions. This is contrary to the usage of Herodotus and Thucydides and even to Xenophon’s own usage in the Anabasis and the Hellenistica and seems to represent a conscious innovation on his part. We nd a parallel to this in Qohelet, whose introduction evokes the genre of “panegyric to wisdom” but then sets out to give just the opposite. The book of Ezra begins with an introduction that says “historiography,” though it differs from the other “historical” books of the Bible. Perhaps it is showing a genre innovation, a possibility conrmed by comparison with 1 Chronicles. The biblical writers did not know the term “historiography,” which was new even to Xenophon, but this understanding of genre may allow us to use texts that look like historiography for historiographical purposes. Historiography is potentially one of the most powerful genres because a historiographical work reveals an individual’s or group’s self-understanding. ukasz Niesioowski-Spanò writes on the topic of “(Pseudo-)Eupolemus and Shechem: Methodology Enabling the Use of Hellenistic Jewish Historians’ Work in Biblical Studies.” He argues that there is bias in favour of writings in the Hebrew canon when people do history. His aim is to examine the relationship between the “canonical” tradition and the traditions known from the Jewish writers in Greek, using the Shechem tradition as the main example and the so-called Pseudo-Eupolemus as the main example. Is there any evidence to demonstrate the priority of 1

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canonical writings over against early Jewish “para-biblical” literature? It should rst be noted that a number of recent scholars question the common division between the known writer Eupolemus and the supposed Samaritan writer whose fragments are also listed in the name of Eupolemus. The criteria used to show that this was a Samaritan writer do not stand up, and it could have been the historical Eupolemus who wrote about Shechem. Theodotus also wrote about Shechem, and the arguments making him a Samaritan are also not secure. There are biblical passages well disposed toward Shechem, and these can be connected with extra-biblical Jewish writings that express a similar positive attitude toward Shechem. For example, the tradition that the patriarchs were buried in Shechem is found in Gen 33:19 and also in Acts 7:16. It was once argued that Acts 7 showed evidence of a Samaritan origin, but this has now been refuted. Eupolemus and Theodotus also have the tradition of the patriarchal tombs in Shechem, and Jubilees placed Salem near Shechem. This suggests that the traditions transferring events away from Shechem (e.g. Gen 21, putting the patriarchal tombs in Hebron, and Gen 34) was developed after 164 B.C.E., and the Shechem tradition was suppressed in the text. But the real break between the Jews and Samaritans came later, probably even long after 128 B.C.E. Once the break came, Shechem became an element of polemic between Jews and Samaritans, with Jews arguing for their own holy places. The positive traditions were early, and the later traditions did not arise later but were survivals of the earlier view. An alternative to the diachronic explanation is a synchronic one, with more than one view among the Israelite elite. This illustrates the value of these Hellenistic Jewish writings for understanding the historiography of ancient Israel. Reviews NB: the various reviews and responses are listed alphabetically by surname of the author, regardless of the order in the Table of Contents. Also, please note that two of those reviewed chose not to respond (McKenzie and Soggin), while others did not so much respond to the review as make other points (which was their privilege). Rainer Albertz reviews two of William G. Dever’s books, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (2001) and Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from? (2003): both these books are polemical, and it is a shame that such an outstanding expert in archaeology has become stuck on polemic. He himself was an innovator, especially in liberating the eld from “biblical archaeology,” 1

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but having espoused a “secular history of ancient Israel” he saw his own methods subverted, to be used not for constructing but only deconstructing such a history. This seems to be why he is so angry with the “minimalists” (or “revisionists,” as he calls them). It must be annoying that some accuse him of having never left the Albright position, as well as bringing the contemporary struggle between Israelis and Palestinians into the debate. He sees his approach as different from the “revisionists,” but his position is not always clear. That is, he argues that archaeology should be given pre-eminence and that much biblical material is unhistorical (e.g. the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua), yet he still insists that the archaeological and biblical data converge. Two examples are examined: (a) the pre-state period and (b) the “United Monarchy.” It is especially with the latter that Dever defends the biblical text, though there are problems with his discussion of “ofcial” and “popular” religion. The 2003 book is less polemical. Dever engages in a debate over the exodus and argues that the archaeology shows it and the subsequent occupation of Canaan to be unsupportable. He is equally critical of the Albright and Alt/Noth views of the settlement, but thinks the “revolt model” has much to be said for it. Again, he thinks he can identify “proto-Israelites,” but now confusingly limits them to the Samarian hill country. Dever’s conclusion again shows ambivalence: on the one hand, he argues for new archaeological evidence to be used as primary data; on the hand, he seems startled by the negative results of his own methodology and is ready to make some concessions to the biblical text and his pious audience. His concluding statements suggest that the American foundation myth stands behind this historical investigation. To summarize, some of the criticisms that could be levelled at Dever are the following: he is right to stress the importance of archaeology, but the more you move into political, cultural, and religious issues the more ambiguous the artifactual evidence becomes. The same evidence is used by Dever and others to come to quite different results (e.g. over the question of literacy). There is no evidence of worship of Yhwh in the Iron I hill country, though Dever does not want to accept one obvious conclusion (the one taken by the “minimalists”) that this is because Yhwh was not worshipped by them. The lack of important information from archaeology, such as inscriptions, makes it questionable whether one could write a history of Israel from archaeology alone. A more rational assessment of the limitations of present-day archaeology would have been in order.

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Bob Becking considers two recent works on the gure of David: Steven L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (2000), and Baruch Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (2001): From the beginning the David narratives are problematic in that they are part of the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), which is usually dated as completed in the exile at the earliest. The old view that the narrative of David’s rise to power, the Succession Narratives, and the Ark Narrative were early has generally been given up, even if there is no consensus on their dating. Three theories of truth have been put forward by current debates in the philosophy of science: (1) the correspondence theory of truth (are there corresponding facts that support the theory?)—the problem is that the concept of “fact” will not necessarily be agreed on; (2) the coherence theory of truth (can the theory be linked to other theories with which it is coherent?); (3) the pragmatic theory of truth (does the theory work or provide a successful guide when acted upon?). The two “lives of David” can be evaluated by considering three sorts of evidence. First, is epigraphic evidence. It has been argued that David is mentioned in the Tel Dan inscription, the Mesha stele, and the Sheshonq inscription. McKenzie accepts that the Tel Dan inscription mentions the name of David and is a witness to his historicity but in no way conrms the stories of 1 and 2 Samuel. The reference to David in the Moabite stone is less certain, while the identication in the Sheshonq Relief is little more than speculation. Halpern makes similar comments about the Tel Dan inscription, does not mention the Mesha stele, and thinks the Sheshonq interpretation ts into a web of references to Israelite kings in external inscriptions. This suggests that Halpern is using a coherence theory of evidence, using extra-biblical sources as a model to read the Hebrew text. The second sort of evidence is archaeological. McKenzie believes there are no direct links to David, though he does note that the population seems to have increased drastically during the Iron I/Iron IIA transition, which has some implications for the “United Monarchy.” Halpern, on the other hand, cites a number of building projects. He seems to be using a sort of coherence theory, based on references to the biblical text. The interpretations of both McKenzie and Halpern seem to be possible, but there is a danger, when using both archaeology and the text, to attempt to ll the gaps of one with the other. The nal type of evidence is textual exegesis. McKenzie seems to base his reading on the principle of cui bono—who prots? He also uses analogies to try to interpret the situation in ancient Israel, but a third principle also seems to lurk in the background: which construction is more logical? The nal picture is of David as a young man from an upper middle class family who strikes out 1

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as a wandering warlord, selling his services to those who would buy them (King Saul, the Philistines, etc.). He increased his power by strategic marriages, then using Hebron as a springboard he eventually gains the kingship. McKenzie seems to work partly with a “coherence theory” of truth (hence, his criterion of logic) but also a “pragmatic theory” (it is true if it works), but such a proposal is acceptable only for those readers who share his idea of pragmatics. Halpern presents an “anti-David” reading, in which he reads the text from the point of view of David’s enemies, though he wants to date this version of the text as a Solomonic perspective. Both McKenzie and Halpern present daring reconstructions of David. Neither can be considered as correct or incorrect, since both help to understand David. The problem is that we have few epigraphic references available for David. Ehud Ben Zvi provides a review of Lester Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Vol. 1, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah (2004). Ben Zvi’s view is that the volume is well thought out, well structured, and well written. There are, however, several areas for criticism, or at least further discussion: (1) some important topics are treated only briey (e.g. magic, popular religion)—only nine pages are given to archaeological sites and surveys, only 37 to the biblical sources, and “scriptural interpretation” receives only a page and a half; (2) accepting that we begin with primary sources, archaeology and epigraphy take us only so far and say little about intellectual history—the biblical texts may be secondary sources for events to which they refer but are primary sources for when they were written; (3) the choice of biblical writings could affect the history, and more could have been said about the ideologies and perspectives given in the literature—the sociology of the literature, and writing, editing, reading, and producing books, could have been discussed at greater length; (4) there is no discussion of the new written dialect of Hebrew often called “Late Biblical Hebrew” as a social phenomenon. Joseph Blenkinsopp reviews Mario Liverani, Oltre la Bibbia: Storia antica di Israele (2003)/Israel’s History and the History of Israel (2005): He is unhappy with many histories that more or less paraphrase the biblical text but also aims to move beyond the current stalemate between maximalists and minimalists. The novel element in his project is to make a clear distinction between “normal history” (that reconstructed by critical examination of the sources) and the ideologically constructed “invented history” that grew out of the crisis of the sixth century B.C.E. (affecting not only Judah but also large areas of the ancient Near East). 1

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“Normal history” is not without its ideological values and the “invented history” may refer to real events. He suggests that these two parallel histories will need to be integrated by the critical historian but leaves it unclear how this is to be done. He begins his “normal history” with the Late Bronze Age and takes it down to 398 B.C.E. (his dating of Ezra’s mission). There are many points of reconstruction and interpretation that could bear question, criticism, or further discussion, but the overall picture he gives is the following: as the Egyptian grip on Palestine weakened, it allowed a growth of the indigenous peoples (there is no evidence of major immigration) into independent kingdoms in the region, of which Israel and Judah were only two, centring on Jerusalem and Shechem. Saul’s was a small Habiru chiefdom limited to the tribal areas of Ephraim and Benjamin, while the historical nucleus of the David’s kingdom (contemporaneous with Saul’s) points to a brigand chiefdom based on Hebron which expanded in the direction of Jerusalem (though this nucleus has to be extracted from a vast novelistic elaboration). The gure of Solomon has been mythologized beyond measure; for example, the alleged borders of his kingdom are those of the Persian satrapy of Transeuphrates, while his palace and temple are impossible for the tenth century but are based on Persian models. The “invented history” originated in the Babylonian diaspora and was further elaborated in the course of the resettlement of Judah during the rst century of Persian rule. The exodus tradition is generated by a “displacement formula,” a change of political status from imperial control to autonomy. The law codes often reect ancient jurisprudence but have developed away from the political and in the direction of a religious and cultic model, taking the place of political structures no longer available. These laws are also a source of religious and ethnic self-disclosure. The period from the fall of Jerusalem to Ezra is primarily retrospective, the time when the foundation myth was being elaborated and ethnic identity being completed. Philip R. Davies also provides a review of Liverani. For Davies, the book makes two major claims: (a) to avoid both excessive credulity and excessive scepticism, using the structure of “normal history” and “invented history” to assist in this process, and (b) the history of ancient Israel can be set between two crucial caesuras—rst, the Late Bronze/Iron Age transition, which saw the creation of Israel as a nation and, secondly, the sixth century, which saw new forms of religion and politics across the Orient and Mediterranean. The rst caesura corresponds to “Israel” and also to “normal history,” while the second represents “Judaism” and the rise of “invented history.” Davies argues that Liverani is on weakest ground when he tries to retrieve historical events from the biblical 1

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narrative (which he regards as largely invented). It is unclear what Liverani means when he speaks of integrating these two parallel histories. Liverani’s great asset is his wide knowledge of the ancient Near East. He offers a brilliant synthesis of the cultural as well as political effects of the dawning Iron Age. But there is a weakness, which is his not being a biblical specialist. Thus, he accepts positions that he might otherwise reject if he knew the subject more intimately (e.g. with regard to Ezra, the Deuteronomistic history, and the Samaritan schism). It is hard to nd consistent criteria in working with the biblical texts. His literary-critical work is interesting and fruitful, but how he apportions ctionality and history to propaganda is worrying. Has he, in the end, developed a sound methodological principle for extracting historicity from texts? This book is ultimately an excellent resource in the ballet between information and counter-information that is currently being waged over the question of ancient Israelite and Judaean history. William G. Dever expresses gratitude to Professor Albertz for the opportunity to clarify several issues. The attempt to “psychoanalyse” is based on a mistaken reading: as a child of the Enlightenment he does defend the Western cultural tradition, but the main part of his work for several decades has been to illustrate the real Israel by means of archaeological data, which are primary or “eye-witness” sources. In general, Albertz’s close reading is thorough and fair, and also in general agreement with Dever’s interpretation of texts and artifacts. Admission of uncertainty here and there is simply an acknowledgment of the limitations on our knowledge. For example, the “archaeological invisibility” of the Yahweh cult in the early hill country settlements is a statement of the evidence, not a pronouncement that no such cult existed. Similarly, the distinction between “book religion” and “folk religion” is not a value judgment, only a descriptive statement. Albertz takes exception to the assertion that a history of Israel could be written from the archaeology. But although archaeology is limited, it is also not mute (as Noth claimed), since “hermeneutical rules” have been developed to read the material culture. Therefore, a history (with obvious limitations) could be written from the material culture alone, but the best sort of history would make use of both text and artifacts. It is gratifying that some biblicists are willing to engage archaeologists in much-needed dialogue. Any further advances in writing well-balanced histories will be made only by teamwork, with biblical scholars and archaeologists collaborating.

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In “The Big Max” Lester L. Grabbe reviews Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman, III, A Biblical History of Israel (2003). This is one of the few true “maximalist” histories. Strangely, Grabbe notes, a full third of the text is given over to an introduction that deals with principles of historiography. It becomes clear that this is a smokescreen to make it appear that to give priority to the biblical text is a perfectly respectable historical method. An argument is made for depending on “tradition,” but it is never made clear what constitutes “tradition”; in any case, the concern is not really with wider historical study but purely with the history of ancient Israel. An apparent openness to consider various possible reconstructions always concludes in favour of the biblical text. But to write a “biblical history of Israel” is no different in principle from writing a “Book of Mormon History of Mesoamerica.” What would historians think about a history of the Olmecs that talked about the migration of “Jeredites” and included horses, cattle, and elephants, but ignored typical Central American plants and animals? Interestingly, the techniques of Mormon apologists are basically the same as those used to defend a “biblical history of Israel.” What seems to be overlooked is that if, for example, you withhold negative judgment because archaeology might eventually turn up something supportive, you are bound to withhold positive judgment where the archaeology presently seems to support the biblical text. This history gives no new insights and is essentially a boring paraphrase of the biblical text. It may reassure many readers without the knowledge or understanding to recognize its lack of contribution to the eld, but it does not differ from the many “biblical” sermons given across America every week. Lester L. Grabbe considers the different editions of J. Alberto Soggin’s Storia d’Israele/A History of Israel over the period 1984–2002. This work appeared almost simultaneously in Italian and English in 1984, going through a second (1993) and third (1999) English edition, and eventually a second Italian edition (2002). (There was also a French edition in 2004.) Following the various revisions of this work gives an interesting insight into the development of the debate on the history of Israel. The rst edition began the real history of Israel with the kingdom of David and Solomon, considering everything earlier as part of Israel’s “prehistory.” The various English editions maintained this stance, though acknowledging increasing difculties with getting at the history of the “United Monarchy.” In the second Italian edition, however, the kingdom of David and Solomon has been relegated to Israel’s “prehistory,” with the proper history of Israel beginning with the “divided monarchy.” This seems to portend a major shift in the eld, for Soggin—who has never 1

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been seen as a “radical” or “revisionist”—has been forced by the evidence to abandon the position that Israel and Judah began with a “United Monarchy” that was anything like the biblical picture. Unfortunately, a new English edition with this revised view is not currently planned by the publishers. In “Damn, I Thought They’d Never Notice: Response to Ehud Ben Zvi” Lester L. Grabbe accepts most of the points made by Ehud Ben Zvi in his review, with some qualications. He responds by pointing out that his manuscript was 220,000 words—10 percent over the limit set by the publisher—and there was no room for lengthening it. It seems strange to complain about the sources section being too short, when few histories of Israel and Judah have even discussed sources at all. But there is much we do not know about the Persian period, and to have treated certain topics would not have progressed much beyond speculation. A similar situation applies to the desire to see more “intellectual history,” since most who write on the question are actually writing on “theology.” The comment that “Late Biblical Hebrew” could have been addressed is well taken: the linguistic situation merits a lengthy discussion, though it should include Aramaic and other Near Eastern languages, not just Late Biblical Hebrew. But some other topics are better taken up in later volumes of the History; for example, apocalyptic is discussed at much greater length in volume 2 of the History which appeared in 2008. In “David and the Historical Imagination: A Counterpoint in Evocation” Baruch Halpern comments on the partial nature of knowledge and communication—indeed, its ctive nature. He agrees with Becking’s review that, although different representations of the past can be justied, not just any representation of the past will do. His “portrait” of David was an exercise in historical imagination, though geography, philology, archaeology, and so on rule out a date for 2 Samuel later than the seventh century B.C.E. Fiction as a way of organizing knowledge has advantages: the embrace of a world in which there is no single truth but multiple windows on truth. Jens Bruun Kofoed (“Factualizing the Evasion”) responds to Niels Peter Lemche by selecting those areas where he feels Lemche has misrepresented him: First is the question of whether he was acquainted with the range of work by the “minimalists.” The answer is that he knows the range of studies but has dealt with them in a book in Danish. The problem is not ignorance but that both camps are “path-dependent”—basing their reconstructions on certain presuppositions. Another area has to do with historiographical sources. Here he objects to Lemche’s preference 1

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for archaeological sources over written. Although these are rst-hand evidence, they are mute—they cannot speak for themselves but must be interpreted. The distinction between mute and speaking (written) sources was made by the father of Danish historiography Kristian Erslev. A related point is the question of ancient historiographers whom Lemche rejects as true historians. Although modern critical-historical research is based on more sophisticated methodologies, it is a non sequitur to assume this makes the ancients unreliable as historians. To observe, as Lemche does, that someone like Arrian may simply have invented part of his history is unwarranted. Arrian had a pro-Macedonian bias, but we also know something of his sources, and there is no evidence that he invented part of his history. Lemche objects to the use of legal metaphors, but these have a respectable employment since David Hume and Thomas Reid. Lemche makes use of Popper’s principle of falsication, but this is inappropriate. Popper applies his methodology in the scientic sphere but did not intend its use in humanistic areas such as history. Popper did not reject the metaphysical; indeed, the principle of falsication is a metaphysical concept. On what basis does Lemche argue that the biblical picture has been falsied? He has not falsied, for example, the existence of David, Solomon, and the United Monarchy but at best has made them less probable. Furthermore, the vast majority of professional archaeologists (such as A. Faust) come to very different conclusions. The nal point concerns the possibility of oral tradition. The possibility of a reliable prolonged oral tradition is not argued for on the basis of evidence as such but on the basis of analogy. These come from modern African and Middle Eastern illiterate societies. If Lemche rejects these analogies, he owes an explanation of his rejection to the scholarly world. In “Evading the Facts: Notes on Jens Bruun Kofoed: Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text (2005),” Niels Peter Lemche evaluates his fellow countryman. This work, Lemche notes, is an example of a recent trend in evangelical scholarship, the demand to be respected as an interlocutor on the same level as critical scholars. Their attack on the “Copenhagen School” is really a disguised attack on conventional historical-critical scholarship. In his critique of the “Copenhagen School,” Kofoed argues about its supposed adoption of a “great story” and especially its direction by ideology so that their minimalism is the outcome of this ideology. This argument is misleading, which would have been clear if Kofoed had made himself acquainted with the full scholarly output of the individuals in question. The accusation of postmodernism is a two-edged sword, for it allows the evangelicals to claim that one account is not to be preferred to another, leaving a space for the 1

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evangelical version. The discussion in Kofoed’s Chapter 2 on sources is generally sober, until we come to the question, “Is a text guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven guilty?” This uses language foreign to academic discourse. Apparently, however, it refers to whether the text conveys accurate historical facts. But the assumption that a text is historical relies on a circular argument. The Old Testament contains texts from a religious community, which leaves open the possibility that it contains religious propaganda, a possibility not considered by Kofoed. Over the past several decades Old Testament scholarship has been deconstructing the Old Testament narrative—not in the Derrida sense but in the modernist sense of critical analysis that separates between biblical texts and their presumed historical background. It is the process of Popperian falsication of texts that has been going on. We can make statements about David only if they can be falsied. This is indeed the case, and most scholars believing in the existence of David see a much more modest gure than that in the Bible. Orally transmitted material may retain a limited core tradition, but this can be garbled (as in the case of David): there is nothing in favour of his thesis of a reliable oral tradition. In his short chapter on comparison, he argues that the names and order of the Israelite and Assyrian kings are correct, which is true, but no conrmation of Judaean kings is possible before about 800 B.C.E. Apparently, he is unaware of this break in the type of information we have from ancient Judah. He cites Liverani to support the historicity of the queen of Sheba, even though Liverani himself says the historicity of the tradition is highly questionable. We have to accept the ability of the biblical writers to invent stories on meagre data, such as the Sennacherib campaign where a short note has been expanded into a comprehensive tale. In his nal chapter, he argues that the authors of biblical books should be treated as serious historians. What Kofoed does not seem to realize—because he has not done his research on their early publications—is that members of the “Copenhagen School” began by giving the biblical texts “the benet of the doubt”: it was the continual disappointment in expectations that changed their mind. In citing Herodotus and Thucydides, he forgets that they were writing contemporary history, not about the past. He has also cleverly concentrated on Kings—in which there are remnants of historical memory—when he should be considering Genesis and Judges as well. Mario Liverani does not respond directly to the reviews of Blenkinsopp and Davies, except to thank them for their comments, which he accepts. Instead, he claries his reasons for writing. It was not to position himself between the “maximalists” and “minimalists,” which he thinks are 1

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looking at two different aspects of history and cannot be reconciled. One reason was to take up the challenge of engaging in the complexities of another eld. A second reason was to demonstrate that the history of Israel was part of the history of the ancient Near East, and also to insert the history of Israel into the larger history in the correct way. This was more easily done with the “actual” history than the “invented” history. A third aim was to provide a history of Israel for an Italian-speaking audience of non-professionals. He has now moved on to other projects which now occupy his time, another reason for not replying to the reviews. Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III respond to Lester L. Grabbe’s review in “ ‘Who Is the Prophet Talking About, Himself or Someone Else?’ (Acts 8:34): A Response to Lester Grabbe’s Review of A Biblical History of Israel.” Provan, Long and Longman (hereafter PLL) begin by summarizing their own book, and then part of Grabbe’s 2007 book, in which he laid out his own view of how we should approach the history of Israel and how we should discuss it with others. One of his stated principles was to avoid ad hominem argumentations and comments. Therefore, it was to be expected that Grabbe would engage seriously with PLL’s arguments in an objective way; instead, he has not lived up to these reasonable expectations, including prose which is often mocking in tone. Moreover, he has not in fact accurately represented their arguments in the book: 1. They do not accept themselves as “maximalists” but accept as historical exactly that amount of material in the sources that appears to be historical. 2. The rst chapter of A Biblical History of Israel is not confused when discussing the history of historiography, especially over the question of positivistic historiography. 3. They do not argue “that historians cannot be objective,” nor that history is just another form of ction. Recent qualications to the idea that a purely objective reconstruction of the past is possible were discussed in a form quite different from what Grabbe claims. 4. They do explain what is meant by “testimony” in the book, though Grabbe had denied that he could nd an explanation. They do not believe that any account of an event, no matter how late or ignorant, has historical value. Rather, they argue that we cannot decide in advance whether an account has historical value simply by noting it closeness to or distance from an event. 5. They do not wish to debunk eye-witness sources, only to give them their appropriate weight. 1

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6. The Biblical History of Israel is not “essentially a paraphrase of the biblical account.” They do take the biblical account seriously as a major source, but also spend considerable amounts of space bringing the text into conjunction with all kinds of other historical evidence. Most disturbing in this rst part of the review is Grabbe’s lack of engagement with PLL’s arguments, for example on testimony and on archaeology, and his recourse instead to what “most/real historians” think. This most unsatisfactory (and brief) set of reections on Part I of the book then gives way to a substantial discussion of only one section of Part II, where Grabbe portrays PLL’s reading of Joshua and Judges as an attempt to get away from scholarly consensus. He does not present an argument against PLL’s reading here, however, but only the reassertion of a traditional view. Grabbe’s subsequent summary of their overall position is disgracefully misleading. PLL’s intended readership is not evangelical, but anyone who is interested in thinking seriously about matters of history and historiography in general, and about the history of Israel in particular. The term “biblical” history of Israel does not mean that the Bible is given a privileged position, but only that non-biblical texts are not taken more seriously (or less seriously) than the biblical text. There is not much to say about the strange and unduly long third section of Grabbe’s review, which draws an analogy between the Book of Mormon and the Bible; the analogy is a ridiculous one. In sum, PLL assert, in this review of A Biblical History of Israel Grabbe evades, rather than engaging with, their arguments; misrepresents, rather than listening to, their words; ridicules, rather than conversing. In many ways, his essay is not a dialogue with the authors of this book at all, but with quite other conversation partners.

1

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON ANCIENT ISRAELITE HISTORIES IN THEIR ANCIENT CONTEXTS* Ehud Ben Zvi

I Debates about the presence, or in cases when this is agreed upon, the main features of historiographical writing in the ancient Near East in general and in ancient Israel in particular are relatively commonplace. For instance, one may compare on the one hand the position illustrated in recent years by Nicholson, who claims that “ ‘[h]istoriography’ as a genre description is misapplied when used of the Pentateuch or Deuteronomistic literature” and even more poignantly (and tellingly) “[t]he Hebrews did not at all raise themselves to the standpoint of properly historical contemplation, and there is no book of the Old Testament, however much it may contain material that is otherwise objectively historical, that deserves the name of true historiography,”1 and on the other the positions advocated by scholars such as Van Seters, Brettler, and Halpern, who, despite all their disagreements, rmly assert the existence of history and historical writing in ancient Israel.2 At times the argument centers on a particular work—for instance, the debate on whether the Chronicler was * I would like to thank Christine Mitchell, who read and commented on this study, and the members of the ESHM in general for raising these issues and stimulating my thoughts on the matter. 1. See E. Nicholson, “Story and History in the Old Testament,” in Language, Theology and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (ed. S. E. Balentine and J. Barton; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 135–50; quotations from pp. 146 and 150, respectively, 2. See J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). See also Van Seters, “Is there Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew– Greek Comparison,” JNSL 28 (2002): 1–25, which is a response to Nicholson; and see further M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995); B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). 1

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a historian has raged for a long time.3 At times the argument is much more general. For instance, claims that there was no real historical writing in ancient Mesopotamia, or, in some circles, that real historical writing began in Greece, were almost a boilerplate until a few decades ago, even if today are far less accepted, and for a very good reason. Substantial work showing not only the existence of, but characterizing ancient Near Eastern historiography, has been published in recent decades.4 To a large extent, the matter is one of denitions. For instance, if critical history as understood today is the yardstick, then there is no doubt that there is no history in the entire ancient Near East. Signicantly, classicists inform us that if that yardstick is held, there is no history in ancient Greece either.5 Thus, this type of denition is of very 3. For contributions to this debate, see K. G. Hoglund, “The Chronicler as Historian: A Comparativist Perspective,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Shefeld: JSOT, 1997), 19–29, and, in the same volume, I. Kalimi, “Was the Chronicler a Historian?,” 73–89. Of course, this kind of question is raised also concerning historiographical works produced in ancient cultures other than Israel. See, for instance, C. H. Grayson, “Did Xenophon Intend to Write History?,” in The Ancient Historian and His Materials: Essays in Honour of C. E. Stevens on His Seventieth Birthday (ed. B. Levick; Westmead: Gregg International, 1975), 31–43. 4. For a sophisticated survey of the matter, see A. Kuhrt, “Israelite and Near Eastern Historiography,” in Congress Volume, Oslo 1998 (ed. A. Lemaire and M. Sæbø; VTSup 80; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 257–79. To a large extent Kuhrt is responding to A. D. Momigliano, The Classical Foundations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), esp. 5–28; cf. A. D. Momigliano, “Eastern Elements in Post-Exilic Jewish, and Greek Historiography,” in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1977), 25–35. Incidentally, Momigliano maintains that Persian inuences were central for the development of both Hebrew and Greek historiography, although in different ways. See below. 5. Note the comment that “[w]e have now almost stopped talking about Thucydides as a ‘scientic historian’ ”; W. R. Connor, “Narrative Discourse in Thucydides,” in The Greek Historians: Literature and History: Papers Presented to A. E. Raubitschek (ed. M. H. Jameson; Department of Classics, Stanford University; Saratoga, Calif.: ANMA Libri, 1985), 1–17 (citation from p. 2). The ability of Thucydides’ writing to convince many (modern) readers of the veracity of his account is, signicantly, not related to its higher degree of “historicity” but tends to be explained in terms of narrative features and strategies, use or lack of use of genre conventions and the like. See also P. Robinson, “Why Do We Believe Thucydides? A Comment on W. R. Connor’s “Narrative Discourse in Thucydides,” in Jameson, ed., The Greek Historians, 19–23. On these matters, see also M. Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (London: Routledge, 1995), and esp. 34–36. 1

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limited help for the purpose of elucidating the social functions, ideological construction and literary features of ancient writings that may be considered historical or a history. At the same time, these writings appear to be very heterogeneous and some genre distinctions may seem appropriate. After all, the most cursory reading of, for instance, Xenophon’s Hellenica shows that it is substantially different from Chronicles, for example. In fact, one may even nd it hard to compare the beginning of Thucydides’s work with that of the Primary History in Gen 1 or with any Mesopotamian “historical” text. These considerations raise the question of whether heuristically helpful denitions of genre can be applied to different social, cultural, ethnic groups. For instance, if a denition of history is based on Thucydides’s work, where would it leave ancient Israelite or Hittite or Mesopotamian historical writing? It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the most common criticisms leveled again those who maintain that ancient literati in Israel developed histories is that such claims demand a sui generis denition of “history,” or at the very least a denition of history substantially different from that one may abstract from the works of either Thucydides or Herodotus or both.6 Denitions of genre are, however, situational and contingent. Literary genres are not “platonic models,” but constructs present in particular communities of readers (or listeners in some cases). These communities exist in particular historical circumstances. Genre is an attribute assigned to a work that evolves out of the interaction between a particular readership and text. It is concerned with textually inscribed markers, and involves the attribution by the readership of intentions to the implied author of the work, which is also a construction of the readership and therefore changes accordingly under different social and historical settings. Genre has to do with the expectations and ideological horizons of a particular readership, which, of course, may and do change from readership to readership, and are in any case socially and historically dependent. This being so, that which is considered to be “history” by one group of readers may not be considered so by another. To illustrate, one may characterize an ancient text as “historical” if it provides information 6. As suggested above, similar considerations apply to historiographical works of ancient near Eastern cultures other than Israel. See, for instance, H. G. Gütterbock, “Hittite Historiography: A Survey,” in History, Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures (ed. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984), 21–35. 1

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about events which by contemporary critical analysis is deemed reliable or partially reliable for present-day reconstructions of the past. Or one may choose to refer to a text as a “history” if it conforms or relates somewhat to contemporary standards of historical research (see above). Such denitions, however, would have nothing to do with genre awareness in ancient Israel. They say rather something about us. Histories are and were always written for particular readerships and within intellectual and ideological settings that were shared by authorship and target readership. It is unreasonable to ask those responsible for the writing of the books included in the collections of books usually referred to as the Deuteronomistic History (hereafter DH) or for the authorship of the book of Chronicles (hereafter CHR) to think or write according to modern denitions of (critical) history and, among others, to reect contemporaneously accepted systems of cause and effect relations. There was nothing in their social discourses that would have allowed, never mind encouraged, such an endeavor.7 Similar considerations may be raised about comparisons between the DH and CHR on the one hand and the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Xenophon on the other. Neither the discourses of the literati of Achaemenid Jerusalem nor the social conditions associated with their writing and reading books such as Kings and Chronicles would have allowed or encouraged the writing of works such as those of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Xenophon, or for that matter Josephus. II From the considerations raised above about the fundamental association between a genre and readership, between genre and society, along with its emphasis on the singular nature of each society and community, it does not follow that comparative studies are of no heuristic help. Knoppers is undoubtedly correct when he states: Cross-cultural studies offer the benets of comparing similar phenomena in a plurality of social settings, illuminating otherwise odd or inexplicable traits of certain literary works, exploring a set of problems in different societies, and calling attention to the unique features of a particular era or writing.8

7. See also discussion in section III. 8. G. N. Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chronicler’s History: A Reexamination,” JBL 122 (2003): 627–50 (628). 1

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Different works may show comparable solutions to literary/“historiographical” problems, even if they served very different ideological and social goals. Literary, social or ideological concerns frequent in ancient retellings of the past (e.g. matters of verisimilitude, authority of the speaker, or conformity with some trans-cultural folkloristic/ideological metanarratives in traditional societies) may have, and were likely to have raised analogous responses.9 Even within different discourses, similar “basic options” could be available to writers; for instance, the use of genealogical references for developing constructions of self and the other or the construction of geographical spaces for similar purposes, or rhetorical goals.10 In addition, every trade, by necessity, carries a set of similar practical concerns. From the perspective of historiographical craftsmanship there is always room for the question of how to deal with more than one “source” relating an event or development that either happened or was supposed to have happened within the discourse shared by the historian and the target readership; or for that of how to deal with different stories about the same events that circulate among the same public. There are different ways of dealing with these matters, but the choice is not unlimited.11 In addition, there were stories that circulated beyond narrow territorial boundaries. Of course, these stories could and were “appropriated” in diverse manners as they were incorporated into different discourses. Moreover, they tended to be embedded in different literary and theological contexts. In these cases, the signicance of the story was strongly

9. See, among others, Hoglund, “The Chronicler as Historian,” concerning the rst two. The latter include from stories about the endangerment of a future leader in his/her youth (e.g. Sargon, Moses, Cyrus), which fulll important ideological functions to narratives about social continuity through time and “rootedness” that are communicated through genealogical lists. On the latter, see, recently, Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chronicler’s History.” 10. On comparative studies of genealogical references, see the discussion above. On constructions of geographical spaces, see, for instance, T. B. Dozeman, “Geography and History in Herodotus and in Ezra–Nehemiah,” JBL 122 (2003): 449–66. For rhetorical appeals to comparison and animals, although for clearly different purposes, see, for instance, 1 En. 85–90. 11. For instance, in the case of multiple versions, should the ancient historian accept one version and omit all others? If not, should several versions be mentioned separately, or should they be combined? If other versions circulate within the same public, should the author of one explicitly mention and contradict the other, or should he/she do that implicitly by providing a different version? Should textually inscribed pointers at the other version be included in the new work or not? 1

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shaped by the particular context in which it was intertwined.12 Comparative studies may illustrate these social and ideological processes. Many literary gures of speech (e.g. a rhetorical appeal to comparisons with the animals) and some genres (e.g. autobiographies) were also widespread temporally and geographically. Of course, widespread awareness and use of, for instance, a basic genre does not mean production of unied meanings and signicances. An appeal to a known literary genre may serve in fact to convey meaning through defamiliarization. To provide one example: Momigliano correctly notes that “[i]n Ezra and Nehemiah an autobiographical form originally destined to extol an individual is used to narrate the birth of a new politico-religious organization.”13 Comparative studies in this case serve to highlight the particularity of the meaning conveyed by the individual piece within its discursive context(s). From the perspective of studies on the intellectual setting in which historiography (here understood as the art and techniques used for writing accounts) took shape in different ancient societies, the most signicant feature is perhaps the presence of at least elements of a shared matrix of thought that informed several local and contingent discourses in different societies and their “histories.” Two examples will sufce. First, the explanation of historical events and processes in terms of social and economic factors—so common in our historiographical practices, and for good reasons—is at the very least underdeveloped, if it is present at all, in Classical, Mesopotamian and Ancient Israelite history. Moral behavior and the will of the gods are far more often associated with causation than social and economic processes.14 Second, there is a strong 12. Cf. T. C. Römer, “Why Would the Deuteronomists Tell About the Sacrice of Jephthah’s Daughter?,” JSOT 77 (1998): 27–38. On the widespread circulation of stories in the sixth and fth centuries B.C.E., see Momigliano, “Eastern Elements,” esp. 26–27. Of course, this feature is not restricted to these centuries; stories such as Gilgamesh circulated in a large geographical area well before them. 13. Momigliano, “Eastern Elements,” 29; cf. T. C. Eskenazi, In An Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra–Nehemiah (SBLMS 36; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). 14. It is worth stressing that causality associated with the will of the gods and moral behavior is expressed in different forms in different discourses. Certainly, Xenophon’s Hellenica does not read like the book of Chronicles, but still assumes and conveys this type of causality. See F. S. Pownall, “Condemnation of the Impious in Xenophon’s Hellenica,” HTR 91 (1998): 251–77. Note also the following viewpoint: “Divine activity becomes more prominent in the failure of the great Theban leader Epanimodas… As Xenophon tries to make sense of the political realities of his world, he struggles with the reasons why, with so many outstandingly gifted leaders, Greece failed to reach a stable and just political arrangement. He is caught 1

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tendency to emphasize the role or importance of the individual agent and his/her character (e.g. king, lawgiver, charismatic leader, military leader, and the like), though this tendency is often balanced by a sense of temporality and social continuity that goes beyond the lifetime or leadership of any of these heroes.15 Finally, there is the matter of power, or better, of claims for power and authoritativeness. To begin with, the bearers of high literacy who read books that advanced an authoritative construction of the past empowered themselves through their activities and most often became custodians, interpreters and brokers of that knowledge to those who cannot read. Certainly, those who control the (construction of the) past have something to say about the present. It is not only or even mainly the individual writer who writes a work meant to be recognized by the target readership as an authoritative recollection of the past who claimed authority and power, but the social groups that educate and maintain these writers, that promote and support (and control?) such recollections of the past and socialize their members and those under their inuence through these between the poles of human and divine causality. Both are obviously signicant, but in the end he decides that the inexplicable and therefore the divine element is ultimately determinative” (R. J. Kroeker, “Politics and Personality: Characterization in Xenophon’s Hellenica” [PhD dissertation, University of Alberta, 2002], 31). Xenophon’s position in this regard is comparable, for instance, with that of CHR concerning the separation of the North and the continuous political separation of the northern territories from Jerusalem from these times to CHR’s own times. See E. Ben Zvi, “The Secession of the Northern Kingdom in Chronicles: Accepted ‘Facts’ and New Meanings,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph W. Klein (ed. M. P. Graham, S. L. McKenzie and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T&T Clark International, 2003), 61–88, and Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles (London: Equinox, 2006), 117–43. 15. Cf. Sasson’s perspective: “Using these guidelines, conventions and principles the Hebrews narrated the story of their people. The narrator was guided by a notion favored in recent centuries by Thomas Carlyle, that ‘history is the essence of innumerable biographies.’ His vision was encyclopedic and the subject of his biographies acquired character and purpose from events and goals that occurred centuries later. Consequently, the subjects of the biographies often foreshadow characters that are to follow and their goals are renewed in subsequent narratives.” J. M. Sasson, Hebrew Origins: Historiography, History, Faith of Israel (Chuen King Lecture Series 4; Hong Kong: Chung Chi College, 2002), 18. It bears notice, however, that the gure of the historian is self-effacing in ancient Israel, but certainly not in Classical historiography. The self-effacedness of the mentioned historians is only a reection of the self-effacedness of the literati of Yehud in general. On the latter, see E. Ben Zvi, “What is New in Yehud? Some Considerations,” in Yahwism After the Exile (ed. Rainer Albertz and Bob Becking; STAR 5; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 32–48. 1

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memories (be the text the book of Kings or the Sumerian King List). Neither the proud scribes of the eduba nor the Jerusalemite scribes, who were most likely associated in some way or another with the Temple in Achaemenid Yehud, can be understood in historical terms in isolation from their social setting, nor their works. Needless to say, studies of the internal social systems of societies in the ancient Near East have much to contribute in these areas. Historical writing was inuenced not only by the social location of the literati who composed and read this literature and by systemic tendencies to socialize at least some sector of the population around the constructions of the past shaped and reected by these narrative, but also by the social location of their center vis-à-vis larger socio-political structures such as empires. It makes a difference if the historical narrative is created at (and by) the imperial center or within the periphery at and by a regional center. In the latter case, under imperial circumstances, such as those during Achaemenid Yehud, comparative studies suggest the presence of both inuence from the imperial centers and ideologies and at the same time a strong regional, ideological focus, a tendency to socialize into regional identities, which in some way or another are likely to carry some element of hybridization and local adaptation of ideological motifs of the imperial center.16 III The preceding observations balance two important concerns: the contingent character of genres and expectations associated with genres including historical narratives, and the heuristic usefulness of comparative studies to shed light on, among other things, social location, social systems that allow or promote historiographical writings, ideological impetus, ideological constructions and constraints, themes, common metanarrative, matters of historiographical craftsmanship, and literary/ ideological tropes. It goes without saying that these studies should take into account the situatedness of any case of writing historical narratives within a particular 16. See, for instance, the case of the Persian king as founder of a Davidic Temple or the identication of YHWH, the god of Israel, with the God of Heavens. On the latter motif, cf. T. L. Thompson, “The Intellectual Matrix of Early Biblical Narrative. Inclusive Monotheism in Ancient Israel,” in The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms (ed. D. V. Edelman; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 107–24. As for the former, cf. E. Ben Zvi, “What is New in Yehud?,” and “The Book of Chronicles: Another Look,” SR 31 (2002): 261–81, Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles, 20–41. 1

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society and its distinct main discourses and genre repertoire. Within each society, genre expectations, although in some way played upon in any singular work, provide the basic frame according to which authors, implied authors and readers interact. Genre expectations provide a range of that which is acceptable and produceable or even re-produceable within a particular group. Since the texts discussed here are written works, the relevant groups consist of literati. Turning to ancient Israel, the authors and the target readership belong to a very small group and share expectations and constructions of genre. But which constructions of historical genre(s) and their related expectations were common in postmonarchic Israel, within which the present form of most historical books in the Hebrew Bible were shaped? Within the Hebrew Bible there is a large set of texts that constructed and communicated events in the past, explained through a system of cause and effect meant to be accepted by the intended or target readerships, and shaped a meaning or signicance for that past. These texts included, among others, the prophetic books (i.e. the Latter Prophets), Pentateuchal narratives, the books of Esther (see Esth 1:1; 10:2) and Ruth, and some Psalms, and of course, books such as Chronicles, Kings, and Samuel. Yet it is likely that ancient Yehudite (re)readerships understood that the book of Kings, for instance, does not belong to the same genre as Leviticus, the book of Hosea or any psalm, even if all construct a past. If so, how did they approach the question of “history writing” and “historical texts”?17 First, it is worth stressing that the core differences that most likely served to characterized these texts as belonging to different genres had nothing to do with perceived referentiality, that is, with the question of whether the past they constructed was believed by the target readerships to be a truthful or believable reection of past events whose very existence was agreed upon by the authorship and the primary target readership of the text.18 In fact, it seems very unlikely that because a reference 17. The question is still meaningful even if the Yehudites did not have a term for history or historical-writing. They, for instance, did not have a clear term for “prophetic book,” but certainly did have an awareness of how a prophetic book may or should look like. I addressed these issues in Ehud Ben Zvi, “The Prophetic Book: A Key Form of Prophetic Literature,” in The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (ed. Marvin A. Sweeney and Ehud Ben Zvi; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 276–97. On the general matters involved, see G. Prudovsky, “Can We Ascribe to Past Thinkers Concepts they Had No Linguistic Means to Express?,” History and Theory 36 (1997): 15–31. 18. I am using the term “referentiality” instead of “historicity.” The latter conveys a sense that the events “actually” happened, which is not relevant to the 1

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concerning the past was present in, for instance, the book of Chronicles, such a reference was considered automatically as a more reliable representation of what was believed to have happened in the past than a reference embedded in books such as Genesis, Deuteronomy, or for that matter, the books of Jeremiah, Haggai, Isaiah or Ruth. Genre recognition seems to do more with literary observations, style, and theme. Moreover, even within the realm of a particular genre, writers may choose (to develop?) subgenres for particular purposes. When they did so, linguistic and stylistic choices served to communicate their generic choice. For instance, Chronicles is similar in some ways to Samuel–Kings, but it does not claim the status of “classical” historical work that was associated with Samuel–Kings within the target readership of Chronicles. This choice served to negotiate the “authoritativeness” of the new text. The latter, of course, is related to power as well.19 Genre, genre conventions and expectations, and the intertwined social and ideological expectations of the target readership were crucial factors to achieve these goals. A text has to fulll genre expectations to be accepted by the target readership or successive readerships.20 But what exactly did a text in ancient Israel (Yehud) have to fulll to be accepted by target readerships as “history-writing”? Or, in other words, how can one dene “history-writing” in terms that are contingent to ancient Yehud? Four contemporary denitions of historiography are relevant at this point, since they serve to explore the possibilities and drawbacks of the approaches to the questions mentioned above that they represent, or to which their logic leads to. Van Seters set ve criteria to identify history writing in Israel:21

matter at stake. “Referentiality,” however, addresses to the matter that the text points at an external referent, that is, a construction of particular events in the past that is accepted within the discourse of the authorship/intended and primary readerships. For proposals associating both Hebrew and Greek historical writings, or some aspects of them, with cultural and ideological interactions between local elites and the Persian center, see Momigliano, Classical Foundations, esp. 5–17. 19. Cf. J. Van Seters, “Creative Imitation in the Hebrew Bible,” SR 29 (2000): 395–409; Ben Zvi, “The Book of Chronicles: Another Look.” 20. This holds true even if one assumes that a degree of playfulness or defamiliarization was or could be included within the range of expectations. 21. Note his recognition of the local as opposed to universal validity of this genre denition. 1

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1. History writing is a specic form of tradition in its own right. Any explanation of the genre as merely the accidental accumulation of traditional material is inadequate. 2. History writing is not primarily the accurate reporting of past events. It also considers the reasons for recalling the past and the signicance given to past events. 3. History writing examines the causes of present conditions and circumstances. In antiquity these causes were primarily moral— who is responsible for a certain state of affairs?… 4. History writing is national or corporate in character. Therefore, merely reporting the deeds of the king may be only biographical unless they are viewed as part of the national history. 5. History writing is part of the literary tradition and plays a signicant role in the corporate traditions of the people.22 Brettler writes, I propose dening a historical narrative within biblical studies as “a narrative that presents a past.” The group of “narratives that presents a past” delimits a meaningful corpus of biblical texts which may be distinguished from other corpora, such as law, proverbs, psalms and (most of) prophecy.23

For Halpern, History is not how things happened, but an incomplete account, toward a specic end, of selected developments. Yet normally we would say that if the author does not mean to be accurate in representing the past (“as it was”), if the author does not try to get the events right and to arrange them in the right proportion, the result cannot be history… Whether a text is a history, then, depends on what its author meant to do… [A]ll history is ctional, imaginative, as the literary critics say. The distinction between history and romance, or fable; it is a distinction in authorial intention, in the author’s adherence to sources.24

Edelman writes, Historiography is a broad category that includes a number of genres of literature, whose subject matter deals with current or past people, events or reality. History-writing is a genre that needs to be subdivided into ancient and modern types because of differences in critical standards and in the understanding of causation. Ancient history-writing is a narrative genre that describes current or past reality, events or people, based on one 22. Van Seters, In Search of History, 4–5. 23. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, 12. 24. Halpern, The First Historians, 7–9. 1

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Enquire of the Former Age or more sources of information, which creates meaning by attempting to answer the question “why.” In ancient history-writing causation tends to be associated with both humans and the divine…25

Halpern’s position has been strongly criticized on several grounds.26 One of the most important of which is its reliance on authorial intention. This intention is irretrievable and, accordingly, the denition turns out be of no help. Further, many would claim that even were authorial intention retrievable, authorial intention is not necessarily the most important standard by which to characterize a text and its role in society. Edelman raises an additional concern: the claim that ancient historians, who deserve to be described as such, would not omit material they know about or add “invented” material into their writings, because their goal is to represent accurately the past, “as it was.” If such criteria were to be used consistently, there would not be any ancient historians in antiquity.27 Despite all its shortcomings, Halpern’s denition is very helpful for understanding the problem of dening ancient history. It is reasonable to assume that Halpern brings authorial intention to the center because without it, he feels, it would be impossible to distinguish history writing from ction writing in ancient Israel. Accordingly, the corollary of Halpern’s position is that those who argue that (a) authorial intention is either not retrievable or not important in itself or both, and (b) there were no ancient historians whose main and only goal was to describe the past precisely as it was, and therefore would not dare to invent material or refrain from using sources, or any combination of (a) and (b), will fail to come up with criteria with which to distinguish history-writing and ction writing. In fact, such a distinction may seem even more difcult for those who, like this writer, also question the meaning of the word “right” in Halpern’s “…to get the events right and to arrange them in the right proportion,” or fully admit that ancient Israelite historians could and did omit matters they knew about and added “invented” materials.28 Brettler, Van Seters, and Edelman bring to the forefront a certain delimitation of “history-writing” by stressing its narrative character. This emphasis is fully consistent with the tendency to bring to the center matters of narrativity and of the literary character of history-writing in

25. D. V. Edelman, “Clio’s Dilemma: The Changing Face of History-Writing,” in Lemaire and Sæbø, eds., Congress Volume, Oslo 1998, 247–55. 26. See ibid., 250–52; Brettler, Creation of History, 11–21. 27. On Thucydides, see n. 5. 28. The authorship of Chronicles serves as a primary example. 1

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contemporary discussions about the nature of historiography. It is also consistent with the obvious narrative character of most of the texts describing the past in the Hebrew Bible. If this approach is followed, however, two questions arise. As Amit wrote, He [Brettler] denes history as “a narrative that presents the past.” The immediate question that emerges is: What about biblical poetry that presents the past? Is Psalm 78 less history than the story of the Exodus only because of its genre? If history is a specic genre, what is the place of the different genres one can nd in the historical books.29

Amit’s rst question is of particular relevance to the matter discussed here.30 Must a construction of the past that was understood as “historical representation” to be written as a narrative to be understood as such? Or is narrative only the most common way to communicate such representations and particularly useful for larger textual units? If the latter, as I tend to think, then the previous denitions can serve as pointers at main or common features of history-writing in ancient Israel rather than as a set of exclusive criteria for dening the latter. If so, not only were the boundaries of the genre of “history” as understood by ancient Israelite literati far more porous than usually assumed, but also “historical narrative” becomes a subgenre of “history-writing,” even if it is undoubtedly the most common. These considerations somewhat recall Edelman’s distinction between historiography and “history-writing” (in Edelman’s sense). But if so, it is worth noting that this distinction leads Edelman to conclude that “the Hebrew Bible as a whole, in addition to individual books or segments, can be classied as historiography, since the subject matter deals with current or past events, people or reality.”31 Whether or not this approach is taken, a matter remains: if not every narrative can be considered history-writing (as opposed to historiography in Edelman’s terms), then which additional criteria may be raised to distinguish history-writing from any other narrative, besides that the former represent events or persons in the past (or present), which in itself is not a very useful criterion since few narratives in the Hebrew Bible aim at representing future events.32

29. Yairah Amit, review of Marc Zvi Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, Review of Biblical Literature. Online http://www.bookreviews.org. 30. On her second question, see below. 31. Edelman, “Clio’s Dilemma,” 253. 32. Signicantly, the same seems to hold true of narratives outside the Hebrew Bible and outside Israel. 1

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Edelman adds two related criteria: (a) “based on one or more sources of information,” and (b) “creates meaning by attempting to answer the question ‘why.’ ” Turning to (b) rst, although it is a common feature of historical narrative, it can scarcely be considered an exclusive feature. The books of Jonah and Job, to mention two, certainly raise the question of “why,” of causality, and heavily weigh on it. The criterion of sources might be more appealing—at least for us, as modern historians for whom sources are at the center—but as Edelman would agree, ancient historians did not always rely on sources. Further, if this criterion were to be used consistently, should we imagine that the ancient literati considered CHR more “historical” than Genesis, because it used the genealogies of Genesis? Would the account of the creation in Josephus’ Antiquities be an important piece of historical writing, unlike the one in Genesis, simply because Josephus used the latter as a source? Moreover, unless one assumes beforehand that those writers responsible for the present (biblical) books wrote their material out of full cloth, would it not be agreed that most (or all?) were using sources?33 Van Seters tends to emphasize corporate or national criteria: “merely reporting the deeds of the king may be only biographical unless these are viewed as part of the national history.”34 Within the Hebrew Bible, biographical narratives are implicitly or explicitly part of a national history. The stories of Abraham or David, for instance, are an integral part of books that deal with more than these gures and that by themselves are part of collections of books within which their lives are assigned meaning. Moreover, this process happens not only in the world of the books, but within the world of knowledge of the readers for which these books were intended. For instance, the story of Ruth points to events that go well beyond her “biography.” It is an important piece in a national story, because the readership was well aware of who David was or is. When texts are approached from this perspective Van Seters’ approach leads to the conclusion that there is historiography in the Hebrew Bible—that is, provides a rebuttal to those who claim that there in no ancient Israelite historiography (see above)—but is not heuristically helpful to distinguish between historical and non-historical writings in the Hebrew Bible, because there is no “biography” there that is not associated with a national narrative. These considerations also bring to the fore the second question raised by Amit, that is, the role of literary genres used in the historical books. In 33. Of course, one may consider a very restrictive use of the term “source”—for instance, royal accounts 34. Van Seters, In Search of History, 5. 1

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fact, Amit’s concern should be expanded to include the role of literary texts that were read within a world of knowledge that directly related them to national stories, such as the book of Ruth, which was not part, in my opinion, of the book of Judges, but still was read in a way informed and informing the narrative created by DH and probably the Primary History as well. It is obvious that the logic of this approach leads to the inclusion of law and poetry (and biographies or narratives about a particular individual, e.g., Joseph) within the realm of historical writing. This logic has much to commend itself. To illustrate, the laws in the Pentateuch are not presented outside a narrative setting, but at and as the center of an historical narrative. Similarly, the psalms or hymns that were placed in the mouth of leaders and kings in Deuteronomy, Samuel, or Chronicles are certainly a part and parcel of historical narratives. In other words, once the larger historical compositions and the discursive world of the literati are brought to bear the differentiation between “law” or “psalms” (to mention two corpora) and historical narrative becomes blurred, since the latter includes the former. But what about the distinction between historical and ctional narrative in ancient Israel (or Yehud)? The preceding considerations tend to undermine clear-cut distinctions or polar opposition between historical and ctional narrative.35 Can a modied version of Halpern’s criteria contribute substantially to its reformulation on more solid grounds? From a position that grants that the intention of the actual author is not retrievable, it does not follow that the likely intention of the implied author as construed by a particular readership is not retrievable. This 35. The question of “ction and historiography” or “ction and history” has been raised, of course, also by “literary critics” of the Hebrew Bible. See, in particular, M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 23–35. It is worth noting that Sternberg comes to a conclusion comparable to some extent to that of D. Edelman in so far as it concerns the historiographical character of the Hebrew Bible. See, for instance, Sternberg’s comment that “under the aegis of ideology, convention transmutes even invention into the stuff of history, or rather obliterates the line dividing fact from fancy in communication. So every word is God’s word. The product is neither ction nor ctionalized history, but historiography pure and uncompromising” (ibid., 34–35). It is to be stressed that Sternberg’s claim is not that the Hebrew Bible describes historical events in an accurate way, but that it communicates a claim to “truth-telling” which is reected in and conveyed by appeals to divine inspiration and by the omniscient character of the narrator. Of course, Sternberg’s literary position raises questions of intentionality and of what is meant by the term “truth” and for whom. Signicantly, these questions resurface, albeit in a different form and from a different perspective, when historians such as Halpern deal with matters of historiography and ction. See also below. 1

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being so, one may ask what intention(s) were the primary or intended readers and rereaders of these texts likely to associate with their implied author?36 If one follows a kind of Halperian approach within this heuristic outlook that focuses on readership, then one is likely to set criteria based on such questions as: Did the primary (or intended) rereadership of the text believe that the communicator speaking to them through the text was relating them the events as they truly happened? But this question raises immediately the matter of what would be meant by “truly” from the perspective of the ancient readerships mentioned here. It certainly did not mean “true” in the sense of “objective” truth, or history as “it actually happened.” Or in more general terms, they neither expected nor demanded full and complete mimesis with past events. This can be shown in many ways. For instance, historical narratives make use of typology and of common topoi to convey meanings. They may use and reuse similar narratives or narrative fragments in different instances.37 The readers of Chronicles, for instance, read, among many other things, about a person who had two different mothers (see 2 Chr 11:20; 13:2), about a pious king (Asa) who faithfully removed in his rst years improper cultic institutions (e.g. altars, high places) from the land—even though none of the above could have been established or existed within the discourse of CHR during the time of his predecessor (Abijah)—and of “biological” genealogies that expand and contract vertically (i.e. from father to son) according to the importance of particular periods in the story of advanced by the book.38 Ancient Israelite readers did accept Chronicles. Moreover, they read and considered authoritative both King and Chronicles, even if these two texts disagreed in many details, and had no problem with more than one account of creation.39 This being so, in which sense could the above mentioned “truly” have been considered relevant within the discourses of these communities? 36. In other words, one shifts the focus from the intention of authorship to that constructed by a particular readership. 37. Sasson (Hebrew Origins) characterizes the feature mentioned last as “kaleidoscopic.” He continues the quotation mentioned in n. 15 above as follows: “The narrator’s vision was also kaleidoscopic: fragments from one biography could be replayed in another.” 38. E. Ben Zvi, “About Time: Observations About the Construction of Time in the Book of Chronicles,” HBT 22 (2000): 17–31, and Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles, 144–57. 39. Of course, none of this is surprising. Cf. the Gospel narratives and notice the fact that the Church did not replace them with a harmonization, as it theoretically could. 1

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Two intertwined elements were at play. The text had to be “true” in regards to (ideological) meaningfulness and signicance and be consistent with a set of core facts about the past that were agreed upon within the community. For the purpose of the present paper, it sufces to say that these core facts included the basic outline of the story about Israel that was agreed by the community. These core facts included, among others, Adam and Eve as the common originators of all humanity, the series Abraham–Isaac–Jacob, the exodus, the leadership of Moses and Sinai, David, the building of the temple by Solomon, the list of kings and the respective length of their reigns, Sennacherib’s campaign and Jerusalem’s survival, Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem and exile.40 In other words, historical narratives that would have maintained that the rst man was Moses, or that the Jacob was the father of Abraham, that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem during Solomon’s reign, or that Jotham built the rst Jerusalemite temple of YHWH would have been rejected by the community as false. In fact, these are un-produceable historical narratives within the relevant historical settings discussed here. Similarly, a historical narrative whose main message to the readers would have been that Jerusalem was destroyed due to Judah’s failure to worship Baal or Marduk or that would communicate that YHWH was a false god would also have been unacceptable and un-produceable within the setting(s) within which and for which these historiographies were written. Signicantly, the same holds true for any historical narrative that would have constructed causality in pure social, economic, or systemic terms or one in which YHWH would have no role to play, either explicitly or implicitly.41 40. I discussed elsewhere the concept of “core facts” and its importance for an understanding of ancient Israelite historiography. See E. Ben Zvi, “Malleability and Its Limits: Sennacherib’s Campaign Against Judah as a Case Study,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; ESHM 4; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2003), 73–105; Ben Zvi, “Shifting the Gaze: Historiographic Constraints in Chronicles and Their Implications,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. M. Patrick Graham and J. Andrew Dearman; JSOTSup 343; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2001), 38–60; and Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles, 78–99. Whether these core facts are consistent with our present understanding of the past is absolutely irrelevant to their status in ancient Israel. The point is that these constructions were accepted as “core facts” at the time by a particular group. For general comparative studies, cf. Arjun Appadurai, “The Past as a Scarce Resource,” Man NS 16 (1981): 201–19, on the shared, “remembered past” as a scarce resource. 41. These narratives are produceable and reproduceable in our times, but not in theirs. 1

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These considerations, however, bring us back to the issues raised at the beginning of this section, because there is no text in the Hebrew Bible that states any of the above. From this observation it does not follow that there was no historiography in ancient Israel, but to the contrary that almost all the books and texts created within its discourses were strongly inuenced and at some level governed by an awareness of history. This is history in the sense of a construction of a past of Israel and of its relationship with YHWH and other nations that was agreed upon among, at the very least, the Jerusalemite elite. This construction of the past was not an antiquarian curiosity devoid of practical use, but a central marker of social identity and the basic metanarrative that not only made sense of their past and present, but educated them about how they should behave in the present and how to imagine possible futures. In others words, it served as a central socializing tool. Taking these considerations into account, Edelman’s statement that the Hebrew Bible as a whole, in addition to individual books or segments, can be classied as historiography takes a new meaning. At the same time, as reective as it is of the ideological discourses within which books and texts that construed and reected constructions of the past accepted were within the relevant communities of readers, this and similar statement do not mean at all that there is no genre variety among all these texts and books. History may be written as poetry and as narrative.42 Narrative historical writings may embed numerous genres. At the same time, because of the strong historical consciousness permeating the discourses of ancient Israel there is no clear distinction between “history” and “ction.” In fact, ction, if understood as a literary genre fully independent of constructions of the past based on “core facts” and clear integrative patterns of historical signicance, is not rarely represented in the literature of ancient Israel (Tobit, is probably one exception). But this does not mean that every piece of historical narrative was similar to the others, that they all show similar literary techniques, or that necessarily they address general “historiographical” matters (e.g. authentication) in the same manner, as any comparison of Genesis, Judges, Kings and Chronicles would show. To be sure, at times, differences served to advance interplays of authority (CHR vs. Kings), but at times they reected also or were due to the use of different subgenres. One does not have to go as far as to claim that each book points at a genre of itself, but there is an interplay between sharing a cluster of common features and individual textual distinctiveness. This interplay, along with

42. Even if narrative representations are much more frequent. 1

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that between the text and the world of knowledge of the community served in fact to shape the meaning of the text. The concept of clusters of common features provides a more helpful re-conceptualization of the features correctly noticed in the denitions mentioned above than the use of them as strong boundary markers that separate “historical writing/narrative” from other genres or subgenres. Signicantly, this concept of clusters, because of its non-exclusive character, is conducive to an understanding of texts and books within a “both–and” approach, as opposed to an “either–or” one. To mention a few possible pairs, ancient Israelite texts could be understood as both historiographical and ideological; to be considered as historiographical and at the same time fulll clear mythical functions; to be understood as historiographical and contain “ctional” narratives, speeches, or characterizations of personages that served to enhanced the “truthful” message conveyed by the text, to be historiographical and typological or “kaleidoscopic.” Of course, all these considerations apply to ancient Israel and, in my opinion, to postmonarchic discourses. They do not apply to modern historiography, or necessarily to other groups. Genre distinctions are historically, socially, and historically bound.43

43. Readers of the present study may notice that I have not discussed the value of ancient historiographical texts or books as sources for our historical-critical reconstructions of the past they narrate. Ancient historiographical texts were not written so as to provide good sources for contemporary, critical historians of the periods described in them, and therefore such considerations have no place in a discussion of ancient Israelite historical texts against their ancient contexts and within their original discourses. 1

THE ORIGINS OF BIBLICAL ISRAEL* Philip R. Davies

The province of Judah in the sixth and fth centuries has become a topic of enormous interest and importance in the last decade. A period that was previously—following the lead set by the biblical narratives themselves—focused almost exclusively on the deported royal and priestly leadership of Judah (“exilic”) has now come to be called, more neutrally, the Neo-Babylonian period, with a switch of focus to the land of Judah itself and its inhabitants. That this time and place (written off by the biblical accounts as “empty”), should have been so neglected is unfortunate, since it represents a highly signicant and most peculiar anomaly: a province called “Judah” was in fact governed from a territory that, as the Bible and biblical historians themselves describe it, was “Benjaminite.”1 The former capital of the kingdom of Judah, Jerusalem, was replaced by Mizpah. In the majority of modern histories of Israel/Judah that I have consulted, no explanation is offered for this decision, nor is any serious attention paid to its consequences.2 * An earlier version of this study appeared in the e-journal, The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, vol. 5, article 17, and in Y. Amit, E. Ben Zvi, I. Finkelstein and O. Lipschits, eds., Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 141–48. 1. See the collection of essays edited by O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp, Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003). A second volume on this topic is in press. 2. J. Bright, History of Israel (London: SCM, 1960), 310, states: “probably because Jerusalem was uninhabitable…” M. Noth, The History of Israel (rev. ed, London: SCM, 1960), 288, concurs, adding that probably “Mizpah had not suffered so badly as other Judean cities.” G. W. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (ed. D. V. Edelman; JSOTSup 146; Shefeld: JSOT, 1993), 800–801, offers no explanation. B. Oded, “Judah and the Exile,” in Israelite and Judaean History (ed. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller; 1

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How long this state of affairs continued remains unclear, but, as Hayes and Miller (among others) have suggested, and Edelman has argued,3 it was probably only in the middle of the fth century (at the earliest) that Jerusalem was restored as the capital of Judah, and the fact that no scriptural record indicates otherwise is signicant. Indeed, if Jerusalem had been the capital before the time of Artaxerxes, the beginning of the story of Nehemiah, with its desolate portrait of the city, would be absurd. Thus, for well over a century, the political life of Judah was centred in a territory which had once been part of the kingdom of Israel. How, when and why the territory of Benjamin became attached to Judah is unknown. Perhaps when the Assyrians divided the territory of the former kingdom of Israel into provinces, its southernmost part (which was topographically linked to the southern highlands by the depressed ridge known as the “Jerusalem saddle”) was allocated to Assyria’s vassal Judah;4 or perhaps it was annexed by Josiah (but not reclaimed by Egypt or Babylon after his death?).5 Or perhaps it was even Manasseh’s reward for persistent loyalty to them. The biblical explanation that the tribe of Benjamin joined with Judah at the time of the “division of the kingdom” is unacceptable, both in narrative terms (the houses of David and Saul are portrayed in the books of Samuel as mutually hostile), the offhand way in which this decision is related, and in the ambiguity in the counting of the ten tribes and the “one remaining.”6 One highly important implication of this conclusion is that the city and sanctuary of Bethel belonged to the territory of Benjamin, which explains the later incorporation of

London: SCM, 1977), 435–88 (476), states that “Gedaliah settled in Mizpah”; J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 423–24, suggest that Mizpah was Gedaliah’s choice, but also suggest that, unlike Jerusalem, it had not been destroyed, and also that it “probably continued as the capital of Judah for over a century.” 3. Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel and Judah, 476; D. V. Edelman, The Origins of the “Second Temple”: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005). 4. A. Zertal, “The Province of Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) in the Late Iron Age (Iron Age III),” in Lipschits and Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the Judeans, 377– 412, suggests that the southern border of Samerina was the “Jericho–Nasbeh–Eqron line” (384), following Aharoni—but this is no more than a guess on the part of either. 5. The story in 2 Chr 13 of Abijah’s capture of the territory of Benjamin from Jeroboam looks improbable, but possibly comprises an attempt to solve the question of when Benjamin and Judah did come together as a single administrative unit. 6. For a fuller discussion of this episode, see my The Origins of Biblical Israel (London: T&T Clark International, 2007), 67–79. 1

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Bethel into Judah (along with the rest of Benjaminite territory) and the intense antipathy towards it demonstrated in the Jerusalem-centred biblical corpus.7 This northern part of the province of Yehud was, during the sixth century, not only the most densely populated part of the Neo-Babylonian province and the focus of political life in Judah, but it also, with the demise of the dynastic cult, provided the sanctuaries at which the population could worship (Bethel, Mizpah, Gilgal, Gibeon). That the remains of the Jerusalem temple continued as a site of religious activity remains possible, but such activity would not have involved the inhabitants of the territory of Benjamin, and would almost certainly not have been approved or supported by the imperial or provincial authorities. Despite the rhetoric about the centrality and uniqueness of Jerusalem in Judah’s literature, we cannot take it as a historical fact that Jerusalem was the only sanctuary active in the territory of Judah-and-Benjamin prior to the Neo-Babylonian period, and the Benjaminite places of worship had a long and continuous history that reached back to the time when they belonged to the kingdom of Israel.8 Blenkinsopp has argued that of these sanctuaries, Bethel was preeminent.9 This is extremely likely. In the rst place, if the presentation of 2 Kings is correct in this respect, Bethel was a royal sanctuary during the existence of the kingdom of Israel. Second, the biblical tradition associates it with Jacob, the eponymous ancestor of Israel. Third, the extensive polemic in the Judean scriptural canon against Bethel points to it having been the chief rival to Jerusalem, presumably from the point at which it became part of Judah. Its Israelite history becomes, indeed, a major reproach in the Judean canon.10 The stories of the transfer of the 7. See further ibid., 159–71. 8. For a convenient summary of the data, see C. E. Carter, “Ideology and Archaeology in the Neo-Babylonian Period: Excavating Text and Tell,” in Lipschits and Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the Judeans, 310–18 (307–11). For more details on Bethel and Gibeon, see J. Blenkinsopp, “Bethel and the Neo-Babylonian Period,” 93–107, and D. Edelman, “Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited,” 153–67, in the same volume. 9. See n. 6. In fact, “pre-eminent” is perhaps misleading: he does not consider the status of the others at all. But I take it that “pre-eminent” is at least implied. A fuller defence of Blenkinsopp’s thesis will appear in the second volume. 10. See in particular the essay by Blenkinsopp in the forthcoming second volume; but also, importantly, D. V. Edelman, King Saul in the Historiography of Judah (JSOTSup 121; Shefeld: JSOT, 1991); also Y. Amit, “Epoch and Genre: The Sixth Century and the Growth of Hidden Polemics,” in Lipschits and Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the Judeans, 135–51; P. Guillaume, Waiting for Josiah: The Judges 1

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ark in 2 Sam 6 (from Benjaminite territory to Jerusalem) and the golden calf episode (connected with the legend of Josiah’s destruction of Bethel, 2 Kgs 23) show that Bethel–Jerusalem rivalry constitutes a major issue in the argument of the Deuteronomistic historiography. In my view, this rivalry reects more immediately the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian period, when Jerusalem lost and then reasserted its supremacy over Bethel (religiously) as well as over Mizpah (politically).11 The impact of the Neo-Babylonian period on the formation of the Deuteronomistic historiographical ideology probably goes further than the claim of Judean and Jerusalemite legitimacy. It incorporates two important consequences of the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian era. One is the absorption of the Jerusalem deity Yhwh Sebaoth into the deity of Bethel, ’l ysr’l: the other, following from that fusion, is the emergence of a belief in a common religion binding the two provinces of Samaria and Yehud from the very beginning. Unlike the Pentateuch and books of Chronicles, the Deuteronomistic story of monarchic Israel and Judah does not see them as a single political unit at all, but always divided into the “house of Israel” and “house of Judah” (as is clear from 1 Samuel). But they are each subject to the same deity. And this precisely matches the situation in the sixth century, when the cultic centres of Benjamin served both Yehud and Samaria. (Such a vision of a “people of Israel” is not realistic among the Babylonian deportees and their authorship of even a rudimentary version of Joshua–Kings is not plausible.) Yet these circumstances alone do not explain the rise of a historiography that charts the origins of Israel within Benjamin (from Joshua to Saul) but recounts its rapid conjunction, through a joint king, of both kingdoms. But there are elements of this story that can only have originated in Benjamin itself: an account of the rise of the kingdom of Israel, beginning with a conquest of the territory by Benjamin, a sequence of “judges” initiated by a Benjaminite, a judge-prophet, Samuel, whose circuit lies within Benjamin, and nally the rst, Benjaminite king of

(JSOTSup 385; London: T&T Clark International, 2004); cf. M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995), 109–11. 11. Edelman (King Saul) argues that Gibeon (as the true home of Saul) is also attacked in the pro-Jerusalem literature, suggesting the city’s continued importance in the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian period (which would imply the continued status of its own sanctuary also). It is likely that the polemic of Deuteronomy for a single sanctuary, while not explicitly advocating Jerusalem, reects a period in which several Yahwistic sanctuaries were thriving and a drive for centralization was in process, but possibly not resolved. My own preference for a fth-century date for Deuteronomy was defended at an earlier meeting of the ESHM. 1

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Israel.12 However ancient some of the elements of this narrative, its literary form is most likely to have emerged at a time when political and religious leadership (and perhaps religious leadership extending also to Samaria) was once again a reality. If this context is the correct one for the very rst draft of an “Israelite” history, the so-called Deuteronomistic History emerged as a Judean redrafting of that story, a redrafting necessary to reect the aspirations of a restored Jerusalem that was claiming the same sovereignty as Bethel has previously enjoyed as the major religious centre of two provinces. It is the period of Benjaminite hegemony, lasting for well over a century, in which the notion of Judahites being “children of Israel” and worshipping the “god of Israel” emerges—and not before. This is the era from which Judahites subsequently call themselves by the name “Israel,” as their scriptural and post-scriptural writings attest. However, the name never connoted a political identity, only a worshipping community that was expanded through historiography into a nation. In his recent response to my formulation of this thesis in 2006, Nadav Na’aman has entirely misunderstood this point, and seeks to explain why Judah might adopt “Israel” as a prestige title.13 Are there any other plausible settings in which Judah might name itself as “Israel” or part of Israel? Perhaps while the land of Judah (however politically constituted) was subservient to its more developed and powerful northern neighbour, even for a time under a single king Jehoram (2 Kgs 3:1–2; 8:16, where the fact is possibly disguised by inventing a second Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, and (perhaps in a separate, later editorial process) changing “Jehoram” to “Joram” for the king of Israel)?14 But this “united monarchy” if it did really exist, was short-lived, and the Israelite hegemony ended. Judah pursued its own political career independently of Israel, and indeed, against Israel’s interests, in allying itself to Assyria. It seems unlikely, then, that we have here any plausible basis for the continued adoption by Judah of the name “Israel,” especially when the kingdom that bore the name had been 12. Joshua and Samuel are said to come from the “hill of Ephraim,” a name that suggests it lies on the border with Ephraim and not in Ephraim: for how else would such a name serve to identify it? The area of activity of both heroes is centred in Benjamin. 13. N. Na’aman, “The Israelite–Judahite Struggle for the Patrimony of Ancient Israel,” Bib 91 (2010): 1–23. 14. This solution to two contemporary kings of the same name was proposed by Cook (CAH 3:367) and supported by J. Strange (“Joram, King of Israel and Judah,” VT 25 [1975]: 191–201) and dismissed as a “drastic suggestion” by G. H. Jones, 1 and 2 Kings (NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 446. 1

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defeated and Judah itself was enjoying the prosperity of a booming imperial economy. Finkelstein and Silberman have argued15 that it was in the reign of Hezekiah that Judah became “Israelite,” when a ood of refugees from the former kingdom of Israel swelled Jerusalem’s numbers. However, this is an implausible explanation for a sustained increase, even if, as is improbable, farmers would desert their land and livelihood for a city in a neighbouring kingdom allied to Assyria. The expansion of the city did not necessarily occur before the seventh century in any case: refugees from the Judean countryside or other Judean cities devastated by Sennacherib are a more likely scenario, though in the longer term economic expansion is another likely cause. But even if Israelites came to Jerusalem in large numbers, it hardly follows that their identity would impose itself, or be accepted, by Judah itself. The reign of Josiah might offer another alternative occasion for Judah to assume an “Israelite” identity. The once-dominant (and indeed stillpopular) theory of a Josianic dream to reunite Davidic “Israel” (if it had ever existed) might entail the restoration of the ancient name. But such an ambition is not plausible given the nature of the power transfer from Assyria to Egypt, which did not allow the kind of power vacuum once supposed. Josiah’s reported destruction of Bethel may or may not reect historical reality, perhaps even an attempt to annex the territory of Benjamin. But in any case, one cannot see why such an expansion would have been allowed to persist, given Josiah’s death at the hands of the Pharaoh. This is not a realistic scenario in which Judah takes on the name of Israel. Fundamentally, the reason why all these alternatives fail is that they suppose a situation in which Judah is the stronger partner and thus unlikely to assume the name of the weaker. We are obliged, on the contrary, to look for a period when “Israel” was dominant and “Judah” subordinate, and a period of time in which an identity “Israel” could be absorbed by a population that also saw itself as “Judah” in such a way that it was irreversible. We must also bear in mind that the denition of “Israel” adopted by Judah was not political but religious. A religious rather than a political context is needed to explain this. The locus for a religious “Israel” is the enlarged community served by the Bethel cult in the Neo-Babylonian period. As an erstwhile Israelite royal institution, the symbolic and cultic home of “Israel,” Bethel 15. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001), esp. 246–50. 1

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encouraged its worshippers to identify themselves as “children of Jacob” (or more simply, just “Jacob”), venerating him as their ancestor and his god as theirs. We have no reason to doubt that even when absorbed into Judah the people of Benjamin remained true to this cult. After 586, with the Jerusalem royal house and aristocracy removed, there was no institutional support for any “traditions” of “Zion” or of the “house of David.” In a period of over a century, spanning at least six generations, the identity “Israel” will have permeated the population of Yehud in such a way that the later restoration of political and cultic supremacy to Jerusalem could not challenge it, let alone remove it (except, that is, by detaching the population of Samaria from the name while implying a rightful claim to its territory).16 It remains to explore whether the merging of Judah and Israel (or specically “Jacob”) can be traced in datable Judean literature. Perhaps we can begin with texts such as Isa 2:3: And many people will go and say, “Come let us go up to the mountain of Yhwh, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Yhwh from Jerusalem.”

“Jacob” occurs at least 40 times in Isaiah, but is especially concentrated in chs. 40–55 (22 times). This is a totally unexpected phenomenon in the work of a poet supposedly exiled among the Zionists and addressing them (I use the term precisely: the “exile” was a deportation of Jerusalemites, whose descendants presumably were responsible for lobbying for the restoration of their beloved city). I have argued before that the contents of Second Isaiah stem largely if not entirely from Judah in the fth century, when the issue of Jerusalem’s claims and the claims of its “children” were being advanced in a way that did not, as in Ezra and Nehemiah, seek to exclude the indigenous population.17 For this poet, the returning Zionists (to whom he is sympathetic, 16. Although the pre-eminence of Jacob was diminished by introducing a grandfather who immigrated from Babylonia. Both Abraham and his son were associated (when?) with sites in the erstwhile territory of Judah (Hebron, Beersheba). These sites probably still belonged to the province of Judah in the sixth and fth centuries, but were largely populated by Edomites, and at some point Edom was given administrative independence—becoming identied with Jacob’s estranged brother in the process(?). 17. See my “God of Cyrus, God of Israel: Some Religio-Historical Reections on Isaiah 40–55,” in Words Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F.A. Sawyer (ed. Jon Davies, Graham Harvey and Wilfred G. E. Watson; JSOTSup 195; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 1995), 207–25. 1

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if not even one himself) are part of “Israel”; they are “Jacob” and should be welcomed. The conjunction of “Jacob” and “Judah” is extremely rare in the Hebrew Bible but its seven instances are signicant. One is from Second Isaiah: Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have come out of the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of Yhwh, and make mention of the god of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. (Isa 48:1)

Another from Trito-Isaiah: And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and my elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall live there. (Isa 65:9)

The following reference may be an allusion at the end of the Judean monarchy, but is a unique collocation and may more probably be the result of a redactional addition during the editing of the book of Jeremiah: Declare this in the house of Jacob, and publish it in Judah… (Jer 5:20)

McKane’s comment, “The form of address in v. 20 is new, but 3BJEJ3 almost certainly functions as a synonym of 95H9J and is not a reference to the northern kingdom,”18is surely correct, but the absence of further comment on this unique appellation is surprising! But see also 30:10; 31:7, 11; 33:26; 46:27–28, where “Jacob” apparently refers to Judeans (2:4; 10:16, 25 cannot be decided). The collocation in Lamentations ts the proposed period very well: The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not shown pity: he has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought them down to the ground: he has polluted the kingdom and its princes. He has cut off in his erce anger all the horn of Israel: he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a aming re, that devours round about. (Lam 2:2–3)

See also Lam 17 where Jacob is collocated with Jerusalem. In the two collocations of Jacob and Judah in Hosea, on the other hand, the terms are not synonymous—“Judah” and “Jacob” apply to different entities:

18. W. McKane, Jeremiah (2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), 1:128. Holladay makes no relevant comment. 1

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Enquire of the Former Age And Ephraim is like a heifer that is trained, and loves to tread out the corn; and I put a yoke upon her fair neck: I will harness Ephraim; Judah shall plough, and Jacob shall break up the ground. (Hos 10:11) Yhwh has also a dispute with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his doings will he recompense him. (Hos 12:2)

The same is true of the last collocation, in Mic 1:5: All this is because of Jacob’s rebellion, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem?

Finally, it remains to show that in the sixth century the deities of Jerusalem (yhwh sb’wt) and Benjamin–Samaria (’l ysr’l) were in fact identied. This is proved by their collocation in the book of Jeremiah, where “Yhwh Sebaoth, god of Israel” occurs altogether 35 times out of only 44 in the entire Hebrew Bible.19 Since the book of Jeremiah (a gure associated with the ruling families of Benjamin who took power after 586 and who left Jerusalem for Mizpah after the city’s fall) must surely have been initiated in Mizpah and nowhere else, the combined title points very dramatically to the assimilation of the god of Jerusalem into the now dominant god of Benjamin and Samaria. In this brief study I do not have the scope to examine in detail the textual evidence for the identication of “Judah” as “Jacob” as opposed to “Judah” and “Jacob” as pairs. I have here outlined 20 an answer to the problem in the hope (indeed, expectation) of informative discussion. The implications of the answer for the history of biblical traditions are considerable and will of course have to be addressed, including the antiquity or otherwise of the tribal system in particular, the invention of the “united monarchy” and the gures of David and Solomon, the true nature of relations between the populations of Judah and Samaria in the Persian period, and the place of Benjamin between these. Also of some importance is the role of the conict between Benjaminite and Judean religious traditions (whether real or invented) and the origin of the Judean scriptures themselves. But in my view, and according to my arguments, the origin of “biblical Israel” lies in the sixth century and holds the key to the origin of the Judean literary activity that accompanied the rise to hegemony of Judah over “Israel” and the creation of new “memories” of the past.

19. The occurrences outside Jeremiah are Isaiah (3×); 2 Samuel (1×); 1 Chronicles (1×); Psalms (2×); Zephaniah (1×); Malachi (1×). 20. A fuller presentation is given in Davies, The Origins of Biblical Israel. 1

AGAINST HISTORIOGRAPHY—IN DEFENCE OF HISTORY Ernst Axel Knauf

I am a historian (I am doing a couple of other things as well, but this is what I think I am supposed to do within our seminar); my interest in historiography, in this respect, is rather limited (I deal with it in biblical studies, and theology, where this subject belongs). I am reading a lot of historiography, of course—in my copious spare time, and only for pleasure. Nevertheless, Sir Harry Flashman and Mrs Amelia Peabody Emerson contributed more to my understanding of the Victorian era than did Lytton Strachey and Eric Hobsbawm1 (to name two historians whom I highly appreciate). Sometimes I am even writing history (I would write much more [science] ction if I were less fascinated by the problems I encounter in the pursuit of my profession, and would spend less time trying to solve some of them). As a historian, however, I have emigrated from the connes of narrativity. I am no longer interested in histories and sources, but in data and theories. I am interested in objective knowledge about the past, and call “(scientic)2 history” the results of my investigations—and the investigations of fellow historians, of course, although I cannot regard as a fellow everybody who calls him/herself a historian. I might present the results of my investigations in narrative form, but I am by no means conned to this medium.3 The unscientic 1. Hobsbawm wrote the history of the period, which Strachey declared unwritable. Strachey, of course, was too much in awe of the sources to look for data. It stands to reason that the histories which Fergus Millar (to name another of the real big ones) declares unwritable (like a social and economic history of the Roman World) will soon be written. 2. Cf. J. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (2d ed.; New York: Norton, 1999), 403–25; also M. Buchanan, Ubiquity (London: Weidenfeld, 2000). 3. In my earlier articles, “Who Destroyed Megiddo VIA?,” BN 103 (2000): 30– 35, and “Saul, David and the Philistines: From Geography to History,” BN 109 (2001): 15–18, the maps contain more information than the accompanying text. 1

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representations of their own past as it is present in the collective minds of ethnic groups, religious sects and political parties are just stories—and, if deriving from the past, data for the historian, but denitely not theories which could determine his/her objectives and interpretations. In my religious (i.e. private) life, a Christian Bible4 is an important part of my own story which tells me, among other things, what I am doing when taking Holy Communion; professionally, I deal with the Hebrew Bible and the history of Canaan/Israel/Palestine over the past 5000 years, and my Christian Bible does not tell me how to process my data or which theories to favor (and if it were to do so, I would not listen). Objectivity A text allows more than one reading; historiographical texts cannot claim to make an exception. Data are either genuine or fake.5 Data are objects; they are what they are and nothing else. The interpretation of data is, of course, a matter of competing hypotheses. There are, however, clear rules concerning which hypotheses are still allowed to compete and which are not (notably, those which have been falsied, or do not take into account all of the data available, or a representative sample of them). A data base might be inconclusive (under a chosen level of statistical signicance); in this case, the researcher has to throw it out instead of “reading” it to her/his liking. Objectivity does not imply more than that empirical data are allowed— and invited!—to contradict one’s theories for the sake of the theory’s improvement (or abandonment).6 That every researcher has a personality, interests, and attitudes is well understood (also, that nobody is infallible). But these are research impediments which need to be addressed only in 4. There is no such thing as “the Bible,” as every student of the biblical tradition and its development through the past 2500 years will know; cf. my “History, Archaeology and the Bible,” Theologische Zeitschrift 57 (2001): 262–68 (262), and, in more detail, though probably less accessible, “Der Kanon und die Bibeln. Die Geschichte vom Sammeln heiliger Schriften,” Bibel und Kirche 57 (2002): 193–98. 5. Is it by chance that credulist historians like A. Lemaire repeatedly defend the “authenticity” of rather dubious inscribed objects from the (largely illegal, and in any case highly immoral) antiquities market which no ethically minded professional would touch with a bargepole? 6. I thought I had made that point in my “From History to Interpretation,” in The Fabric of History: Texts, Artifact and Israel’s Past (ed. D. V. Edelman; JSOTSup 127; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 1991), 26–64, but given various misreadings of this contribution in the course of the subsequent discussion, this seems not to be the case.

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order to be neutralized; a decent research design should take care of these. The objectivity criterion applied to research results demands of the researcher not to make statements which cannot be tested empirically, and not to repeat statements which have failed the test.7 Objective data are not restricted to matters of chronology.8 It is objective data that Norway, in 1905, had ca. 400 maxim guns whereas Sweden had just one (so, the War of Norwegian Independence, which Sweden was at the brink of initiating, never took place, and Norway became independent without a war). It is objective data that there was reforestation in northern Palestine in the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, but not during the Late Bronze Age.9 It is true that objective research has a tendency to look for numbers wherever such can be found, and demands some mathematical skills other than simple addition and subtraction. Given that all research results (including e=mc2 and the like)

7. N. P. Lemche’s fanciful notion of a Hellenistic date for the composition of the Bible does not survive the confrontation with the linguistic data presented and discussed in “War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache? Empirische Gesichtspunkte zur Annäherung an die Sprache der althebräischen Literatur,” ZAH 3 (1990): 11–23 (cf. also H. M. Barstad, “Is the Hebrew Bible a Hellenistic Book? Or: Niels Peter Lemche, Herodotus, and the Persians,” Transeuphratène 23 [2002]: 129–51, and more or less the entire collection of essays in L. L. Grabbe, ed., Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period [JSOTSup 317; ESHM 3, Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2001]). Any repetition of this statement now has the epistemological character of a dogma (and a quite heretical, or superstitious, one, for the des of the Church does not contradict the scholar’s ratio, whereas superstitions can be identied by their disregard for empirical facts, or tests), and should not concern students of history any further. 8. Pace B. Becking, “Chronology: A Skeleton Without Flesh? Sennacherib’s Campaign as a Case Study,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; ESHM 4; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2003), 46–72. In the same volume, P. R. Davies, “This Is What Happens…,” 106–18 (106), by stating that “objectivity in history writing is impossible because history can only exist as narrative and every narrative has to have a narrator,” indicates that he has a different concept of history, or objectivity, or both. For a scientic response to the postmodern gobbledygook, cf. n. 10, below. While postmodernism might have provided the empirical refutation of geisteswissenschaft, the perpetrators of postmodernism are now invited to join the cultural sciences, or leave academia alone. (I agree with Davies that history is what historians produce; the collective mind, producing a collective memory, can be conceived as a naive [and rather incompetent] historian.) More on that infra. 9. Cf. my “ ‘Kinneret I’ Revisited,” in Saxa Loquentur: Studien zur Archäologie Palästinas/Israels. Festschrift für Volkmar Fritz zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. C. G. den Hertog et al.; AOAT 302; Münster: Ugarit, 2003), 159–69 (167).

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are preliminary probabilistic globalizations,10 a basic knowledge of statistics is indispensable. A historian for whom chronology supplies the only signicant numbers s/he can think of is, in my opinion, a sorry sight in the third millennium C.E. There a many histories—stories about the past—and some of them can claim to be scientic, and demand our professional attention. But there was only one past (as there is only one universe which we all inhabit, differently as we might perceive it). The objective study of the past (or of the world) is characterized by the never-ending quest for the adaequatio intellectus ad rem, in which the res has its say. No theory ever presents the nal truth, but in a functioning scientic discourse, present theories are truer than those which they superseded. I am looking for the past real world beyond the stories.11 Very few of my textual data are stories, and relatively few of my data are texts. Retrieving Data Ancient historiography, aberrant as it may be on the level of historical theory and political purpose, contains data, and the historian has to retrieve them. Regardless of the question of authorial intentions, statements about the past are, in any text, correct, partially correct or incorrect, and the difculty is to sort them out. Partially correct or incorrect statements can be due to the tricks that collective as well as individual memory plays on us humans, or to deliberate doctoring of the facts. “It wasn’t me who lost us the battle of Waterloo, it was everybody else” is the tenor of more ar less all French memoirs written in the wake of the event.12 Based on the vast number of narratives from different points of view, and sticking to the facts without regard to their “meaning” in the individual narratives, it is possible to render a fairly precise account of what most probably happened between Belle-Alliance and Waterloo on 18 June 10. The probabilistic aspect is missing in the epistemology of K. R. Popper, from which my methodology is otherwise derived; cf. A. Sokal and J. Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science (New York: Picador, 1998). 11. The nal doom of text-oriented (as opposed to problem-oriented) research was correctly anticipated by R. M. Rilke: Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Texte so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Texte gäbe, und hinter tausend Texten—keine Welt. 12. On the British side, the tenor is “It was me (or: my regiment) who won Waterloo single-handedly, and I hadn’t even my cook with me.”

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1815.13 In addition, the historian of this battle has the rare advantage of being supplied with primary evidence in the form of carbon copies of some of the orders issued by the rst Duke of Wellington in writing in the course of the battle. The extent to which one uses data from historiographical texts which are always somewhat iffy in nature (as long as one does not insist, dogmatically, on believing everything that is written or refuses, just as dogmatically, to believe anything that is written) will simply be determined, pragmatically, whether these data t the framework established so far on the basis of data retrieved from other sets and with a higher level of condence.14 In this respect, literary criticism just does not apply. First Kings 9:15–19 is a conglomerate of glosses postdating one of the main deuteronomistic editings of Samuel–Kings. In spite of their very late and secondary character in terms of literary criticism, these glosses contain information that somebody built Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo (and we now know that Jeroboam II indeed rebuilt all three of these fortied places), and somebody else built Gezer, Baalath-Judah, Beth-Horon and Tamar (and I still vote for Solomon as the one responsible for these projects15). Ancient historiographers perfectly mastered the art of lying with the truth.16 The Signicant and the Meaningful Ancient historiography, on the level of concept and purpose, is theory at best, and an assemblage of thoroughly outdated theories too. I like mine better, if for no other reason than that they are slightly more up to date, and have data bases at their disposal completely unbeknown to any 13. Cf. H. T. Parker, Three Napoleonic Battles (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1944 [1983]), with a good description of his method on pp. 211–14. 14. I think L. L. Grabbe, “Of Mice and Dead Men: Herodotus 2.141 and Sennacherib’s Campaign in 701 BCE,” in Grabbe, ed., “Like a Bird in a Cage”, 119–40, is a good example for the soundness of that method. 15. Cf. “Solomon at Megiddo?,” in The Land that I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. J. A. Dearman and M. P. Graham; JSOTSup 343; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2001), 119–34, with some corrections in “The Queens’ Story: Bathshebah, Maacah and Athaliah and the ‘Historia’ of Early Kings,” lectio difculior 2 (2002), available online at www.lectio.unibe.ch, to which I. Finkelstein, “The Campaign of Shoshenq I to Palestine,” ZDPV 118 (2002): 109–35, provides the archeological background. 16. Cf. B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 107–32 (126), as well as my “701: Sennacherib at the Berezina,” in Grabbe, ed., “Like a Bird in a Cage”, 141–49 (141–42).

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ancient author. The unfounded respect paid to authors for no other reason than that they are old (or “classic,” which implies that they are very old indeed) seems to derive from the unfortunate upbringing of most contemporary historians from within the obsolete realm of humanities (which seems to prevent some of them from ever understanding how the sciences think and work). I should not deny that I am perfectly able to enjoy Homer and Sophocles, but these compete now with “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” for my attention, and their scientic treatment clearly belongs to the economics of leisure and entertainment enterprises. Another reason why so much effort is wasted on the “history of historiography” might be provided by the fact that it is rather easy to be right vis-à-vis authors who are passé anyway, and have no chance to talk back (writing history from scratch, on the other hand, necessitates vast stretches of dreary data retrieval, creative courage, and the ability to take risks—for quite a while there is no guarantee that the data one is processing will lead anywhere, if one dares to leave the trodden path of standard interpretations and operations). A third and most probably unconscious reason for the historicus incurvatus in se might be provided by the vain hope that, if I read and appreciate the work of colleagues who wrote 2500 years ago, some people will still read and appreciate my works 2500 years from now—an assumption which is silly to the extreme. More basically, the human animal has the unfortunate tendency to attribute far too much importance to its doings and thinkings. This is not to say that human actions are of no importance at all. The creation of the Sahara, the largest desert of the world, is a purely human achievement and, at least as far as the spatial dimension is concerned, one of the most impressive of these. But it will be hard to nd a single human among the millions who contributed to this task in the course of the past 10,000 years who ever decided “And today, I will do my part in the desertication of central North Africa.” In antiquity, people blamed themselves for the gods’ refusal to grant rain, and took the appropriate ritual measures; or, they blamed the worship of the wrong gods, or the wrong worship of gods, for the catastrophic failure of Judaean politics between 597 and 582 B.C.E. Today, it is fashionable in some circles to blame capitalism (whatever that means) for the rise of fundamentalist hatred among Muslims, which is exactly as reasonable as the deuteronomistic ideology.17

17. Because fundamentalism is an (individual as well as collective) moral and intellectual, not an economic, failure. It may respond to economic distress, but then, humans have choices—at least on the level of their attitudes.

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If religious, the human animal has the tendency to credit God with creating the world as some sort of a birthday present for its appearance on the cosmic scene. A careful reading of the rst two chapters of any Bible reveals that humanity was called in as a maintenance team (notably Gen 2:5, 15 indicating how 1:26–30 ought to be read), not as proprietors. Had God foreseen how abysmally humanity was to fail in its task, She would have contented herself with the chimpanzees. A history which does not take into account the non-human agents as well is not only incomplete, it is probably wrong in most, if not all, cases. One factor contributing to Napoleon’s loss of the battle of Waterloo was the extreme humidity of the summer of 1815, preventing him from bringing his superior artillery to bear (roundshot does not ricochet on mud). Actually, his downfall had begun with the unusually cold winter of 1812, and had been exacerbated by the rainy summer of 1813. In the rain, the slightly better trained French infantry was not able to re their muskets. Firearms were reduced to the function of very long, very heavy and very lethal clubs, and the largely untrained Prussian militia was better at clubbing. Neither Wellington, Blücher nor Schwarzenberg had made the rain (and it was not Metternich or Talleyrand, either). Between 1811 and 1818, a series of unusually intensive eruptions of volcanoes in the tropical zones produced 4.4 times the atmospheric debris set free in the eruption of the Krakatoa (1883), the meteorological consequences of which were well studied and well understood by then. In consequence, the years 1812–1817 were extremely cold and wet in Europe (and everywhere else), leading rst to the downfall of Napoleon and then, 1815–1817, to the last subsistence crisis in the history of Europe.18 As far as I know, Napoleon did not learn of the volcanic (and extra-European) contribution to his decline up to his very end. What is meaningful, what is signicant? Usually not what people unaware of the Chi-square test and of other means to establish statistical levels of signicance think it is. But sometimes this can be made clear even without recourse to such technicalities: Some years are more eventful than others. Some seem more full of history’s milestones; they contain more beginnings and endings. The year 1870 [C.E.] was such a year, for in it a remarkable number of extraordinary things happened. The end of an era was marked by the deaths of Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and Robert E. Lee… But 1870 was above all a year of beginnings: John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company and B. F. Goodrich started his rubber company; Henry M. Stanley set out to 18. J. D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), esp. 4–22.

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Enquire of the Former Age nd Livingstone in the heart of Africa; Heinrich Schliemann started digging in the ruins of Troy; the Americans began the construction of Brooklyn Bridge; compulsory education began in England; and in the United States, with a population of only 381/2 million, 22 per cent of whom were illiterate, four important universities were founded. It was also the year in which Wagner wrote Die Walküre, diamonds were discovered in the Orange Free State, the Vatican Council proclaimed the Dogma of Infallibility, and Italy was at last unied. Most of these happenings were more important to future generations than the Franco-Prussian War of that year or the question of who would sit on the throne of Spain, but they did not seem so at the time.19

19. B. Farwell, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars (Ware: Wordsworth, 1999 [1973]), 179–80.

WHY THE HEBREW BIBLE MIGHT BE ALL GREEK TO ME: ON THE USE OF THE XENOPHONTIC CORPUS IN DISCUSSIONS OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE* Christine Mitchell

“Parallelomania” abounds.1 I am not a historian, but a literary critic. I have no interest in using biblical texts as historical sources. But I know that many other people have a great deal of interest in doing so. If we are going to use these texts as historical sources, then I think we should be very clear about how they function as literature before we make any use of them as “historical” documents.2 However, I do not think that literary analysis of biblical texts is only the rst step, leading to “truer” historical analysis—I play the literary game for its own sake. But in order to do the work that I want * I wish to thank the members of the Seminar for their comments and suggestions, especially Lester Grabbe and Ehud Ben Zvi. Any errors and omissions that remain are, of course, my own. 1. I wondered about providing citations for the title and for this sentence. In true Bakhtinian style, no citation would be required, because the speech of Robert P. Carroll (“Jewgreek Greekjew: The Hebrew Bible Is All Greek to Me: Reections on the Problematics of Dating the Origins of the Bible in Relation to Contemporary Discussions of Biblical Historiography,” in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period [ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 317; ESHM 3; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2001], 91–107), and Samuel Sandmel (“Parallelomania,” JBL 81 [1962]: 1–13), respectively, has become my own, shaped by and shaping the rest of the text (and on Bakhtin having done this himself, see Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (2d ed.; New Accents; London: Routledge, 2002), 188. Similarly, the Chronicler or Qohelet or Ben Sira would not see the need for me to make a citation—they would understand that surely my readers/hearers would be as well-versed in the appropriate literature as myself. But those readers in the early twenty-rst century might have other terms for my nonfootnoting behaviour (although hearers might not, and perhaps that says something about the milieu in which biblical authors worked). 2. Cf. Mario Liverani, “Memorandum on the Approach to Historiographic Texts,” Or 42 (1973): 178–94. 1

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to do with biblical texts, I need the historians: I need the historians to tell me about the social and historical context in which biblical texts were created; I need the historians to tell me about institutions, family life, religion, and power. And I would like the historians to be able to do so without getting trapped into the circular arguments endemic to biblical studies. So, I will step outside the circle. I will bring in the outside element, the comparative element that both unsettles and claries, that gives us another way into the problem, that gives us perhaps an entirely different problem. In fact, I will bring in two outside elements: one is the Xenophontic corpus from the late classical/early Hellenistic world; the other is the discussion of genre theory. I will try to begin to develop a theory of genre that will work for an analysis of ancient texts; I will test this theory on one body of texts, the Xenophontic corpus; I will then apply it to selected biblical texts. By developing the genre theory, I hope to avoid simple “parallelomania.” Eventually, I will arrive at some preliminary conclusions about biblical texts and historical writing. This entire study is both preliminary and programmatic—many of its assertions will need to be demonstrated more clearly in the future. The genre theory that I will be working on will be based in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. Form criticism is still the primary way of looking at genre in biblical studies, and Bakhtin’s work is very useful in starting to look at other conceptions of genre. It is precisely because Bakhtin was working in the early to mid-part of the twentieth century that his work is so useful—he was well aware of and reactive to “form” criticism in its early manifestations in the critical world. His reactions (or his circle’s) against Russian Formalism are helpful in formulating a non-formal theory of genre. Traditional form criticism, with its insistence on locating the original Sitz im Leben, actually hinders our understanding of biblical texts for historical or historiographical use. Although form criticism also originally insisted on the study of the transformation of the genre through time,3 form criticism as it has been practiced in the last part of the twentieth century has been consistent in looking at original social situation and context. A theory of genre that is exible enough to analyze a biblical text diachronically is one that I hope to begin to develop in the following pages. I will try to show how it might be used in the analysis of biblical texts at the end of the present study. The full implications will have to be spelled out elsewhere; nonetheless, I think there is enough material at this point to make a beginning. 3. Cf. Joe Foley, “Form Criticism and Genre Theory,” Language and Literature 4 (1995): 173–91 (179–80). 1

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Literary Genres One of the problems plaguing any work with Bakhtin and genre is that Bakhtin did not develop any abstract system of genres. In fact, Bakhtin rejected both systems and radical relativism.4 In the early work of the Bakhtin circle (exemplied by Medvedev’s The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship,5 often the only work of the Bakhtin circle cited by genre theorists), there are programmatic comments about genre. However, in the works solely authored by Bakhtin there are analytical or applied comments on specic texts, with no general framework laid out.6 Although Bakhtin made comments about genre in many of his works, for anything close to a denable statement, we should turn to Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (hereafter PDP), “The Problem of Speech Genres” (hereafter “Speech”), and “The Problem of the Text” (hereafter “Text”).7 In PDP, Bakhtin begins his discussion of genre by suggesting that: A literary genre, by its very nature, reects the most stable, “eternal” tendencies in literature’s development. Always preserved in a genre are undying elements of the archaic. True, these archaic elements are preserved in it only thanks to their constant renewal, which is to say, their contemporization. A genre is always the same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously. Genre is reborn and renewed at every new stage in the development of literature and in every individual work of a given genre. This constitutes the life of the genre. Therefore even the archaic elements preserved in a genre are not dead but eternally alive; that is, archaic elements are capable of renewing themselves. A genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past, its beginning. Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development.8

4. Gary Saul Morson, “Bakhtin, Genres, and Temporality,” NLH 22 (1991): 1071–92 (1073). 5. P. N. Medvedev and M. M. Bakhtin, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics (trans. Albert J. Wehrle; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 6. Clive Thomson, “Bakhtin’s ‘Theory’ of Genre,” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 9 (1984): 29–40 (33). 7. M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson; with an Introduction by Wayne Booth; Theory and History of Literature 8; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (trans. Vern W. McGee; ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist; University of Texas Press Slavic Series 8; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 60–102; Bakhtin, “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 103–31. 8. PDP, 106, emphases original. 1

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I have quoted this passage at length because I think that there are several parts of it that should be explored in more detail, and that have relevance to the discussion of ancient genre. Bakhtin began his own commentary on this passage by describing his understanding of the sources of the novelistic genre: the coalescing of a variety of primary genres that all had their roots in classical antiquity.9 His discussion of these genres and their change over time and their eventual use in the rise of the novel is complex. But what might be of interest to us is that “history” or “historiography” is not one of the genres that he saw contributing to the novel. Perhaps this is because historiography is in itself a complex secondary genre, like the novel. In PDP, Bakhtin’s discussion of the development of genres comes with his discussion of the social conditions or formations that prompted or embodied the various generic mutations.10 The social context of genre formation is important. Its corollary is that the uniqueness of social context leads to uniqueness of genre. Evelyn Cobley points out that since Bakhtin saw genre as an unrepeatable event, genre groupings do not seem possible in his thought.11 For those writing about Bakhtin and genre, an important feature to keep in mind is that for Bakhtin, literary genres carry wisdom. They are forms of thinking.12 They have a life of their own; they have a memory. Genre is central to creative memory in that a genre remembers its history. An author can uncover hidden meanings in a genre and unlock those potential meanings.13 Tradition, normally seen as being restrictive, becomes a liberating force—respect for tradition allows the accumulated meanings of a genre to produce new texts and interpretations.14 Genres mediate, and are in a state of constant renewal.15 Bakhtin is useful also in reminding us that all genres are ideological.16 9. Ibid., 106–37. 10. Ibid. 11. Evelyn Cobley, “Mikhail Bakhtin’s Place in Genre Theory,” Genre 21 (1988): 321–38 (327); cf. Bakhtin, “Speech,” 75; Bakhtin, “Text,” 106, 127. 12. Morson, “Bakhtin,” 1077. 13. Ronald D. LeBlanc, “A la recherche du genre perdu: Fielding, Gogol, and Bakhtin’s Genre Memory,” in Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age (ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally; Studies in Russian Literature and Theory; Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 101–22 (101, 117–18). Cf. Bakhtin, PDP, 106. 14. Morson, “Bakhtin,” 1089. 15. Thomson, “Bakhtin’s ‘Theory’ of Genre,” 34–35. 16. M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist; ed. Michael Holquist; University of Texas Press Slavic Series 1; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), 259–422 (333–35). 1

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There is no such thing as a “neutral” genre. The construction, maintenance, mutation, transformation, and innovation of genre are shaped by ideological forces. Form on its own is not a helpful criterion in determining genre. Although Bakhtin repeatedly emphasized the link between style and genre,17 it is very difcult (if not impossible) to distinguish between historiography (“true”) and novella (“not-true”) on the basis of form alone.18 Form criticism has usually only been concerned with context of production of the smallest rhetorical units, and we need to begin to look at the genre of the greater rhetorical units, that is, the book as a whole, and the relationship between the various types of speech in the book.19 Bakhtin noted that, [P]rimary genres [i.e. small rhetorical units] are altered and assume a special character when they enter into complex ones. They lose their immediate relation to actual reality and to the real utterances of others… They enter into actual reality only via the novel as a whole, that is, as a literary-artistic event and not as everyday life… A one-sided orientation toward primary genres inevitably leads to a vulgarization of the entire problem.20

So, where should we start in our development of an understanding of ancient genre? Each “example” of a genre is in fact an innovation of that genre, retaining the generic memory of its forbears, but innovating at the same time as it re-uses or relies upon that generic memory. The precise contours of the text within its genre are shaped by the social and political exigencies of the author and his/her perceived addressees. This understanding of genre does not rely on a list of features; it is not descriptive or prescriptive. The genre of historiography, then, is a genre-construct that serves one purpose for an author, another one for a reader, and another one for the historian. The stable features of the genre suggest to us that we can read the biblical or classical text with a certain amount of common sense and its truths will reveal themselves to us. However, the 17. E.g. Bakhtin, “Speech,” 66. 18. Cf. Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (ISBL; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 23–35, on this point. 19. Form criticism is changing, placing more emphasis upon the whole book rather than the individual units. See Marvin A. Sweeney and Ehud Ben Zvi, eds., The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); and for an example of such a different kind of form criticism, see Ehud Ben Zvi, Micah (FOTL 21B; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). 20. Bakhtin, “Speech,” 62, emphases added. 1

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ever-changing features of the genre should suggest to us that such an understanding is fraught with danger.21 Our universe of meaning is very different from that of the authors of biblical or classical texts. To understand the functioning of the genre, we need to trace the history of the genre and its development, check for “genre memory,” and try to develop a sense of the generic expectations that the author is trying to address, while perhaps at the same time innovating or overthrowing them. Xenophon’s Works There are several good biographies of Xenophon available.22 However, as Sarah Pomeroy points out, they are generally based on Xenophon’s own writings along with the account found in Diogenes Laertius (third century C.E.).23 There is enough explicit information in Xenophon’s works for us to make some attempt to place Xenophon’s life and career in context. Xenophon (born ca. 430 B.C.E.) was a young man at the end of Socrates’ life, enlisted as a mercenary in the army of Cyrus the Younger (ca. 401 B.C.E.), and was thus away from Athens during Socrates’ trial. He returned to Greece and was exiled by the Athenians for having favoured the Spartans (ca. 394 B.C.E.).24 He spent most of the rest of his life on two country estates in the Peloponnese and Corinth (although the decree of exile was rescinded around 365 B.C.E.), and died sometime after 359 B.C.E. His books were probably written while in exile, quite possibly over an extended period of time. Many of his books probably reached their nal form in the 360s, perhaps even as late as 360 B.C.E.25 Pomeroy argues that Xenophon was probably of the highest class in Athens (his family was at least of the second-highest class), and thus

21. Cf. Yuri M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (trans. Ann Shukman; with an Introduction by Umberto Eco; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 271. 22. See, for example, J. K. Anderson, Xenophon (London: Duckworth, 1974); Edouard Delebecque, Essai sur la vie de Xénophon (Paris: Klincksieck, 1957); John Dillery, Xenophon and the History of His Times (London: Routledge, 1995). 23. Sarah B. Pomeroy, Xenophon Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 1–2. 24. Ibid., 4. 25. E.g. the Oeconomicus, cf. Pomeroy, Xenophon, 8; the Cyropaedia, cf. Debora Levine Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique (Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 23–25; the Hellenica, cf. Vivienne Gray, The Character of Xenophon’s Hellenica (London: Duckworth, 1989), 1. 1

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had a wealthy and privileged upbringing.26 Certainly the focus in his works on leadership, gentleman-farming, hunting, and other such upperclass occupations would suggest this, if nothing else. As Pomeroy points out, since Xenophon did not found a philosophical school or have a circle of followers, there was little inclination to preserve biographical details about him in antiquity. That Xenophon seems to have worked in relative isolation, drawing upon the works of his predecessors for inspiration but rarely upon the works of his contemporaries,27 may be of some importance to us. The impact that Xenophon had upon his successors may be gauged by the fact that none of his works have been lost. As Joel Farber describes, if Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (and Agesilaus) did not directly become a handbook for Hellenistic rulers (a possibility he does not discount), then it certainly pregured many Hellenistic theories about kingship. It is certainly possible to see the Cyropaedia as a handbook used by Hellenistic rulers; Farber cites several authors who have, but also notes that there has not been enough work done on the Hellenistic theorists about kingship in order to make any direct connections.28 I suggested above that we should check for generic expectations that the ancient author might have had to address. One way into the question with respect to Xenophon and historiography can be found in M. J. Wheeldon’s “True Stories.” In this essay, he asks, “[W]hy did readers believe historians’ accounts of the past when in many cases we know these accounts to have been ctitious? and how did this belief affect their evaluation of these texts as worthwhile objects?”29 He suggests that at least by the late Republican period the generic expectation of historiography would have been two-fold: historiography would have had (1) an account of the past as it was and (2) an authorial preface vouching for the truth of the author’s account of the past30—features found already in Herodotus. Zola Marie Packman’s analysis of the language of credulity and incredulity in Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon suggests that for Herodotus, incredulity on the part of characters within the Histories, and by implication the readers of the Histories, was the response to new 26. Pomeroy, Xenophon, 2. 27. Ibid., 9–10. 28. J. Joel Farber, “The Cyropaedia and Hellenistic Kingship,” AJP 100 (1979): 497–514 (497–99). 29. M. J. Wheeldon, “ ‘True Stories’: The Reception of Historiography in Antiquity,” in History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (ed. Averil Cameron; London: Duckworth, 1989), 36–63 (36). 30. Ibid., 44–45. 1

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and unfamiliar information, and that for Herodotus, the main problem he foresaw in his readers/hearers was their mistrust of evidence that did not conform with their pre-existing ideas.31 Herodotus did not foresee that readers/hearers would simply accept the incredible on his authority—this is in marked contrast to later historians, whose statement of authority was considered sufcient for credibility.32 His job, therefore, was not to eliminate erroneous information, but to make more information available.33 While Thucydides continued to use the same kind of language around the incredible to the same effect as Herodotus had, Xenophon did not. Packman notes that Xenophon did not seem to feel that there would be incredulity directed against him as a teller of the story, and suggests that the achievements of Herodotus and Thucydides allowed Xenophon not to have to plead for trust in his account.34 However, the analysis of Wheeldon shows us that in later antiquity some effort went into establishing the author’s authority. Xenophon therefore appears as an anomaly, and further analysis is needed on this issue. By later antiquity, it was expected that historiography would be written in the third person, even when the author was a witness to or protagonist in the events recounted.35 In this respect, the genre-tradition that Xenophon shaped thus continued for many centuries after him. Another way into the question of generic expectations is to examine Xenophon’s works in relation to the works that he seems to have known and reected. One feature that might be worthwhile to explore is his introductions. The Anabasis begins as follows: “Darius and Parysatis had two children; the elder was Artaxerxes and the younger was Cyrus. When Darius was sick and suspected that the end of his life was near, he wanted both of his children to be near him” (1.1.1).36 Now this beginning looks nothing like the beginning of Herotodus’s or Thucydides’ histories, both of which explicitly set out their reasons for writing their works (Hdt. 1.1; Thuc. 1.1). In fact, as Robert Fowler points out, the rst-person introduction (such as Herodotus’s or Thucydides’) is known for a number of fth-century works; this introduction usually sets out the importance of the question or vouches for the reliability of the 31. Zola Marie Packman, “The Incredible and the Incredulous: The Vocabulary of Disbelief in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon,” Hermes 119 (1991): 399– 414 (406). 32. Wheeldon, “True Stories,” 62. 33. Packman, “Incredible,” 406–7. 34. Ibid., 409. 35. Wheeldon, “True Stories,” 45–46. 36. All translations from ancient sources are my own. 1

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information.37 Continued reading in the Anabasis makes it clear that a story set in the past is being related; the relationship of the teller of the story to the story events does not become immediately clear. Turning to the Hellenica, we are confronted by a very different problem. The Hellenica begins as follows: After this (meta de tauta), not many days later, Thymochares came from Athens with a few ships, and immediately the Spartans and the Athenians fought at sea again. The Spartans won under the leadership of Agesandridas. Shortly after this, Dorieus son of Diagoras sailed from Rhodes into the Hellespont at the beginning of winter… (1.1.1–2)

The chronology of winter and summer for military action is taken over from Thucydides, and the introductory meta de tauta presupposes an earlier story. This beginning sets up a generic expectation of Thucydidean historiography. Yet, as Vivienne Gray points out, this expectation is almost immediately refuted.38 Turning to the Cyropaedia, we nd a very clear introduction: The consideration once occurred to us how many democracies have been overthrown by people wanting to be governed by any other means than democracy; again, how many monarchies and how many oligarchies before this have been abolished by the people… When we considered that Cyrus the Persian, who acquired for himself the obedience of a great many people… Since we believe this man to be worthy of wonder, we have examined who he was by birth… (1.1.1–6)

Similarly we nd in the Memorabilia, “I have often wondered by what arguments those who indicted Socrates persuaded the Athenians that it was right for him to die for the polis…” (1.1.1); and in the Oeconomicus, “I once heard him discuss the subject of estate management in the following way” (1.1). The point, I think, should be clear: Xenophon knew how to frame an introduction, and if one was generally expected in historiography (as seems likely from the fth-century sources), he could have provided it. Clearly he chose not to, so either the Anabasis and the Hellenica are not historiographies or they are, and Xenophon was playing with the generic expectation or perhaps drawing on generic memory.39 Playing with generic expectation seems to me to be most likely: 37. Robert L. Fowler, “Herodotos and His Contemporaries,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996): 62–87 (69). 38. Gray, Character, 2–6. 39. Gray makes the suggestion that Xenophon’s structure of the Hellenica is closer to the denition of history in Aristotle’s Poetics (59a20–26)—a simple chronological reporting—than it is to the structuring devices in either Herodotus or Thucydides (ibid., 178). 1

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Gray has outlined the various reasons why this might be so in the Hellenica, suggesting that Xenophon’s generic model might have been Herodotus, not Thucydides (I think the implication would be that Xenophon deliberately set up the Hellenica in order to play between the two authors);40 and the introduction of the Anabasis seems to me to be not unlike the causal events described in Herodotus 1.1 (after the proem) or Herodotus’s epic predecessor Homer in the Iliad (1.10ff.). An index of the relationship between Xenophon and his predecessors is Xenophon’s use of the term legetai, “it is said.” In the Cyropaedia, it is used primarily in Books 1 and 8, those books in which Xenophon covers the same ground about Cyrus’s life as had been covered previously by Herodotus and Ctesias. It is almost always used where there are competing versions to his story. An example of this is Cyrus’s ancestry: about Cyrus’s father, Xenophon says that he “is said (legetai) to have been Cambyses, king of the Persians” (1.2.1). This takes care of Herodotus, for whom Cambyses is the father, but not a king (Hdt. 1.107). It also takes care of Ctesias, for whom Cambyses is not the father (FGrH 90 F 66.3).41 Thus, it is not said by everyone. With regard to Cyrus’s mother, Xenophon says that “it is generally agreed (homologeitai)” that it was Mandane, daughter of Astyages (1.2.1): this statement thus agrees with Herodotus (Hdt. 1.108) and disputes the position of Ctesias (FGrH 688 F 9.1). Thus, it is not generally agreed. At the end of the work, in 8.6.19– 20, we are told that Cyrus is said to have collected his army and gone off to campaign against the other nations he had not already conquered, as well as Egypt.42 Herodotus left the conquest of Egypt to Cyrus’s son Cambyses (Hdt. 2.1), and Steven Hirsch has speculated that there may have been the accretion of traditions about the deeds of Cyrus’s successors to Cyrus himself, reected in the Cyropaedia.43 It is important to note that rather than simply reporting that these campaigns took place, Xenophon uses the word legetai, thus emphasizing the existence of those other accounts. Hirsch has suggested that the use (three times) of legetai 40. Ibid., 4–6. 41. If we can trust the account of Nicolaus of Damascus. Cf. Mark Toher, “On the Use of Nicolaus’ Historical Fragments,” Classical Antiquity 8 (1989): 159–72. The fragment can be found in F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden: Brill, 1923–57), abbreviated hereafter to FGrH. 42. Bodil Due, The Cyropaedia: Xenophon’s Aims and Methods (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1989), 161, suggests that these subsequent campaigns are compressed in the narrative because of the focus on the “just war” of Cyrus against the Assyrian aggressor. 43. Steven W. Hirsch, The Friendship of the Barbarians: Xenophon and the Persian Empire (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985), 79–80. 1

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in Cyr. 8.6.20–22 is contrary to Xenophon’s normal practice and it indicates that Xenophon was only reporting something he had heard, a tradition, rather than simply stating it as a fact.44 I would note that of the 32 uses of legetai in the Cyropaedia, 25 are used by the narrator of a tradition about Cyrus, and these are found largely in Book 1 and Book 8.45 It is as if, by the use of legetai, Xenophon were saying that he knows his narrative opposes other texts, and he is thus both acknowledging that other positions exist and that his position opposes them. This ideological positioning within the text-continuum allows us to see the operation of genre: the Cyropaedia is the representation of one side of a dialogue, the dialogue being the favourite form of the Socratic philosophers, including Xenophon himself. The other side of the dialogue is implied, but not expressed. When we look at Xenophon’s use of legetai in the Anabasis and the Hellenica, as well as in the Memorabilia, we nd many fewer uses, and used generally very differently. In the Anabasis, it is used almost exclusively to refer to mythical events or to proverbs (so in 1.2.8, 9, 13; 1.8.6; 3.4.11; 3.5.15; 5.7.7; 6.2.1, 2). The places where it is not are quite interesting (1.2.14; 1.8.24, 28; 2.6.29), and are more like the uses in the Cyropaedia; I will explore its use in 1.8, the account of the death of Cyrus the Younger, as its use here is juxtaposed with Xenophon’s only named source (in his entire corpus of work). In 1.8.24, we are told that in the nal battle, Cyrus the Younger defeated the king’s picked troops, and that “it is said (legetai) he killed with his own hand their commander Artagerses.” This depiction of Cyrus the Younger’s ability is quite consonant with the picture of him throughout the Anabasis. I would suggest that the use of this word here indicates that Xenophon knew of contrary versions, but chose not to present them. The support for this can be drawn from the death of Cyrus the Younger’s favourite attendant: “It is said (legetai) that Artapatas, the most trusted of his staff-bearers, when he saw Cyrus fallen, leapt down from his horse to embrace him. And some say (hoi men phasi) that the king ordered someone to slay him, but others say (hoi d’) that drawing his short sword he slew himself…” (1.8.28–29). I think what Xenophon is suggesting by the use of legetai is that there were those who disputed that Artapatas leapt down to embrace Cyrus; but the devotion displayed by Artapatas is appropriate for the depiction of Cyrus in the Anabasis. For Xenophon’s purposes it does not 44. Ibid., 79–80. 45. Traditions about Cyrus: 1.2.1 (2×); 1.3.4, 15; 1.4.25, 26 (2×), 27; 1.5.1; 8.2.9, 13, 15, 18, 19; 8.3.26; 8.6.19, 20 (2×); the other occurrences of legetai are 2.1.11; 4.2.13, 15; 4.5.9; 5.2.20; 7.3.15. 1

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matter how Artapatas died—either way shows the high worth of this slave,46 and so he can give two versions of the story (notably using phasi, not legetai). Thus it is precisely because he is not refuting another position that he can quote Ctesias (as a physician, not as a historian47) in 1.8.26 and 27. There are fewer uses of legetai in the Hellenica and the Memorabilia, and I believe they can be shown to follow the same general pattern as the Anabasis, although I will not argue it in detail here. Gray’s recent article on the citations in the Hellenica and the Anabasis does deal with some of these issues.48 The disputatious use of legetai in An. 1.8, paralleling its use in the Cyropaedia, may indicate the irruption of another generic usage into the Anabasis, not unlikely when we consider that in many ways the depiction of Cyrus the Younger in the Anabasis and Cyrus in the Cyropaedia are similar.49 When we compare Xenophon’s use of legetai with Herodotus’s and Thucydides’, the pattern is striking. Thucydides makes use of the term in much the same way as Xenophon in the Anabasis, Hellenica, and Memorabilia, in referring to the legendary past, oracular answer, and to the inner thoughts of persons whose actions are then reported. The disputatious use of the Cyropaedia is not paralleled. Herodotus’s use of the term is very frequent (over one hundred occurrences). He seems to have used the term to present material that he did not necessarily believe to be true, but that should be presented nonetheless (and which could possibly be true). An example might be about the funeral practices of the Magi: “I know and can say in truth these [previous] things about them; however, it is said (legetai) secretly and not clearly, thus about the dead…” (1.140.1). This should be contrasted with Herodotus’s common formulation for source citation, legousi (hoi), which while occasionally used as functionally equivalent to legetai, is more usually paired with a specic subject (the “locals,” the “Egyptians,” etc.), and which occurs twice as many times as legetai. Detlev Fehling’s well-known work on Herodotus’s sources focuses primarily on the formula legousi,50 and he could conclude that there were three main principles behind the use of 46. Vivienne Gray, “Interventions and Citations in Xenophon, Hellenica and Anabasis,” CQ 53 (2003): 111–23 (121). 47. Ibid., 117. 48. Ibid. 49. That one was a model for the other in Xenophon’s works is reasonably clear; which way the modelling went is much-discussed; cf. Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 11. 50. Fowler (“Herodotos,” 77) notes that Herodotus uses a variety of terms to denote his relationship with his sources, and that this seems to have been original to him. 1

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Herodotus’s source citations: the principle of citing the obvious source, the principle of maintaining credibility, and the principle of regard for party bias.51 He also concluded that Herodotus could invent a source citation when it suited his literary purposes—a conclusion that has led Fehling’s work to be used (or described) as questioning the usefulness of Herodotus for historical research.52 This is a debate I do not want to enter here, except to note that the debate runs exactly parallel to the one the ESHM is engaged in, and that Fowler’s comment about Herodotus’s vs. Thucydides’ authorial voice might be pertinent here: “The absence of [voice] markers is no guarantee of objectivity; by the same token, a plethora of markers does not imply an historian who is allowing his own personality to get in the way of his job.”53 However, I would suggest that the use of legetai is probably part and parcel with Herodotus’s anxiety about incredulity that I mentioned above. I should make it clear here that I am not discussing this term in hopes of deriving something about historical methodology (perhaps the most obvious result of the discussion), but rather generic expectations. When we tie the analysis of legetai together with Packman’s analysis of the vocabulary of incredulity, it becomes clear that Xenophon was aware of the generic expectations of using legetai when he wrote (at least) the Anabasis and the Hellenica, although he chose to innovate within the genre by occasionally using the term to cast doubt on the versions he was not presenting. Innovation rather than imitation is in fact typical of Xenophon’s works; Gray has analyzed his relationship with wisdom literature in some detail.54 The use of legetai also brings up another feature of Xenophon’s relationship to his sources: Bernhard Huss notes that, in his works, Xenophon does not merely quote previous authors, but uses those elements for his own purposes to create his own literary work.55 Huss makes this note about the Symposium, but Due, James Tatum, and Deborah Levine Gera have made similar observations about the Cyropaedia: 51. Detlev Fehling, Herodotus and His “Sources”: Citation, Invention and Narrative Art (trans. J. G. Howie; ARCA 21; Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1989), 257. 52. Ibid., 258. For a balanced view of his arguments, see Fowler, “Herodotos,” 80–85. 53. Fowler, “Herodotos,” 76. 54. Vivienne Gray, The Framing of Socrates: The Literary Interpretation of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (Hermes Einzelschriften 79; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1998); Gray, “Xenophon’s Symposion: The Display of Wisdom,” Hermes 120 (1992): 58–75. 55. Bernhard Huss, “The Dancing Sokrates and the Laughing Xenophon, or the Other Symposium,” AJP 120 (1999): 381–409 (382). 1

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Tatum’s analysis of the relationship between Xenophon’s account of Croesus and Cyrus and Herodotus’s is particularly helpful in this regard; although Gera disputes almost every part of this analysis, I think it is the most convincing one.56 Finally, the use of legetai brings up the question of genre again for Xenophon’s three long works. I have shown how legetai was used by Xenophon in the Anabasis and the Hellenica in manners consistent with or in conversation with previous historiographic works (Herodotus and Thucydides). I have also indicated how Xenophon’s use of legetai in the Cyropaedia is not consistent with the use in Herodotus and Thucydides, and is in fact an almost disputatious use, indicating where the opposing side of a dialogue has been omitted. This of course is much more consonant with the Socratic dialogue, as I indicated. The Cyropaedia has had an interesting history in terms of genre-reception (the discussions in Due, Gera, and Tatum give an outline); but for our purposes what is most interesting is that both historians and political philosophers in the academy today use this work. I refer to the works of Hirsch and Christopher Nadon, respectively.57 It is not just that a work can simultaneously belong to more than one genre (although that is one possibility); it is that a work can bring out the genre memory carried within the genre. Before turning to a discussion of biblical literary genres, we need to give some attention to that other facet of a Bakhtinian understanding of genre: social situation and context. Xenophon worked in relative literary isolation: he does not seem to have been current with fourth-century literature, preferring instead to innovate from fth-century literature. He was a citizen-soldier, then mercenary, then country gentleman. He founded no school, had no disciples, and yet all of his works have been preserved. Much has been made (both in antiquity and today) of the perceived rivalry between Xenophon and Plato, although the rivalry may be created by us, the readers of the texts, placing them in dialogic relationship. That they did know each other’s works is fairly clear: Xenophon certainly made use of Plato’s Symposium while writing his own, and Plato commented in somewhat a derogatory fashion about 56. James Tatum, Xenophon’s Imperial Fiction: On The Education of Cyrus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 147–59; Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 265–78. 57. Hirsch, Friendship; Hirsch, “1001 Iranian Nights: History and Fiction in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia,” in The Greek Historians: Literature and History (ed. Michael Jameson; Saratoga: ANMA Libri, 1985), 65–85; Christopher Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 1

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Xenophon’s depiction of Cyrus in the Laws (694c); Tatum suggests that in two parts of the Laws (643e–644a; 693e–696b), Plato was responding in detail to the arguments of Xenophon in the Cyropaedia.58 I think what is important for us to note about Xenophon’s context is his relative isolation. He innovated because he had the freedom to do so.

Biblical Literary Genres In the biblical tradition, very rarely do we get anything like a statement of the purpose of the book. One text that does provide such a statement is Qohelet (1:12–18); of course, this book is traditionally dated late by scholars, and is often held up as one with clear marks of Hellenistic philosophic inuence. However, as Michael Fox points out, the most noteworthy parallels between Qohelet and Hellenistic philosophy may be the ones that are least easy to prove.59 Here again we have a rebellion against the vague search for Hellenistic parallels. Perhaps the genre route might be more fruitful. I shall take a small example, ignoring for reasons of space the wider literature on ancient Near Eastern wisdom. The introduction to Qohelet is really a double one: rst a poetic statement of the argument preceded by a short introduction to the speaker and the theme of the book (1:1–11), and then a prose statement by the (implied) author about his reasons for his work, in which he quotes (or creates) two proverbs (1:12–18). As I noted, this second introduction is really quite unusual for a biblical text. The entire introduction, however, bears close examination in terms of its generic relationship. The poetic statement of the argument seems to be patterned formally on texts like Prov 1 (and both Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon continued to use that generic form). It sets up the expectation of a certain kind of work. However, just as Xenophon’s Hellenica played with the form of Thucydides’ History, so the beginning of Qohelet begins to overturn generic expectation. Instead of a panegyric to the value of wisdom, we have the opposite. Instead of the panegyric leading into a collection of proverbs, we have the non-panegyric leading into the (implied) author’s declaration of the origins of his work. So is the book wisdom? Yes, it is—it is playing

58. Huss, “Dancing,” 381–82. Whether Plato actually bothered to try to understand Xenophon’s point is a question open for debate. See Tatum, Xenophon’s Imperial Fiction, 38–41, 225–30, for this discussion. See Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 12–13, for a discussion of the ancient sources on this “rivalry.” 59. Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 8. 1

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within the genre of wisdom literature. Removed from the generic expectations, the book would make no sense at all. Finally, I reach historiography. Since in my discussion of Xenophon’s works I discussed the introductions to the works as part of generic expectations, I will do the same here. I will use another series of small examples here, resisting the temptation to look at the Deuteronomic History, since where the “beginning” of the Deuteronomic History might be is not entirely clear to me. Ezra begins quite simply: “In the rst year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, in order to fulll the word of Yhwh from the mouth of Jeremiah, Yhwh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia…” (1:1). Here is where I bring in the diachronic aspect of genre. To readers today, this introduction looks like “historiography”: it gives a date and an action. The inuence of the divine on the action is not, of course, something that we would consider appropriate history writing, but we are perfectly willing to make allowances for the practices of people in another time and place.60 It looks like historiography to us precisely because we have been schooled in the generic understanding of Thucydides as to what historiography should look like. It is so “common-sense” to us that we cannot conceive of it any other way. But it does not look like the introductions to any of the “historical” books elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. It does look like the introduction to Esther: “It happened in the days of Ahasuerus, that Ahasuerus who was ruling from India to Cush, over one hundred and twenty seven provinces” (Esth 1:1). And it does look like the introduction to Ruth: “It happened in the days of the judges that there was a famine in the land” (Ruth 1:1). The difference is that Ezra has that denite temporal marker, the rst year of Cyrus. So, then, are Esther and Ruth playing with the generic expectations of historiography? But then what about Daniel: “In the third year of the rule of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and attacked it” (Dan 1:1)? Is Daniel also playing with the generic expectations of historiography? And of course, dating events by any means does not mean that a text is historiographic, or even that this is a formal marker of historiography (e.g. Isa 6:1: “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne….”). Form here is our enemy, as Sternberg pointed out (above). But looking at generic expectations and genre memory may help us out. Ezra(–Nehemiah) may be a generic innovation, working within yet at the same time expanding and renewing an already-existing genre of historiography. Or it may be 60. On Xenophon’s innovation with respect to the impact of the divine in history, see Frances Skoczylas Pownall, “Condemnation of the Impious in Xenophon’s Hellenica,” HTR 91 (1998): 251–77. 1

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part of entirely different generic horizon, operating within a different set of generic expectations. If we consider the texts that are often designated as the “Primary History” as historiography (for the sake of argument), then we can see a certain set of generic expectations when we compare those texts to Chronicles, which quotes or uses those texts extensively.61 To take one limited example, it is reasonably clear that some kind of reference to books that contained more information was required for a historiography. We can see this simply by the fact that the Chronicler’s references to these books almost always occur at exactly the same point in the story as they do in Kings; it is simply the name of the book that has been changed. H. G. M. Williamson points out that there are two places in Chronicles where this pattern is not followed: 1 Chr 29:29 and 2 Chr 35:26–27.62 The fact that such a reference is created for 1 Chr 29:29, when no such reference occurs in the Samuel–Kings accounts of David’s reign, suggests very strongly that this was the generic expectation, made consistent throughout Chronicles. Perhaps references such as these serve the same function as legetai does. Which function of legetai is open for discussion: the reporting of additional information of Herodotus, the reporting of proverbial or unattested information of Thucydides, or the disputatious use of the Cyropaedia? I do not want to pick one for now, although if pressed, I would opt for the disputatious use, given the transformative, dialogic structure of Chronicles as a whole.63 Another example may be made of the genealogies. The fact that Chronicles begins with nine chapters of largely genealogical information should be a clue of some importance. The books of the Torah all contain genealogical information to a greater or lesser extent; Genesis (for example), punctuates the story with genealogies. Perhaps the generic expectation the Chronicler is playing with here is the placement of the genealogies: rather than punctuating the narrative, they are grouped together at the beginning of the book. The function of the genealogies at 61. Even if one subscribes to Graeme Auld’s theory of a common source behind both Samuel-Kings and Chronicles (and I do not), the fact that the Chronicler used some previous source that looks a lot like Samuel–Kings cannot be denied. Cf. A. Graeme Auld, Kings Without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994). 62. H. G. M. Williamson, “The Death of Josiah and the Continuing Development of the Deuteronomic History,” VT 32 (1982): 242–48 (244–45). Although this is very interesting for the textual development of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, it does not bear on the question of generic expectations. 63. Christine Mitchell, “Transformations of Meaning: The Accession of Solomon in Chronicles,” JHS 4 (2002), available online at http://purl.org/jhs. 1

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the beginning of Ionian historiographic works has been studied as it might relate to Chronicles.64 Certainly, Chronicles is made up of a wide variety of speech genres: it includes genealogies, lists, hymns, prayers, large portions of other works, levitical speeches, and so on. These are the speech genres that Bakhtin would describe as being “primary,” that is, the simplest kind. They may be imitations of texts that arise in a “life setting,” but they are not related to reality except in an artistic way. The novel, as a complex secondary speech genre, is made up of primary genres. I wondered above if historiography would similarly be a complex secondary speech genre. Whether or not it is “historiography” (although we are assuming that for the sake of the argument), Chronicles is a complex of speech genres. So too, of course, are books like Genesis, Exodus, or Judges. Thus, the issue would be how can we tell one complex secondary speech genre from another? Or, how can we tell a novel apart from historiography? I argued in a previous work that because Chronicles looks like a novel, we can use Bakhtinian methods to analyze it.65 In that work I was not interested in telling a novel and historiography apart. A nal example from Chronicles might be the beginning of the narrative proper in 1 Chr 10. The narrative begins mid-stream, as it were, beginning at the end of a story that is already clearly presupposed by the rest of the book. In this way the action of the book begins no differently from a book such as Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy includes a narrative recapitulation of the “back-story” (Deut 1–4); Chronicles alludes to the back-story without ever making it explicit.66 The expectation of the genre did not include a rmly and absolutely dated beginning point for the action. In this way, of course, Chronicles is not unlike either the Anabasis or (especially) the Hellenica, by beginning the story with the presupposition that the back-story is already known to the readers/hearers. If these markers of generic expectations of what we are calling “historiography” are reliable, then Ezra is an innovation within the genre— and it may not be the only example, and depending on the relative dating of other Persian and Hellenistic period books, may not be such an innovation after all. However, it is an innovation in just the “right” kind of

64. Gary N. Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chronicler’s History: A Reexamination,” JBL 122 (2003): 627–50. 65. Christine Mitchell, “The Dialogism of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. Patrick Graham and Steven L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 1999), 311–26 (313–14). 66. Jonah 1:1 also begins in the middle of the story. However, Jonah is also playing with other generic conventions. 1

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ways for us to understand it as historiography today. What kinds of social contexts or social situations might have led to this change? When, for example, would precisely marking the time of the beginning of the action have become so important? When would making a clear introduction to the action of the story have become so important, rather than leaving it implied or spelled out within the story itself? Clearly, the innovation of Chronicles, grouping all the genealogies together at the beginning, was one that did not endure, as Ezra–Nehemiah has genealogies and lists scattered in various places. However, the question of sources or additional material is one that Ezra (and Nehemiah) deals with differently than Chronicles had. Rather than referring the reader to another book (and thus alluding to material that is omitted from the account), Ezra includes the material by quoting letters and memoirs. The Chronicler was condent enough in his/her own authority as author that such other material could be omitted. Perhaps for Ezra we are looking at an author who is not certain about his/her own authority. Perhaps we are looking at an individual, working in relative isolation, creating a text from texts (written and oral) about the founders of the post-exilic Yehud community.67 The text works within a certain generic expectation, and can therefore take on the power of that expectation. The power of the genre now becomes apparent. Whether or not we want to call this genre “historiography” is beside the point. Biblical Historiography—A Conclusion? Having spent a great deal of time outlining my understanding of genre and how this relates to the Xenophontic corpus raises the question of the use of Xenophon for biblical studies. The easiest thing to do would be to simply compare the biblical texts to texts from the Xenophontic corpus. Certainly this could be done (and in certain cases has been): Ezra– Nehemiah to the Anabasis, Kings to the Hellenica, Ben Sira to the Agesilaus, Chronicles to the Cyropaedia, Proverbs to the Socratic works (Oeconomicus, Memorabilia, Symposium).68 But what would that really tell us? Besides indulging in “parallelomania,” would this really tell us

67. Lester L. Grabbe, Ezra–Nehemiah (Old Testament Readings; London: Routledge, 1998), 187–89. 68. Thomas R. Lee, Studies in the Form of Sirach 44–50 (SBLDS 75; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986); Christine Mitchell, “Bakhtin and the Ideal Ruler in 1–2 Chronicles and the Cyropaedia,” in The Bakhtin Circle and Ancient Narrative (ed. R. B. Branham; Ancient Narrative Supplementum 2; Eelde, Groningen: University of Groningen Library/Barkhuis, 2005), 297–319. 1

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anything about biblical genre? More importantly for our purposes here, would this really tell us anything about the expectations of historiography for the biblical authors? In a way, these comparisons are synchronic—they look at the two comparative texts in isolation from their generic development, presupposing a denition of a genre (like encomium or memoir) that can never change. More fruitful, in my opinion, although built on the synchronic studies, are the possibilities of studying the operation of a genre through time. In this essay I have attempted to give a few hints of what this kind of study might look like, and what it might be able to produce. Further implications and analysis would still need to be worked out. At the beginning of this study I spent some time expounding upon a Bakhtinian understanding of genre: eternal, stable, yet ever-changing and ever-new, shaped by social context and ideological forces. What are the implications then for this understanding of genre for the study of ancient historiography (i.e. the writing of history)? The biblical authors did not even know the term. It was a still-new term to Xenophon, who nonetheless went about innovating the genre to suit his purposes. In one way, this understanding is a bit disappointing: we cannot really know what the biblical authors and their audiences thought about the genre of historiography, at least until we get well into the Hellenistic period. However, this understanding of genre also gives us the freedom to use texts that look like historiography to us as historiographical. In fact, given our own social situated-ness and context, can we use them any other way?69 Historiography is potentially one of the most powerful genres because ultimately a historiographic work is telling the story of some individual or group’s self-understanding. If the readers/hearers of the work identify with this self-understanding, then they will approve of the use of the genre. If the readers/hearers do not identify with this self-understanding, then they will disapprove of the use of the genre. The operation of the power of historiography in the biblical and Hellenistic worlds perhaps would be a rewarding issue to explore more fully.

69. Cf. Bernard C. Lategan, “Questing or Sense-Making? Some Thoughts on the Nature of Historiography,” BibInt 11 (2003): 588–601. Lategan points out that our “sense-making operation” is secondary, that is, the biblical author has performed a previous sense-making operation; but he afrms the use of biblical sources for historical readings (pp. 597–98). 1

(PSEUDO-)EUPOLEMUS AND SHECHEM: METHODOLOGY ENABLING THE USE OF HELLENISTIC JEWISH HISTORIANS’ WORK IN BIBLICAL STUDIES* ukasz Niesioowski-Spanò

Unfortunately Jewish literature that arose during the Hellenistic period is often radically separated from biblical studies. On the one hand, this is the result of the accepted convention (largely the inheritance of religious thinking) of the unique position and role of canonical text. Because a text was at some point accepted into the canon it therefore ought to be analysed separately from other texts originating from a similar tradition. This is reason for using the Talmud or rabbinical commentaries in the analysis of the Old Testament, while Jewish literature in Greek from the Hellenistic period is employed somewhat less. The second reason for this division of disciplines is unfortunately prosaic; to wit, it is a matter of language. Studies of the Old Testament, which concentrate on the Hebrew biblical text and other Semitic texts, drastically separated themselves from Classic studies.1 Thus this supercial characteristic of literature, the language in which it is written, has dened a false division between traditions. The Greek books of Maccabees and the Latin Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum are closer to the biblical tradition than the entire Ugaritic corpus. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate the relationship between biblical tradition and Jewish historiographic literature from the Hellenistic period, using the example of (Pseudo-)Eupolemus’ works. It will be a sort of case study, intending to open the way for further investigation. The general question, which serves as the guiding principle behind this presentation, is of a methodological character: What underlies our * The rst version of the present study was written in 2002. I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues Krystyna Stebnicka and Marek Wcowski for their help in shaping this text. Further thanks must be expressed to several members of ESHM who commented on it: Rainer Albertz, Diana Edelman, Lester L. Grabbe, Ernst Axel Knauf, and Thomas L. Thompson. 1. One of the rare exceptions is Stone 1984. 1

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conviction of the chronological primacy of the biblical text, with the socalled para-biblical literature, later and derivative. How do we know that contemporary tradition represented in some biblical passage is original while another description is simply a different point of view? Or that a version of the narrative, contradicting the canon and found in the ancient texts of Jewish historians, in apocrypha or extra-biblical literature, is subsequent and based on a re-editing of the Bible? Perhaps this is an axiom that ought to be reviewed. Here I shall present just example, but one that I consider proves that literature outside of the biblical canon is very valuable and an important testimony of Jewish tradition. The text presented below also seeks to raise the question of the relationship between Jewish literature in Greek and the biblical canon. Of course, attention should be paid to the different ways in which the texts are analysed, which, above all, is a result of the religious meaning of the biblical canon. However, extra-biblical literature should not be considered completely separated from biblical studies. Among other factors, the ideological uniformity of the texts, which, contrary to the Bible itself, were not submitted to repeated editing, allow them to be successfully used in the analysis of the Old Testament. One of the most important Jewish historians of the Hellenistic period, fragments of whose works we have at disposal, is Eupolemus. The writer was active in the middle of the second century B.C.E. and belonged to the Jewish elite of his time. Certainly, identifying the historian as an emissary to Rome is correct (1 Macc 8:17), which indicated his close ties to Judas Maccabaeus, since he also came from sacerdotal circles and had a deep understanding of Greek culture.2 The remaining fragments of his work testify to his high calibre as writer and erudition. Eupolemus is a typical historian of the Hellenistic era, whose writing is on one hand rmly grounded in diverse, juxtaposed sources, while on the other hand serves concrete purposes. Where he found it suitable Eupolemus presents a version of events that diverges from that found in the Bible.3 Already the fact of not strictly adhering to the biblical text attests to Eupolemus’ skills as a critically thinking historian. I shall try not only to demonstrate the worthiness of his writing, but equally that he can be used to expose biblical traditions as they existed in the second century B.C.E. Ever since the time of J. Freudenthal and his classic 1875 study of Alexander Polyhistor,4 the conviction that there existed two writers, 2. Doran 1987, 264; Attridge 1984, 163. 3. Compare Eupolemus Frag. 4 (Eusebius, P.E. 9.39.2–5) and Jer 3:16; 39:14; 40:4. 4. Freudenthal 1875. 1

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erroneously connected by Eusebius, has dominated. The rst is a Jewish historian writing in the years 158–157 B.C.E., while the second is conventionally called Pseudo-Eupolemus, or identied as an anonymous Samaritan writer.5 Four fragments preserved by Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria are attributed to the rst,6 and two, found in Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica, are attributed to the second.7 Behind the division of these few fragments between two authors lies the acceptance that Eusebius erred, which was suggested by Freudenthal, and has already several times been questioned based on a number of arguments. Robert Doran and Giovanni Garbini have presented the strongest arguments against the existence of a new author called Pseudo-Eupolemus.8 The fragment that constitutes the key to Freudenthal’s theory is found in Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica (9.17.2–9).9 The Bishop of Cesarea clearly credits the authorship of the cited text: “Eupolemus’ Remarks Concerning Abraham—From the Same Work Concerning the Jews by Alexander Polyhistor.” Alexander begins his text with the sentence: “Eupolemus in his work Concerning the Jews of Assyria says…” It is a matter of Freudental’s authority versus Eusebius’. The argument utilized to support the separation of this fragment and of Eupolemus’ fragments was the relationship of Abraham and Melchizedek with Shechem. Fragment 1 is concerned (Eusebius, P.E. 9.17.5–6): “He [Abraham] was also received as a guest by the city at the temple Argarizin, which is interpreted ‘mountain of the Most High.’ He also received gifts from Melchizedek who was a priest of God and a king as well.”10 5. Jacoby, FGrHist 724; Denis 1970, 197–98; Wacholder 1974, 287–93; Bombelli 1986, 49–54, 151–59; Attridge 1984, 165–66. Cf. also Mendels 1987, 109–19; and Hengel 1969, 169–75, who has more reservations. 6. Jacoby, FGrHist 723 Frag. 1 (Eusebius, P.E. 9.25.4; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.153.4); Frag. 2 (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.130.3; Eusebius, P.E. 9.30); Frag. 3 (Eusebius, P.E. 9.34.20); Frag. 4 (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.141.4). 7. Jacoby, FGrHist 724 Frag. 1 (Eusebius, P.E. 9.17); Frag. 2 (Eusebius, P.E. 9.18.2). For the discussion and bibliography of the identication of PseudoEupolemus (FGrHist 724 Frag. 1) with an anonymous Samaritan writer (FGrHist 724 Frag. 2) see Wacholder, 1974, 287 n. 112. 8. Doran 1985; 1987, 264; Garbini 1998. Cf. Garbini 2000. The separation of the two writers, proposed by Freudenthal was also rejected by Schlatter 1925, cited by Hengel 1969, 174 n. 283. 9. Jacoby, FGrHist 724 Frag. 1 = Denis 1970, 197–98 (Frag. 1). Translations by Holladay 1983. 10. $FOJTRIOBJ UF BVUP=O V QP= QPMFXK JFSP=O ’"SHBSJ[JO P FJOBJ NFRFSNIOFVPNFOPO PSPK VGJTUPV [6] QBSB= EF= UPV .FMYJTFEF=L JFSFXK POUPK UPV RFPV LBJ= CBTJMFVPOUPK MBCFJO EX_SB. 1

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Historians specializing in Jewish Hellenistic historians have acknowledged that Eupolemus—a Judaic priest from Jerusalem who was concerned with the welfare of the Maccabean state—could not have written paraphrases to the biblical story of Abraham in a pro-Sychemic, or proSamaritan, sprit. An analogous phenomenon can be observed with fragments of the Jewish poet Theodotus’ work. In several fragments of his work On the Jews, but in one in particular, the pro-Shechemite, or pro-Samaritan tone is immediately striking (Frag. 1).11 There appear descriptions comparable to those used by Eupolemus (P.E. 9.17.6), specically Shechem is described as “Holy City” (JFSP=O BTUV).12 Based on this, commentators determined that the author, since he was so well disposed to the city, must have been a Samaritan. Despite this common opinion being discredited over twenty years ago by John J. Collins,13 it continues to appear in most survey works and is treated as basic general knowledge by most researchers. Similar to the case of Eupolemus’ fragments, there is nothing that proves the Samaritan afliation of the author aside from the conviction that every text arising during the Hellenistic era that emphasizes the exceptional role of Shechem must have been written by a Samaritan. The similar issue was considered by Reinhard Pummer in the article where he discussed the use of the expression ‘Argarizin’.14 Even if many scholars used to see it as the typical word from the Samaritan vocabulary, there are no hints to attribute to this expression a Samaritan background. This word, as many others, is neutral and does not contain any “sectarian” value. The problem becomes even more complicated when we realize that for a very long period of time there is, in fact, no solid information about Samaritans. The main source of information about them during the Hellenistic era—the works of Josephus Flavius— are characterized by an evident dislike of Samaritans, the background of which cannot be described as either objective or neutral.15 I shall try to prove that not only does nothing prevent texts that recognize the religious signicance of Shechem from originating in Jerusalem in the middle of the second century B.C.E., but moreover that there are elements proving the exceptional signicance of this city within the 11. Jacoby, FGrHist 732 Frag. 1 = Denis 1970, 204–5 (Frag. 18b); Holladay 1989. 12. For commentary, see Holladay 1989, 144; cf. the analogous description of Jerusalem (B HJBK QPMFXK) in 1 Macc 2:7. 13. Collins 1980. Cf. the different opinion by Daise 1998. 14. Pummer 1987. 15. Cf. Crown 1991. 1

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Bible itself. I believe that it is possible to link biblical passages “welldisposed to Shechem” with extra-biblical literature expressing similar views. By pairing two different types of literature, expressing analogous views, or by tracing editorial changes made to the canonical text, it will be possible to identify the terminus ante quem of the origin of certain biblical strata. Thanks to the rise of literature speaking of the holiness of Shechem, this city began to be viewed unfavourably by the Jews. This would be the terminus post quem for the beginning of the anti-Samaritan tendency of the Bible. No one needs to be reminded of the signicance of Shechem in the epics of the patriarchs and in the narrative of the conquest of Canaan. Both these periods, belonging to the mythological pre-history of Israel, clash drastically with the teachings of deuteronomistic historiography, disinclined to northern centres. Just as the northern state is negatively perceived, so its largest cities, Shechem and Samaria, generally do not get very good press in the Bible. The Old Testament is a very awed source for the study of Shechem and the relations between the people of Judah (Judaea, Yehud) and those of Shechem. Thanks to archaeological and literary sources, the general features of this city have been determined. The city served as the capital of a local kingdom in the Bronze Age and was destroyed towards the end of the Late Bronze Age. Stratum XIII was identied with the city of Lab’aya mentioned in the el-Amarna letters.16 Shechem’s burgeoning period is contained in strata XII–XI, and archaeologists maintain the city could have played a signicant role in the administrative network.17 The end of the tenth century brought destruction, likely due to Pharaoh Sheshonq’s campaign (ca. 918 B.CE).18 In stratum XI there existed a small temple in Shechem. The city from stratum X was rebuilt after destruction at the end of tenth century B.C.E. The next stratum reveals a city of substantial proportions (stratum IX-b), which was destroyed, either by earthquake or war (perhaps Ben-Hadad 860–853?).19 The city, during the period of stratum IX-a, was probably destroyed by Hazael (ca. 810). Stratum VIII marks a peaceful time for the city, up to approximately the mid-eighth century B.C.E. The importance of Shechem gradually diminished concomitant with the growing importance of the 16. Herzog 1997, 178. 17. I am conscious of the ongoing polemical discussion surrounding the chronology of archaeological material from eleventh through ninth century, but in this case the precise dating of the nds is less important. 18. Wright 1975–78, 1093. 19. Wright 1975–78, 1093. 1

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neighbouring town Samaria built-up by the Israelite kings of the Omri dynasty. However, Shechem almost certainly remained an administrative centre until the eighth century, thereby beneting from tax revenues received from the surrounding regions.20 Even during the period of Samaria’s dominance, Shechem may have remained a signicant religious centre. The constructions found in stratum VII were destroyed in the same period as those in Samaria—the end of eighth century (usually connected with the Assyrian invasion of 724–722 B.C.E.).21 Stratum VI contains modest residue from the Assyrian era; it also contains evidence of the twofold destruction wrought on the city in the late seventh century or early sixth century.22 Very little documentation of specic architectural details have been found in strata VI and V,23 but numerous shards of imported Greek ceramics, dated at ca. 525–475,24 and other objects of this period, indicate the uninterrupted existence of Shechem.25 The scale and the importance of the city in the Persian period remains the object of intense discussions.26 Over the next 150 years Shechem was abandoned—meaning until ca. 330 B.C.E. This statement may soon be refuted, because the character of the settlement on the site could have been very decentralized and the archaeologists could have overlooked the building from this period. However, the argument based on the presence of Attic ware, and the lack of any pottery from the late fth century B.C.E., currently back up this statement.27 Stern wants to lower the date of the end of Stratum V to ca. 450 B.C.E., but the next artifact, namely, the so-called Shechem hoard, must not be dated after 332 B.C.E. A presupposed Persian garrison, suggested by the Shechem tomb, with metal objects imported from the east, is possible but still

20. Wright 1975–78, 1093. 21. Wright 1965, 144; Campbell 2002, 276–95. 22. Campbell 2002, 299. 23. Campbell 2002, 295–309. 24. Campbell 2002, 307; Stern 2001, 576–77. 25. Stern 2001, 299–309. The architectonic remains point to small-scale occupation in the Stratum V, but the quality of the objects (Greek coin and pottery, Persian royal bulla and a jar bearing the impression of lion seal, possibly coming from Judah) can suggest the importance and well-being in this stratum of Shechem. 26. Campbell 2002, 299, states: “The artifact range, however, conrms that there was a Persian period settlement on the site in the late sixth to early fth century whose character was distinctive and not poverty-ridden” (307): “Greek ware…dates to the period ca. 525–475 B.C.E.; the Attic decorative styles that characterize the late fth century are not represented.” 27. Cf. Stern 2001, 427. 1

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needs conrmation from material remains.28 Activity on Mount Gerizim at the beginning of fourth century B.C.E., does not provide a decisive argument. Even if there was a continuous settlement, the period of “Wright’s gap” (475/450–344/335) must have been the time of the least importance of the city in its long history.29 The last signicant settlement in Shechem dates from approximately 330–100 B.C.E. Remains from the Hellenistic period are distributed among four strata: IV and III correspond to the period of Ptolemaic rule while strata II and I are linked to the domination of the Seleucids.30 The fortication and a large tower gate attested in the Hellenistic period can suggest that the city in this period had a bigger importance than the Persian period one.31 Numerous coins from the Hellenistic era have been found in Shechem, originating in the period between the end of the fourth and the end of the second centuries.32 The end of the settlement on the tell most likely can be linked to John Hyrcanus’ expedition (ca. 107 B.C.E.).33 Debate relating to Jewish–Samaritan relations extends to whether the nal abandonment of Shechem was a result of the fall of Samaria (107 B.C.E.) or of the destruction of the temple on Mount Gerizim (128 B.C.E.).34 Numismatic nds, with the latest coins coming from the city of Antioch (112–111 B.C.E.), from the time of Alexander II Zabinas (128–123) and Antiochus VIII (121–120), unequivocally indicate that the year 128 does not mark the end of settlement in Shechem.35 There exist two tendencies in the appraisal of Shechem within the Bible: one positive and the other negative. The rst is expressed by the placement of key events from Israel’s mythical past in Shechem and surrounding areas: Gen 12:6–7; 33:18–20; Deut 11:29; 27:2–13; Josh 8:30–33 and particularly Josh 24.36 Unfavourable evaluations of Shechem go beyond the tendencies in the book of Kings to underline the indelity 28. Stern 2001, 472. 29. For the dates of “the Shechem hoard,” see Stern 2001, 564, 569. 30. Wright 1962. Cf. [Anonymous] 1962. 31. Campbell 2002, 315–16. 32. Campbell 2002, 311, dates the tell occupation period, divided into four strata, to 325–110 B.C.E. 33. Wright 1975–78, 1093–94; see the important methodological objections in Campbell 2002, 316. 34. Cf. Campbell 1993, 1354; which are concerned with the rst variant. 35. Wright 1962, 358. 36. The Abimelech story in Judg 9 is particularly interesting. His enthronement (Judg 9:6) and mentioning of “the middle/navel of the land” (#C 9 CH3) (Judg 9:36) point to the importance of Shechem. 1

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of the kings of Israel, with a certain “grace” accorded to the kings of Judah. It can also be seen in the stories about Dinah (Gen 34) and the fall of Israel (2 Kgs 17), but is also present in a few other places, for example Judg 8–9, Ben Sira 50:25–26. If Etienne Nodet37 is correct, that the biblical city of Bethel does not lie on the border of the territories of Benjamin’s tribe but is rather the sanctuary in Shechem, then all sources speaking of the existence of the Bethel sanctuary “to the West of Ai” express the tendency of the deliberate depreciation of Shechem. Consequently, this would expose a layer illustrating the tendency of editors of the Bible to remove an important cultic site, and in fact to remove the true mythical value from the city. Crucial for our understanding is the question whether disparate contentions existed among biblical authors simultaneously or whether it is an issue of chronological order. I posit that thanks to extra-biblical literature from the second century B.C.E. it is possible to delineate the temporal boundaries of the aversion toward Shechem. Aside from the biblical passages mentioned above, recognizing Shechem’s exceptionality and sacredness, there was another tradition in the Bible that has been scrupulously buried yet of which certain traces remain discernible. This includes the narrative found in Gen 33, which describes the purchase of land by Jacob, and ties into the tradition that graves of the patriarchs are located in the area of Shechem. Intermediary proof can be the following reference to Jacob’s sepulchre: “My father made me swear an oath; he said, ‘I am about to die. In the tomb that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.’ ” (Gen 50:5).38 This tradition was eliminated from the rest of Hebrew Bible, but was preserved in the Acts 7:15–16: “So Jacob went down to Egypt. He himself died there as well as our ancestors, and their bodies were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.” The interrelationship between traditions about the patriarchal tomb in Shechem, preserved in Acts 7:15–16, about land bought by Jacob (Gen 33:19), as well as Joseph’s tomb is quite obvious. Even the person who sold the ground looks like being the same. The Greek version of Acts 7:16 has ‘&NNX@S (as does Gen 33:19) and the LXX version of Josh 24:32 reads "NPSSBJPK (CH>I in the MT).39 We have the coherent tradition of the tomb origins, where the land had been sold by the Amorite Hamor. 37. Nodet 1997, 167–76. 38. Cf. Bloch-Smith 1992, 114 n. 1. 39. At this juncture it is valid to point to Gen 48:22, where Joseph is blessed by Jacob, and the land is given to him. Important for the present argument is the version 1

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Nothing indicates that Stephen’s speech, part of which is Acts 7:15– 16, ought to be linked to the Samaritan tradition.40 It is certainly a Jewish tradition that was omitted in the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible. The parallel traditions about Shechem and Hebron being the site of the graves of the patriarchs, and perhaps even the primacy of Shechem, constitute important elements for the analysis of the history of the Bible. It is not difcult to identify the period when the editor of the Bible wanted the necropolis to be moved from Shechem to Hebron. The heightening of tensions between the Judahites and the Samaritans, concurrent with increasing conict with the Idumaeans at the second half of the second century B.C.E., provides an excellent backdrop for editors depreciating the signicance of Shechem while raising that of Hebron. Even if we know that in Hebron there was a large population of Idumaeans, just as Samaritans had to live in Shechem, there is an important difference between the two. Hebron was conquered and dominated by the Jews, who as time passed tried to impress their religion upon Idumaeans, or, better to say, forced them to convert (Josephus, Ant. 13.257–58). In the rst century B.C.E. the large-scale architectonic and religious works must have taken place there.41 At the same time, the presence of the Jews in Shechem was weakening. We know for certain that in the second century the text of the Bible was interfered with signicantly. The internal chronology of the Hebrew Bible must have been established after 164 B.C.E.,42 and one can speculate that the intensication of editorial work on the biblical text, in order to present an “ofcial version,” began after battles deciding the fate of the Jewish state had been fought—therefore in the second half of the second century B.C.E. Editorial changes could not have been limited to the alteration of dates regarding the life spans of certain heroic gures, events or reigns of kings—or otherwise establishing chronology solely on the basis of altering numerals. Changes had to be much more extensive since they “moved” the burial place of the patriarchs and erased almost all traces linking them to Shechem. It is precisely the example of

preserved in the LXX, FHX@ EF= EJEXNJ TPJ 4JLJNB FDBJSFUPO V QF=S UPV=K BEFMGPVK TPV IO FMBCPO FL YFJSP@K "NPSSBJXO FO NBYBJSB] NPV LBJ= UPDX], and Vetus Latina, Do tibi Sichimam praeciouam super omnes fratres tuos, quam accepi de manubis Amorrhaeorum in machaera mea et arcu. 40. Scobie 1973 and 1979; Taylor 2003. 41. About the building activity in Haram el-Khalil, see Jacobson 1981; Magen 1993, 942. 42. Thompson 1999, 73–75, see also Miller and Hayes 1986, 58–59. 1

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the graves of the patriarchs in Shechem that illustrates the process of changing the text in Genesis.43 In the fties of the second century B.C.E. Eupolemus, and subsequently in the thirties Theodotus, testify to the existence of the widespread popular conviction of Shechem’s sanctity. However, the narrative placing the tombs of the patriarchs in Shechem disappears from the text of the Hebrew Bible. When could this have happened? Certainly this had to have taken place prior to the rst manuscript placing the tombs of the patriarchs in Hebron (Gen 21), meaning 1QGen, which was written towards the end of the rst century C.E. This integration must have also preceded the creation of Jubilees. In accepting the dating of the latter as the twenties of the second century B.C.E., the most likely period coincides with the beginning of John Hyrcanus’ rule, whose rule led to intensied attacks, including the destruction of the temple at Gerizim. Usually the terminus ante quem for certain biblical texts was established by the date of the LXX translation, but thus seems somewhat like explaining ignotum per ignotum, because we hardly know a precise date for this large-scale translation work, which must have been the long process, not an immediate one, as describe in the letter of Pseudo-Aristeas. Furthermore, the role of Origen and his Hexapla must not be forgotten. The dating of the “Shechem tomb tradition” cannot even be established on the basis of the allusion to it in Ben Sira. To sum up the chronological arguments, it can be afrmed that we do not know precisely when, for the rst time, the patriarchal burial place in Hebron was mentioned. In the Hebrew Bible only Genesis contains this tradition,44 and even then there is an apparent contradiction in Gen 50:5’s allusion to Shechem.45 The question may be raised how the “Shechem tomb tradition” survived if it was rejected by the editors of Hebrew Bible. It may appear that the new tradition dominated all previous heritage, if really Shechem was the original place of patriarchal burial (of course, we must not forget that we are speaking about mythical reality, not of reality of events), and in a certain period it was replaced by Hebron account, which was promoted by a group of inuential priests. Why should we expect old

43. Cf. Niesioowski-Spanò 2007. 44. Cf. the Anakites tradition in Numbers, Joshua and Judges. It is striking how Genesis is separated from the rest of the Pentateuch. When the spies are sent to Canaan, and arrive in Hebron, the land of Anakites, there is no suggestion of patriarchal tomb there. Cf. Niesioowski-Spanò 2007. 45. A similar point of view, even if on different material was presented by Garbini 1991. 1

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tradition to be forgotten? Even if it was not the religious mainstream any more, it could be kept as valid, somewhere.46 It seems unlikely that the tradition of Shechem could have been displaced earlier than the end of the second century for two reasons. First of all, earlier than that there was no reason for the Judaeans to dispute the sanctity of Shechem, a fact to which both Eupolemus’ and Theodotus’ texts attest. Second of all, even the undermined and excised tradition remained alive up to the time of the author(s) of the Acts—meaning over two hundred years later. Let us proceed by accepting Crown’s theory regarding the destruction of the temple on Mount Gerizim in 128 B.C.E. as a working hypothesis, namely, that the tensions between the Jews and Samaritans was not as strong as has hitherto been widely believed and that there were certainly no religious underpinnings to the conict.47 The gure of Sanballat, governor of Samaria, mentioned in the book of Nehemiah, is symptomatic. His disinclination towards Nehemiah is solely the result of a conict of interests, with loss of livelihood certainly constituting a backdrop. There is no question about conict of a religious nature. The hostility of Sanballat, instead of being the result of unexplained anti-Yahwistic and antiJudaean attitude, can be better explained as the result of creating the new administrative centre (i.e. the new place to which taxes would be collected), which would have limited Sanballat’s income. In the third and second century B.C.E. it is doubtful the situation looked much different. The only mention of these times comes from Josephus Flavius, who underlined the good relations between the Tobiads and the residents of Shechem (Ant. 13.168). Of course, Josephus liked neither the Tobiads nor Sanballat’s descendents, but the Tobiads in a certain period were the true leaders of the Jewish people, and their good relationship with the elite from Shechem indicates no break between Jerusalem and Gerizim. There can be no discussion of either enmity or a radical break in relations between Judaism and the Samaritans in the mid-second century B.C.E. In this period Samaritans still identied themselves as Israelites. Inscriptions from Delos, mentioning Israelites offering sacrices to God in Shechem, testify to this.48 These two inscriptions, displayed in the area 46. A similar case appears with the Moses tradition, elaborated by Garbini 1991. 47. Crown 1991. 48. Inscription 1 reads: 0J FO %IMX ’*TSBFMFJUBJ PJ BQBSYPNFOPJ FJK JFSP=O ’"SHBSJ[FJ=O TUFGBOPVTJO YSVTX_ TUFGBOX 4BSBQJXOB ’*BTPOPK ,OXTJPO FVFSHFTJBK FOFLFO UIK FJK FBVUPVK, “The Israelites on Delos who make rst-fruit offerings to Holy Argarizein crown with a golden crown Sarapion son of Jason of Knossos for 1

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of the synagogue on Delos, afrm that Jews in the Diaspora co-existed peacefully alongside the Samaritans, the Israelites making offerings in Shechem.49 The authors of the inscriptions emphasized their diverse identity, by mentioning Gerizim as the site of a cult, in order to dene their identity precisely, which was recognizable only to the members of the community. And while Samaritans are different—a fact they themselves underline—they function with the Israelite collective on the basis of equal rights—they attend the same synagogues. Lastly, and I believe rightly, even the date of the destruction of the temple on Mount Gerizim has stopped being considered as the crucial moment marking the separation of Jews and Samaritans.50 Alan D. Crown has shown how different traditions bound to the patriarchs have been used by the Samaritans and Jews in order to prove that the religious centre ought to rightfully be located in Shechem and Jerusalem respectively. What is interesting is that the intensication of this discussion, and the consequent reaching for the biblical text, can be related only to the second/third century C.E.51 Shechem, or rather the mythology associated with this place, has become an element of the polemic carried out by Jews and Samaritans. Typical of topics within this dispute is the question over the location of Mount Moriah—the site of Isaac’s sacrice (Gen 22:1–18) and also of Abraham’s meeting with Melchizedek (Gen 14:17–20).52 Both the Samaritans and the Jews tried to show that important events in the mythical stories of the patriarchs took place in their respective holy places. Still, in the second century B.C.E., Jubilees, a text unsympathetic towards the Samaritans, indicates that Salem, the meeting places of Abraham and Melchizedek, was located in the area of Shechem (Jub. 30:1). Here we return to the key fragment found in Eupolemus, which is the main focus of this study (Frag. 1 = Eusebius, P.E. 9.17.5–6). This fragment clearly expresses a favourable disposition toward Gerizim and afrms the sanctity of the place. This convinced commentators to his benefactions on their behalf.” Inscription 2 reads: 0J FO %IMX> ’*TSBIMJUBJ PJ BQBSYPNFOPJ FJK JFSP=O BHJPO ’"SHBSJ[FJ=O FUJNITBO…, “The Israelites who make rst-fruit offerings to holy Argarizein honour…” See Bruneau 1982, 465–504, text on pp. 469, 473–74; cf. Crown 1991. 49. Cf. Pummer 1989, 193–94. About the Delos synagogue, see Pummer 1989, 150–51; Binder 1999, 297–317; Matassa 2007. 50. Crown 1991. For a description of the status questionis, see Hjelm 2000. 51. Crown 1991. 52. Cf. the comprehensive description of this issue, along with the literature, in Kalimi 1998. 1

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acknowledge Fragment 1 as being pseudo-Eupolemusian. As we have seen, there is nothing that prevents us from abandoning the division between Eupolemus’ and Pseudo-Eupolemus’ works.53 Seeking evidence of an aversion toward Samaritans and their sanctuary in the works of a historian working in the middle of the second century is a mistake. The only basis for separating the works of Eupolemus and Pseudo-Eupolemus would be the supposition that the former—the Jew Eupolemus and closely identied with the Maccabees—must have harboured a dislike of the residents of Samaria and anything smacking of the contrary in his works should be ascribed to another—the latter. Eupolemus worked prior to the year 128—before the destruction of the Samaritan temple by John Hyrcanus. Fragments from his works only testify to the existence of traditions not found in the biblical canon. Their presence in the works of a Jewish historian, closely bound to Judas Maccabaeus, excludes the unilateral pro-Samaritan use of its tradition. We are dealing with a tradition that was devised by the Samaritans and rejected by the Jews. Another example of important difference between biblical tradition and that preserved in Eupolemus’ works should be useful. Let us look at the fragment transmitted by Eusebius (P.E. 9.33).54 The text contains the letter sent by King Solomon to Suron, king of Tyre. Solomon states that he had sent the request for help the building of the temple “to Galilee and to Samaria and to Moabites and to Ammonites and to Galaditis.”55 This passage states quite clearly that ve nations were addressed. But what is important here is the place given to Gilead—it is listed along with Moab and Ammon. This means that for Eupolemus Gilead was comparable with the two, that is, had nothing to do with such “Jewish” or “semi-Jewish” lands as Galilee and Samaria. In 1 Kgs 4:19 Gilead is mentioned close to Ammon and Bashan (instead of Moab), but as the directly dependent territory, not as vassal kingdoms with their own kings.56 The same view can be found in another fragment preserved in Eusebius’ work (P.E. 9.39.5).57 When the Babylonian invasion is described, before entering Judaea the troops attacked “Samaria, Galilee,

53. Garbini 2000, 613–16. 54. Jacoby, FGrHist 723 Frag. 2. 55. Translation of Wacholder 1973, 309; cf. Holladay 1983, who has: “to Galilee, Samaria, Moab, Ammon, and Gilead.” The Greek text reads: HF HSBGB EF= LBJ= FJK UI=O (BMJMBJ BO LBJ= 4BNBSFJUJO LBJ= .XBCJUJO LBJ= ’"NNBOJUJO LBJ= (BMBEJUJO YPSIHFJTRBJ BVUPJK UB= EFPOUB FL UIK YX SBK. 56. For the opposite opinion, see Wacholder 1973, 164–65. 57. Jacoby, FGrHist 723 Frag. 4. 1

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Scythopolis and the Jews living in Gilead.”58 In reality, if there ever existed a Gilead–Judaea (or Gilead–Samaria) commonwealth, it could only be before the Assyrian invasion59 and after Hasmonean expansion, nothing in between.60 And such a view is presented by Eupolemus, which shows in new light the tradition present in Kings. Of course, this does not mean that the “separate-Gilead-tradition” existed in isolation, and that the “incorporate-Gilead-tradition” was invented later. We are not able to establish precisely the process. The only thing we can say is that Eupolemus’ sentence provides proof that in the mid-second century Jerusalem the “separate-Gilead-tradition” was still active some parts. We are now coming down to the crucial issue. On one hand, in the works of Jewish authors, Eupolemus and Theodotus, writing in Greek during the second century B.C.E., an acknowledgment of the sanctity of Shechem can be discerned. This same theme can also be noted in several biblical passages. On the other hand, there are a group of biblical texts rather negatively disposed to Shechem, one of the most important of them, namely Gen 34 (cf. Jub. 30), is difcult to date.61 There are several possible ways of clarifying this dilemma. First, one can search deeper to determine the chronological sequence. The tradition of being favourably inclined towards Shechem would be old since it arose prior to the period of Babylonian slavery or only originated from old accounts linked to the religious signicance of Shechem prior to the fth century B.C.E. It would have to have originated before ca. 475, when Shechem was abandoned. Criticism of Shechem only appears later. It seems that it should not be dated according to the depopulation of Shechem (ca. 475–330 B.C.E.). To carry on a lively polemic about a place that does not exist makes little sense. It is highly likely that the aggressive tendency toward Shechem is linked with the rising conict in the second century B.C.E. However, such explanations do create certain contradictions. In the second century B.C.E., the attitude of Jerusalem authors toward Shechem is rather ambivalent. Eupolemus, priest and close collaborator of Judas Maccabaeus, connects Argarzim with the place of Abraham’s sacrice; 58. Holladay’s translation (1983, 135), cf. Wacholder’s translation, “Galaaditis” (1973, 312). In this context, cf. Frag. 2 (P.E. 9.30.3) where the Davidic conquest of “Assyrians in Galadene” (possibly originally Gilead) is mentioned; cf. Holladay 1983, 140 n. 20. 59. See, for example, the Mesha stele and Hos 12:11–12. 60. There is a large bibliography on this subject, for which see NiesioowskiSpanò 2006. 61. Usage of Gen 34 in Hellenistic times and its supposed anti-Samaritan biases is presented by Pummer 1982. 1

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meanwhile, Theodotus, “a militant and exclusivist Jew”62—writing in the years 129–107 B.C.E.—claims Shechem as a “Holy City.” Simultaneously, in the second century, Ben Sira, connected with the Sadducees, writes of “the foolish people that live in Shechem” (50:26) and the priests editing the book of Genesis remove texts supporting the tradition of Shechem as the location of the graves of the patriarchs. The system breaks down at this point, and there is no longer a continuum. While it is true that we are relying here on a limited number of sources, these constitute a very solid collection. The book of Nehemiah relates the political, but by no means religious, rivalry between Jerusalem and Samaria, which certainly takes place in a period when Shechem plays neither a political nor religious role. During this same period, citizens of Elephantine carry on correspondence with priests from both Jerusalem and governors in Samaria.63 There is an almost complete lack of data from the third century, aside from information that Joseph the Tobiad has friendly relations with the citizens of Samaria (Ant. 12.168). Ben Sira’s caustic remark regarding the people of Shechem, who, nota bene, are not seen as a “nation” (as are Samaritans and Philistines; cf. Sir 50:25–26), marks the beginning of the second century. There is no trace of acrimony towards Shechem in the surviving works of Eupolemus, who wrote in the middle of the second century. Under the rule of John Hyrcanus, Theodotus in his epic re-writing the story of Dinah in Shechem, uses descriptions that betray his respect for the city. The alternative to a diachronic explanation is a synchronized schema based on seeking answers in the diverse political, social or religious views that could affect the generation of multiform literature. The theory of a polarization of forces among the elite in ancient Israel is nothing new; it would sufce to recall the basis of Morton Smith’s arguments about the existence of the Yahweh-alone Party.64 Certainly, while maintaining a degree of generalization, the existence of two constantly struggling factions can be accepted. One of these would be seeking to ensure the domination of Jerusalem’s signicance, which would be accompanied by the removal of narratives regarding the sanctity of other locations from the Bible. Actions supporting a nationalist ideology can also be presumed, actions which would entail a distinct separation 62. Collins 1980, 101–2. 63. Cowley 1923: nos. 30.29; 31.28; cf. Porten and Yardeni 1986: A 4.7; A 4.8. 64. Smith 1971. Cf. Mor 1989, 3, who states: “Characteristic of the entire Persian period was the conict within Judaean Jewry between those who held a separatist ideology and those who held a universalist ideology… The latter group was interested in bringing together all the different neighbouring groups.” 1

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from the Yehudites. Samaritans as dissenters became the enemy and Hebron, despite being the traditional cult site of the Idumaeas, became the property and holy place of the Yehudites.65 Can divisions between groups inuencing the literature and their characteristics be more precisely dened? Can divisions between Sadducees and Pharisees, or perhaps Maccabees and Oniads be found? Or, above all, can such divisions be discerned in relation to the aforementioned sources regarding Shechem? The hypothesis of the existence of two groups, two points of view, or, more broadly, two ways of viewing the present and future of Israel, can seem to be the universal key to deciphering various contradictions. They can be labelled according to their most pronounced features: War Party, Peace Party. These groups could be divided not only according to their views on political matters, manifest in the labels ascribed to them—War vs. Peace—but could also encompass religious matters, relations with foreigners or elements of the social sphere. The rst would represent a radical nationalist movement while the second would represent more moderate views, supporting, among other issues, peaceful co-existence with diverse nations and religions. This hypothesis can be developed further: the War Party had inuence on the combative fragments in the book of Jubilees, in particular Jacob’s battle with Esau (Jub. 37–38), which the party promoting the notion of peaceful co-existence would have introduced genealogical sequencing in its place in Genesis (Gen 36); the War Party would inspire the anti-Samaritan fragments about the fall of Israel (2 Kgs 17), while the moderate party would have created the gure of an “ecumenical” Abraham;66 the War Party stood behind the expansion of John Hyrcanus and the text of 2 Maccabees, while the Peace Party was the intellectual centre of Eupolemus and authors of 1 Maccabees.67 Even if this hypothesis is correct, it does not fully satisfy all the issues surrounding Shechem. There is no way to place Eupolemus and the author of the Jubilees in the same category, though both place Salem and the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, in Shechem (P.E. 9.17.5; Jub. 30:1). However, it is true that Eupolemus’ tone does resound in the proHasmonean 1 Maccabees, remaining silent on the subject of Shechem, as opposed to 2 Maccabees, which is closer in tenor to Jubilees in respect

65. See Niesioowski-Spanò 2006, 374–81. 66. Term taken from de Pury 2000. 67. For a similar division, but dealing with different topics, which are presented as changing in time, see Prato 1986. 1

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to its promotion of Jerusalem, in which religious dissidence on Mount Gerizim is criticized (2 Macc 6:2). In the case of Shechem there exist a series of diverse biblical and extra-biblical texts underlining its particular signicance. However, there are also evidently hostile passages which were used in the Talmudic period during the Jewish–Samaritan spats over the primacy of holy cities.68 This hypothesis, like any other, must be tested, and it is possible that it has been too readily accepted. Nonetheless, it illustrates certain important premises concerning methods of working with the text of the Bible. Each source is precious material to ponder over, even if it was ultimately placed outside of the canon at someone’s discretion. In this situation, when denitive editing dates of most of the books of the Old Testament, not to mention the dating of the original version, are unknown, it appears that extra-biblical material has enormous value, due, among other factors, to their relatively accurate dating. Dates and places associated with Eupolemus, Theodotus and the author of the 1 Maccabees and Ben Sira are relatively certain. A fair amount is also known about the date of origin of extra-biblical texts, such as the Jubilees. Information is decidedly scantier when it comes to dating the texts of the Hebrew Bible. The results of studies on Shechem in historical literature can be summarized in the following manner. In a series of biblical and extrabiblical texts Shechem is represented as a holy city. This notability is underlined in texts appearing in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, namely, Gen 12:6–7; 33:18–20; Deut 11:29; 27:2–13; Josh 8:30–33 and Josh 24. All these texts relate to prehistoric realities, bound to national mythology, and certainly in the understanding of the authors themselves do not have anything to do with contemporary realities such as the Jerusalem– Samaria dispute. Eupolemus wrote of the exceptional and sacred ranking of the city using the expression: “Holy City Argarizin” (QP MFXK JFSP=O ’"SHBSJ[JO, P.E. 9.17.5) and Theodotus wrote of “Holy City” (JFSP=O BTUV, Frag. 1).69 Also, in the second century B.C.E. there appears epigraphic evidence that the Israelites used the description JFSP=O BHJPO ’"SHBSJ[FJ=O. The author of the Acts also recognizes Shechem’s exceptionality. Hostile attitudes toward Shechem can be found in large stories: Gen 34, 2 Kgs 17 and in Judg 8–9. Ben Sira (Sir 50:25–26) and the 68. Crown 1991. 69. The lack of many similar phrases regarding Jerusalem in the LXX is striking, cf. Neh 11:1, Jdt 4:12; 1 Macc 2:7; 2 Macc 1:12; 3:1; 15:14; Wisd 9:8, also possibly Isa 48:2. 1

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author of 2 Maccabees (6:2) are openly averse to Shechem. Later, Josephus Flavius was agrantly anti-Shechemite and anti-Samaritan. The author of the Jubilees seems rather ambivalent on this matter since on one page he strives to underline the exceptional importance of Jerusalem, then on the other admits that Salem is near Shechem, seemingly despite himself (Jub. 30:1). In the end, the question of the methodology of studying the historiography of the Bible returns. Inspirations and inuences found in biblical historiography can have various directions and can come from different periods and cultural spheres. However, it cannot be forgotten that the most pertinent collection of texts conrming the quality, methodology and styles of biblical authors are those of Jewish authors, originating in various languages, during the Hellenistic era. Even if the authors were not the same, their ideologies, education, goals and aims were analogous. Bibliography [Anonymous]. 1962. Chronique Archéologique—Sichem. RB 69:257–66. Attridge, Harold W. 1984. Historiography. Pages 157–84 in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period. Edited by Michael E. Stone. CRINT 2/2. Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress. Binder, Donald D. 1999. Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period. SBLDS 169. Atlanta: SBL. Bloch-Smith, Elizabeth. 1992. Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead. JSOTSup 123. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Bombelli, Luciano. 1986. I Frammenti degli Storici Giudaico-Ellenistici. Genoa: Università di Genova. Bruneau, Philippe. 1982. “Les Israélites de Délos” et la juiverie délienne. Bulletin de Correspondence Hellénique 106:465–504. Campbell, Edward F. 1993. Shechem, Tell Balatah. Pages 4:1345–59 in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. Edited by E. Stern. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta. ———. 2002. Shechem III. The Stratigraphy and Architecture of Shechem/Tell Balâtah. American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports 6. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Collins, John J. 1980. The Epic of Theodotus and the Hellenism of the Hasmoneans. HTR 73:91–104. Cowley, A. 1923. Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. Oxford: Clarendon. Crown, Alan D. 1991. Redating the Schism between the Judaeans and the Samaritans. JQR 82:17–50. Daise, Michael. 1998. Samaritans, Seleucids, and the Epic of Theodotus. JSP 17:25–51. Denis, Albert-Marie. 1970. Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum Quae Supersunt Graeca. Leiden: Brill. 1

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Doran, Robert. 1985. Pseudo-Eupolemus. Pages 873–79 vol. 2 of OTP. ———. 1987. Jewish Hellenistic Historians before Josephus. ANRW 20.1:246–97. Freudenthal, Jacob. 1875. Hellenistische Studien 1–2. Alexander Polyhistor und die von ihm erhaltenen Reste judäischer und samaritaner Geschichtswerke. Breslau: Druck von Grass, Barth. Garbini, Giovanni. 1991. Torah e Mosé. Ricerche Storico Bibliche 3:83–96. ———. 1998. Eupolemo storico Giudeo. Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti Morali 9/9:4, 613–34. ———. 2000. Eupolemo e Flavio Giuseppe. Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti Morali 9/11:3, 367–82. Hengel, Martin. 1969. Judentum und Hellenismus. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck). Herzog, Ze’ev. 1997. Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in Ancient Israel and Its Social Implications. Monograph Series of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology 13. Tel Aviv: Emery and Claire Yass Archaeology Press. Hjelm, Ingrid. 2000. The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis. JSOTSup 303. Shefeld, Shefeld Academic. Holladay, Carl F. 1983. Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Vol. 1, Historians. TT 20. Pseudepigrapha Series 10. Atlanta: Scholars Press. ———. 1989. Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Vol. 2, Poets. TT 30. Pseudepigrapha Series 12. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Jacobson, D. M. 1981. The Plan of the Ancient Haram el-Khalil in Hebron. PEQ 113:73– 80. Kalimi, Isaac. 1998. Zion or Garizim? The Association of Abraham and the Aqeda with Zion/Garizim in Jewish and Samaritan Sources. Pages 442–57 in Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon. Edited by M. Lubetski, C. Gottlieb, and S. Keller. JSOTSup 273. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Magen, I. 1993. Mamre. Pages 3:939–42 in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. Edited by E. Stern. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta. Matassa, Lidia. 2007. Unravelling the Myth of the Synagogue on Delos. BAIAS 25:81– 115. Mendels, Doron. 1987. The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature: Recourse to History in Second Century B.C. Claims to Holy Land. TSAJ 15. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck). Miller, J. Maxwell, and J. H. Hayes. 1986. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Philadelphia: Westminster. Mor, Menachem. 1989. The Persian, Hellenistic and Hasmonaean Period. Pages 1–18 in The Samaritans. Edited by A. D. Crown. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck). Niesioowski-Spanò, ukasz. 2006. Two Aethiological Narratives in Genesis and their Dates. Studia Judaica 18:367–81. ———. 2007. Primeval History in the Persian Period? SJOT 21:106–26. Nodet, Etienne. 1997. In Search for the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to Mishnah. JSOTSup 248. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Porten, Bezalel, and Ada Yardeni, eds. 1986–99. Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Department of the History of the Jewish People. Prato, Gian Luigi. 1986. Cosmopolitismo culturale e autoidenticazione etnica nella prima storiograa giudaica. RivB 34:143–82. 1

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Pummer, Reinhard. 1982. Genesis 34 in Jewish Writings of the Hellenistic and Roman Period. HTR 75:177–88. ———. 1987. "SHBSJ[JO: A Criterion for Samaritan Provenience? JSJ 18:18–25. ———. 1989. Samaritan Material Remains. Pages 135–94 in The Samaritans. Edited by A. D. Crown. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck). Pury, Albert de. 2000. Abraham: The Priestly Writer’s “Ecumenical” Ancestor. Pages 163–81 in Rethinking the Foundations: Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible. Essays in Honour of John Van Seters. Edited by Steve L. McKenzie and Thomas Römer. BZAW 294. Berlin: de Gruyter. Schlatter, Adolf. 1925. Geschichte Israels von Alexander dem Grossen bis Hadrian. 3d ed. Stuttgart: Calwer. Scobie, C. H. H. 1973. The Origins and Development of Samaritan Christianity. NTS 19:390–414. ———. 1979. The Use of Source Material in the Speeches of Acts III and VII. NTS 25:399–421. Smith, Morton. 1971. Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament. New York: Columbia University Press. Stern, Ephraim. 2001. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible. Vol. 2, The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods 732–332 BCE. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday. Stone, Michael E., ed. 1984. Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period. CRINT 2/2. Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress. Taylor, N. H. 2003. Stephen, the Temple, and Early Christian Eschatology. RB 110:62– 85. Thompson, Thomas L. 1999. The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past. London: Jonathan Cape. Wacholder, Ben Zion. 1974. Eupolemus: A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature, Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 3. Cincinati: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Wright, G. Ernest. 1975–78. Shechem. Pages 4:1083–94 in Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. Edited by M. Avi-Yonah. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. ———. 1962. The Samaritans at Shechem. HTR 55:357–60. ———. 1965. Shechem: The Biography of a Biblical City. New York: McGraw–Hill.

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REVIEW OF WILLIAM G. DEVER, WHAT DID THE BIBLICAL WRITERS KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT? (2001) AND

WHO WERE THE EARLY ISRAELITES AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? (2003) Rainer Albertz

In recent years William G. Dever, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona, has written two books bearing conspicuous titles. The rst, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, was published in 2001 by Eerdmans; the second, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, was published in 2003 by the same publisher. Both books—the rst more than the second—are very polemical rejections of historical minimalism, containing sharp attacks on Thomas Thompson and Philip Davies in particular, as well as the European Seminar in Historical Methodology more generally (2001, 7). Frankly speaking, I am somewhat startled by such personal and emotional polemic in our academic eld; I have never encountered anything like this before or since. 1. Prologue Let me start with some personal remarks. I rst met Dever in 1993, during a symposium in Bern on “Ein Gott allein, JHWH-Verehrung und biblischer Monotheismus im Kontext der israelitischen und altorientalischen Religionsgeschichte.” We seemed to have a good understanding of each other, since we both shared an interest in the actual religious life of Israelite groups that stood apart from ofcial rituals and theological demands. Dever delivered a paper on the topic of “Ancient Israel Religion: How to Reconcile the Different Textual and Artifactual 1

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Portraits?” It seems that my explorations of the differences between family and state religion offered him a possible way of explaining the differences between the two, differences which he had himself noted. I duly presented Dever with a copy of my book, Religionsgeschichte Israels, on which he wrote a short but very kind review (see BASOR 298 [1995]: 44–45). When the English translation of my book became available, Dever wrote a much longer review (see BASOR 302 [1996]: 83–88). Dever had seemingly become aware that our two positions differ slightly in methodological and material respects. Dever felt obliged to supply data and to correct me where, in his view, I had overlooked or wrongly interpreted an important piece of archaeological evidence. Personally, I think Dever is right in his repeated pleadings for a critical dialogue between biblical scholars and archaeologists. Indeed, no one can be an expert in both elds, especially not in these days of advanced specialism. On two occasions I attempted to strike up a dialogue with Dever, but I never got a positive response. My work is all but forgotten in the two books to be discussed here. Dever merely mentions my A History of Israelite Religion in a summarizing footnote (2001, 174 n. 16). Thus, my encounter with Dever ended somewhat disappointingly for me. Nevertheless, I cannot help but still feel some sympathy with William Dever. And I see a kind of tragedy that this outstanding expert in SyrianPalestine Archaeology, this most prolic of writers, has become bogged down with the kind of furious polemic that has featured in his publications. In the rst of the two books to be discussed here, Dever deliberately reveals his personal background and feelings: coming from a pious IrishAmerican family—his father was a preacher, characterized as an “old fashioned fundamentalist” (2001, IX)—Dever found a more liberal position through his academic studies. He was fascinated by his teacher at Harvard, George Ernest Wright, and abandoned theology, deciding instead to become an archaeologist and historian. Dever studied with Nelson Glueck at the Hebrew Union College. Starting out under the shadow of Albright, he liberated himself from the conservative concept of “Biblical Archaeology,” which sought to verify the truth of the Bible by historical and artifactual means. Dever was one of the rst to demand the independence of what has come to be known as Syro-Palestinian Archaeology from the Hebrew Bible. According to him, so far as the historical truth is concerned, the archaeological evidence should have priority over the biblical text (pp. 9–10). Yet Dever had to make the tragic discovery that he had been overtaken by others, scholars who were yet more radical than him. His own methodological demands were used 1

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not for constructing, but deconstructing the history of Ancient Israel. His own aim of writing a “secular history of ancient Israel” (pp. 86, 287) was used to deny any distinguished people bearing this name. In my view, this is the main reason for Dever’s obvious anger with the minimalists, a collective of scholars whom he terms, strangely enough, “revisionists.” By such a title, Dever seemingly means that that those to whom he assigns the epithet have somehow diverted from the right doctrine, a doctrine which is, of course, dened by him. In his view, the revisionists misuse and distort his archaeological approach. In addition to this, Dever clearly experienced some amount of personal hurt when, during several conferences, he was given only a minority position. He reports: At the 1996 national meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Thomas Thompson of Copenhagen triumphantly announced to a standing-room-only crowd that not only was there no “ancient Israel,” but there was “no Judaism until the 2nd century A.D.” His remarks were greeted with applause. Mine was the only voice raised in protest; but I was drowned out, and the chairman closed the session. Afterward, I found many of my colleagues dismayed, but only a few of us had seen the handwriting on the wall (a biblical allusion—Belshazzar’s feast—for those who still response to such images). (2001, 7)

As the reference to Belshazzar of Dan 5 shows, the attack on the historicity of ancient Israel has taken on an apocalyptic dimension for Dever. Dever felt especially upset about the doubts cast about his professionalism, the suspicion of his never having left the Albrightian “Biblical Archaeology” position (2001, 33). Finally, he is apparently disturbed by the political use of archaeology in the contemporary struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, a struggle in which the latter have taken up the minimalistic position (2001, 8; 2003, 237–41). Keeping all these experiences in mind, one can perhaps understand Dever’s furious polemic a little better. Having supplied a background context, I wish now to start my review. 2. Review of What Did the Biblical Writer Know and When Did They Know It? (2001) Dever wrote his 2001 book in order “not only to counter the ‘revisionists’ ’ abuse of archaeology, but to show how modern archaeology brilliantly illuminates a real ‘Israel’ in the Iron Age, and also to help foster the dialogue between archaeology and biblical studies that I had always envisioned” (x). Since Dever and the revisionists have similar methodological demands, he felt obliged to clarify his own approach. In Chapter 1

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3 he gives a useful review of the development of archaeological studies in Palestine from the nineteenth century up to the present. He underlines that the discipline, once it had ceased to be seen as a way of supporting the Bible (i.e. “Biblical Archaeology”), came to be seen as the independent “New Archaeology,” an area of study which was oriented towards cultural anthropology and which, for a time, was uninterested in history. But then the research turned to the new direction of “Post-Processual Archaeology”, which came closer again to being history-writing. In this connection Dever points out that all Near Eastern archaeologists have always considered themselves “basically historians, not anthropologists” (p. 63). Drawing upon Ian Hodder in his co-authored (with Scott Hutson) Reading the Past (1986), Dever observes that an artifact can be read like a text in the context of his assemblage (2001, 67). On this basis Dever tries to formulate his own approach, one which contrasts to that of the revisionists. But his position is not quite clear: on the one hand, he stresses that the “archaeological data” are the “ ‘primary’ sources for history-writing” (p. 89), this being because of their independent witness, their direct approach to reality and their concreteness. Here he praises archaeology over exegesis; only the former, he claims, “can only truly ‘revolutionize’ biblical studies” (p. 90). On the other hand, he reduces the priority of archaeology and pleads for a double approach to historical investigation: “what I propose here has to do with the independent but parallel investigation of the two sources of data for history-writing, and the subsequent critical dialogue between them that scholars must undertake” (p. 106). Here, Dever is looking for “convergences” between archaeological and biblical data; the model of dialogue between exegetical and archaeological experts was turned into a combination of textual and artifactual data. Since this process remains critical, it should not be discredited as akin to what older “Biblical Archaeology” had done (p. 106). A methodological bridge between textual and artifactual data could be the Sitz im Leben of form criticism (pp. 103–4). So, according to Dever’s methodological reection, “we are nevertheless almost totally dependent upon archaeological data for most of what we shall ever know” (p. 105), though the biblical text has supplied some important and useful information. In order to demonstrate his distance to the old “Biblical Archaeology” Dever classies many books of the Hebrew Bible as unhistoric. Among these he lists the Pentateuch, the book of Joshua, prophetic legends such as “the Elisha–Elijah cycle”(!), prophetic books, the Psalms and wisdom 1

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literature (pp. 101–2), although some of these do provide some information about daily life. Only the books of Judges, Samuel and especially Kings are of some historical value. In his overall historical judgment, Dever presupposes the classical source theory for the Pentateuch, which he still thinks valid (p. 102), and the hypothesis of a Deuteronomistic history in the form advocated by Frank Cross. At the same time, in order to counter the scepticism of the revisionists, Dever tries to demonstrate the convergences between biblical and archaeological data by means of two different case studies. In the rst case study he deals with the pre-state period. Summarizing the archaeological investigations—surveys and excavations—of around 300 Iron I settlements in the central hill country, Dever points out that his “symbiosis-model” conceptualizing an indigenous origin of Israel contradicts the view found in the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua, but converges with several details found in the book of Judges (p. 122, chart 125). Dever goes so far as to identify the hill settlers on archaeological grounds as “Proto-Israelites”; for him, the whole assemblage of farm-house compounds, terraces, plastered cisterns, stone-lined silos, unwalled villages and relative dearth of pork bones refers to an agrarian society with distinguished cultural features (large multigenerational families, no central authority, no large city temples). That this society, wherever its members may have come from, understood itself or were identied by others as “Israel” can be veried by the Merneptah inscription (1210 B.C.E.). Thus Finkelstein’s, Thompson’s and Edelman’s scepticism toward ethnicity is unfounded. The second case study has to do with the period of the United Monarchy. For Dever, the most signicant criterion for dening “statehood” is the centralization of power (p. 126). According to him, many archaeological nds from the early tenth to the early ninth century point to a “large-scale process of organization and centralization” (p. 137; most prominent, for Dever, are the city gates of Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor). In accordance with the Solomonic lists of districts in 1 Kgs 4, Tirzah and Bet-Shemesh can be veried archaeologically as administrative centres for Northern Ephraim and Benjamin (pp. 142–43). Every detail of the biblical description of Solomonic Temple can be paralleled by Bronze and Iron Age temples of the region, the closest examples being in Northern Syria (pp. 155–56). Thus, according to Dever, there is no wonder that “today nearly all archaeologists recognize a small-scale but authentic ‘state’ in central Palestine in the mid-late 10th century, or the beginning of Iron II, on archaeological grounds alone” (p. 128). The biblical view, 1

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that this state was founded by David, is corroborated by the Dan inscription. A specic Judaean material culture cannot be distinguished before the ninth and eighth centuries (p. 130). A nice little piece of evidence for the United Monarchy is mentioned later (pp. 213, 223): shekel-weights with hieratic symbols for numbers are spread out over all Judah and Israel, so they must have been introduced before the Divided Monarchy and presuppose a common economical and administrative unit (cf. Na’aman). For the time of the Divided Monarchy Dever focuses more on the archaeological evidence for daily life. So, in a lengthy treatment he deals with religion and cult of this period. Here Dever presents a contrast: while the Bible is to be seen as “an elitist document,” “archaeology at its best provides a graphic illustration of the everyday masses, the vast majority of ordinary folk, their brief lives forgotten by the biblical writers in their obsession with eternity” (p. 173). This reminds of the difference between “ofcial” and “popular religion” or “family religion”— Dever uses the terms equivocally, but strangely enough distributes it to two different kinds of sources. I think that is a misleading overstatement. For sure, on the one hand, the Hebrew Bible also speaks of “family religion” and mentions dozens of deviating cults, as I have shown elsewhere in detail. On the other hand, archaeology can also tell us a lot about the ofcial cult, and indeed would tell us even more if the main temples could be excavated (Jerusalem, Bethel etc.). Based on this unclear differentiation Dever deals with the very different kind of cult places without any systematic order (Bull Site, gate-shrine in Tirzah, Megiddo, Locus 2081, probably a family shrine, the cult places in Taanach, Beersheba, and Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, the temple in Arad and the graves in Ketef Hinnom and Khirbet el-Qom). For Dever, “popular religion” is dened purely negatively: “Popular religion is an alternate, nonorthodox, nonconformist mode of religious expression… [I]t appeals especially to minorities and to the disenfranchised (in the case of Israel, most women)” (p. 196). Admittedly, “popular religion” has a lot to do with the needs of women, such as childbirth, but is it therefore an “almost exclusive province of women”? (p. 196). Dever critiqued Susan Ackermann and Karel van der Toorn for being unable to offer a working denition of “popular religion.” Yet, in my opinion, it is a pity that Dever did not clarify his own historical and sociological categories relating to religion. As far as religion and cult is concerned, Dever noted a contradiction between the Bible and the results of archaeology. In this case, he agrees with the revisionists that the biblical view must be deconstructed, even 1

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more so than he had himself done before. And he concludes: “It is by reading many of the biblical texts ‘against the grain,’ or despite their idealistic pretensions, that we may best get at the truth about ancient Israelite religions. This may not be the religious ‘truth’ that the biblical writers had in mind, but it is the historical truth, and that is our proper goal as archaeologists and historians” (p. 198). In my view, the recognition that not only the Bible, but all written sources must often be read “against the grain” in order to achieve a realistic historical reconstruction, is a banality. Yet, in contrast to Dever, I must insist that the concepts of the biblical authors, although they might sometimes be idealistic, remain likewise an important part of the religion of ancient Israel. Dever sees more convergence with regard to many realia of daily life, among which he mentions such things as the benches sited at city-gates, seals, ostraca, inscribed decanters for libation, tombs, weights, scales, pottery, ivories, and secondary residences (Jesreel, Ramat-Rahel). In contrast to D. Jamieson-Drake (1991), Dever argues, on the grounds of schoolboy practice texts of the eleventh and tenth centuries (letters of the alphabet in Izbet Sartah, Gezer calendar), on the existence of an early “functional literacy” (2001, 203ff.). The rst inscribed seals come from the ninth century, the small archives in Samaria, Arad, Lachish, contained texts from the eighth to sixth century. Dever reminds us that most of the texts written on papyri were lost due to the damp winter climate in Palestine (p. 209). For me, this is a striking example of how the same archaeological evidence can be interpreted in opposing directions. In his 2001 book, Dever tries to equate the different types of pottery with Hebrew terms transmitted in the Bible. He admits that this equation is “still speculative and preliminary” (pp. 232–33), but nevertheless states that apart from the frying-pan, which is mentioned only by P and is archaeologically unattested before the Hellenistic period, all other kinds of pottery belong to the E II level. So, Dever concludes, the “biblical texts that mention these vessels—mostly the J, E, and D sources—were largely composed and edited in penultimate fashion precisely in that period, i.e., in the late Monarchy” (p. 234). So, at the end of his book, has Dever answered the question posed in title: What did the biblical writer know and when did they know it? For Dever, the answer is that “They knew a lot; and they knew it early” (p. 273; cf. 295). For Dever, had the Bible been written in the Hellenistic period, it would have looked quite different—more like the book of Daniel.

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3. Review of Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (2003) The second of Dever’s books to be reviewed, Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, was published in 2003. This work is less polemical in tone than the 2001 book, although it owes its origins to a public controversy surrounding the historicity of the exodus that arose in Los Angeles during the spring and summer of 2001, a debate in which Dever was involved (2003, 205). Here Dever presents a readily comprehensible and well-documented argument, dealing with such issues as why, on the one hand, Israel’s exodus from Egypt must be judged as a historical myth when there is almost no external textual or archaeological conrmation, while, on the other hand, Israel’s indigenous emergence in Canaan can be historically veried by ample archaeological evidence. The amassing and brief assessment of all the scattered archaeological results, along the synthesis of the methodological and scholarly discussions, are very helpful for those readers who do not possess archaeological expertise. In spite of the dating in 1 Kgs 6:1, the exodus could not have happened in the year 1446 B.C.E., because, according to Dever, “the major break in the archaeological sequence in Palestine that would have to be correlated with a shift from ‘Canaanite’ to ‘Israelite’ culture occurred at the end of the Bronze Age, ca. 1250–1150 B.C.” (2004, 8). Thus the Pharaoh of the exodus cannot be Tutmoses III, but only Ramses II. Dever notes that there is no archaeological evidence to support the existence of Pithom or Ramses, the places mentioned in Exod 1:11, during the thirteenth century B.C.E. Tel el-Maskuta, the rst candidate for identication as Pithom, was settled in the Middle Kingdom and after that not before the seventh century B.C.E.; Tell el-Retabeh, the second candidate, was not resettled before the late Rameside period in the twelfth century. Tel el-Dab’a, which was previously equated with Ramses, was destroyed in 1530 and rebuilt by Ramses II, yet no slave camps were found there. Nonetheless, Dever will not exclude that here and somewhere else “Asiatic slaves—among them possibly the ancestors of the Israelites—may indeed have been employed in making mudbricks (Exod 5:5–21) for Ramses II’s construction projects there and elswhere in the Delta” (2003, 15). Some other evidence contradicts the reliability of the exodus report strictly: the Egyptian fortress Migdol, mentioned in Exod 14:2, was only settled in the Saïtic period (seventh–sixth century); in Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat), where the Israelites are said to have camped for many years (Num 13; 14; 20), there existed only a small 1

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fortress from the tenth–seventh century. Dever summarizes: “Thus after a hundred years of exploration and excavation in the Sinai desert, archaeologist can say little about the ‘route of the Exodus’ ” (2003, 20). In the next step Dever convincingly demonstrates that also the Israelite conquest of Canaan, reported in the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua, could not have happened. He briey investigates 23 different settlements in the Negev, Transjordan and Cisjordan, all which could be identied with alleged conquered cities in the Hebrew Bible. The results are almost exclusively negative: “There is no Late Bronze Age Canaanite occupation of the 13th century B.C.E. at Tel Masos (Horma), nor anywhere in the northern Negeb” (2003, 27). In Transjordan only one of the excavated sites was conquered during the period in question, Tell el-‘Umeiri south of Amman—but that is not mentioned in the Bible. In Cisjordan only the destruction of Hazor in the mid- or late thirteenth century, which was conrmed by a new excavation, can probably be brought into connection with the Proto-Israelites (pp. 66–68). Dever summarizes: “Of the more than forty sites that the biblical texts claim were conquered, no more than two or three of those that have been archaeologically investigated are even potential candidates for such an Israelite destruction in the entire period from ca. 1250–1150 B.C.” (p. 71). Thus, in Dever’s view, the “Conquest Model” created by W. F. Albright, his pupils, and older Israeli archaeologist is denitively refuted. Dever does not have much sympathy for the alternative model of a “Peaceful Inltration” created by A. Alt and M. Noth; he mentions it only briey (pp. 50–52). For him, such a process is highly improbable, since ethnographic studies have shown that nomads usually do not settle of their own initiative. In a detailed discussion of I. Finkelstein’s theories, Dever argues that the number of nomads from the hill country in the Late Bronze Age was simply too small to explain the “demographic explosion” in the new settlements. Presupposing that some 10 to 15% of an estimated total hill-country population of 12,000 people were nomads in the Late Bronze Age results in a total nomadic population of just 1,200 to 1,500 nomads—far to few when compared with the estimated population of ca. 50,000 in the 350 Iron I villages. Moreover, nomads would not have had the experience to establish a ourishing agrarian economy in a difcult rocky environment. Dever questions Finkelstein’s archaeological results: his claim that most of the rst Iron I sites in Ephraim “are located in the desert fringe, and that this proves that the rst ‘wave’ of settlement reects pastoral nomads settling down, rests on four sites and four identiable sherds” (p. 161). His own excavation of Izbet Sartah refutes the thesis of a general direction of colonization from the east to 1

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the west. Likewise, Dever rejects the argument of Finkelstein and Fritz that the oval or circular plan of some Iron I settlements (Izbet-Sartah, Tell Masos, Beersheba) and the ground plan of the four-room houses reect the position and division of nomadic tents. Although Dever will not deny that some nomadic elements (Shasu) belonged to the ProtoIsraelites (pp. 180–82), he insists that the emergence of early Israel cannot be explained as a sedentarization of nomads. Dever shows much more sympathy with the “Revolt Model” created by G. Mendenhall and N. K. Gottwald, a model which he praises as “one of the most highly original contributions to American biblical scholarship in the 20th century” (p. 52). It is to be noted that Dever has been one of Gottwald’s principal archaeological informants (p. 53). In his present book, Dever looks more critically at this model; nevertheless, but accepts that, “stripped of its Marxist baggage, the peasant revolt model can still be useful” (p. 74). It has, for Dever, the important advantage that “it draws attention for the rst time to the largely indigenous origins of the early Israelite people” (p. 74). Dever emphasizes: “Gottwald was right: the early Israelites were mostly ‘displaced Canaanites’—displaced both geographically and ideologically” (p. 54). On the basis of this general insight, Dever presents in detail the results of the excavations and surveys of the Iron I settlements in the hill country (Chapters 5–7 and Chapter 10). The excavations in Raddana, Tel Masos, Giloh, Izbet Sartah, Shilo, Beersheba, and Khirbet ed-Dawara (the only fortied settlement) verify, for him, a family-based agrarian society in the Iron I villages; according to the surveys in Galilee and the West Bank, 93 percent of the 350 villages were newly founded. Two insights are fundamental to Dever: the rst is “the population explosion in the 12th century” (p. 98) which increased the population in the hill country from an estimated 12,000 people during the Late Bronze Age to estimated 50,000 in Iron Age I. Dever (p. 99) quotes with approval the words of L. E. Stager: “There must have been a major inux of people into the highlands in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C.E.” The second is the evidence “that the inhabitants were farmers and stockbreeders who had long previous experience with the problems of local agriculture in Canaan” (p. 107; cf. the silos and the large quantity of cattle bones). Thus Dever concludes that most of the inhabitants must have come from the Canaanite lowlands. Dever reconstructs the reasons for this “mass migration” within Canaan along the lines proposed by N. K. Gottwald, mentioning the decline of the Late Bronze culture, the political instability of the Canaanite city states, the social gap between extremes of wealth and poverty, 1

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and the collapse of international trade (pp. 168ff.). Accordingly, Dever takes up Gottwald’s and Mendenhall’s term, “withdrawal.” Yet, in contrast to these writers, Dever states: “It was not ight from intolerable conditions or necessarily a revolutionary Yahwistic fervor that propelled people toward the frontier, but rather simply a quest for a new society and a new lifestyle. They wanted to start over. And in the end, that was revolutionary” (p. 178). Dever calls this revised theory an “agrarian frontier reform model,” because according to him the “land reform must have been the driving force behind, the ultimate goal of the early Israelite movement” (p. 188). And he compares the Proto-Israelites with radical U.S. settler groups like the Amish in Pennsylvania. Thus, the second question of the book’s title is answered: “Where did they come from?” They came from different parts of Canaan, but mostly from the lowlands. Finally, Dever deals with the question of the identity of early Israelites (Chapter 11). Dever had already pointed out that in his view the ProtoIsraelites were “a motley crew” (pp. 181–82). They consisted of urban dropouts, ‘Apiru and other “social bandits,” refugees, displaced villagers, impoverished farmers, local pastoral nomads “including some from the eastern steppes or Transjordan (Shasu), and even perhaps an ‘Exodus group’ that had been in Egypt among Asiatic slaves in the Delta” (p. 182). Nevertheless, Dever is convinced that these different groups quickly constructed a new ethnic identity after having become “agrarian reformers with a new social vision” (p. 191). Accepting to the denition of ethnicity espoused by Fredrik Barth (1969), Dever points out that the country pioneers partly already stood in a common continuity with the Canaanite culture (pottery, art, language, and religion), but that they went some way to creating a new agrarian lifestyle, a new economy, a new type of farm houses, and a deviant social structure and political organization with specic common values. These are, for Dever, markers signicant enough to distinguish a new ethnicity. In order to determine this new ethnic identity as “Proto-Israelite,” Dever deals not only with the Merneptah stele (pp. 201–8), but also refers to the strong continuity between the Iron I and Iron II culture, the latter of which can be clearly determined as Israelite. There is a continuity of settlement (Dan, Hazor, Beth-Shean, Tirzah, Beth-Shemesh, Lachish, Beersheba a.o.), a continuous demographic, technological and political development, and a continuation of the typical house-type and several Canaanite rites and beliefs (pp 195–200). In the end, however, Dever limits his ethnic denition “Proto-Israelites” to the settlers on the Samarian hill country, since the settlements in upper Galilee, on the 1

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Judaean hills and in the Negev Valley show some differences in the material culture and social organization (pp. 208–21). This late limitation is somewhat confusing, since Dever has previously used the data from all the hill country areas in order to describe the new Iron I society. In any case, the rst question posed in the book’s title—“Who were the early Israelites?”—can be answered: the early Israelites were the Iron I settlers of the Samarian hill country, who came from different areas of Canaan, but mostly from the urban and agrarian lowlands. In the nal chapter of the book, “Salvaging the Biblical Tradition: History or Myth” (pp. 223–41), Dever feels obliged to mediate between his partly negative results and the biblical tradition. Having denied the historicity of the Exodus at the beginning of his book, he now asks now why the Exodus–Sinai tradition should become so dominant in the Bible. For Dever, there exist some hints in the Joseph story that minor elements of the tribes Ephraim and Manasseh “probably had come out of Egypt to Canaan, and in a way that upon reection seemed miraculous to them. Later they assumed (or dictated?) that other of the heterogeneous groups that had made up early Israel had had the same experience” (p. 231). Likewise, he believes that “some of these ‘Shasu of Yhw’ were among the tribal peoples who became early Israel, and that they may indeed had been guided through the desert by a charismatic, sheikh-like leader with the Egyptian name of ‘Moses’ ” (p. 237). These assumptions are reminiscent of M. Noth and indeed my own religious-historical reconstruction (Albertz 2004). They are, however, rather surprising given that Dever can elsewhere emphasize that “there is no longer a place or a need for the Exodus as a historical explanation for the origins of Israel.” It “is best regarded as a myth” (p. 232). Dever makes a similar statement with regard to Moses: “Current theories of ‘indigenous origins’ for early Israel have no place for Moses, nor any need of him” (p. 235). Did Dever not just develop such a theory himself? So, at the end of his book, Dever’s position, which he sees as “aligned with the middle-of-the road option” (p. 226), seems to be not so clear. On the one hand, he claims “that the newer and sometimes revolutionary archaeological evidence must become our primary source for writing (or rewriting) any history of early Israel” (p. 223), while on the other hand he seems to be startled by the negative results of his own methodology and ready to make some concessions to the biblical text and to his pious audience. Perhaps Dever reveals the hidden reason for this inconsistency when he emphasizes at the end of his book that the controversy about the origins of ancient Israel is not simply an antiquarian pursuit: for him, “It 1

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is very much a question of our own self-identity, for in some ways we see ourselves as the New Israel” (p. 237). Thus the American foundation myth stood in the background of this historical investigation. 3. Epilogue The two books by William Dever discussed in this review clearly reveal the ambivalence of current researchers working on the archaeology of Palestine towards using the biblical text as a source for reconstructing the history of ancient Israel. As far as developments of longue or moyenne durée are concerned, for such topics as Iron I settlement of the hill country or family-based agrarian production, archaeology is able to supply impressive and illuminating results. On the hand, as far as the more concrete political, cultural, and religious aspects of the history of Israel are concerned, archaeological evidence seemingly becomes more ambiguous. To give just a few examples: whether the Iron I settlers in the hill country can really be identied with the early Israelites or not remains questionable, since clear inscriptions from Iron I are lacking. On the basis of the same archaeological evidence, one can claim an early (so Dever) or a late (so Jamieson-Drake) literacy in Israel and Judah. Also, on the basis of the cultic artifacts from Iron I, nobody would suppose that these Israelites venerated the god YHWH at all—indeed, the evidence offered by the bronze bull gurine from the Samarian hill country would probably suggest the worship of the god El. On this last example Dever makes a remarkable comment: Curiously enough, religion and cult—which Mendenhall, Gottwald, and many other biblicists have taken as a crucial factor in the “social revolution” that produced early Israel—is virtually unattested archaeologically. (p. 126) The deity Yahweh is attested as early as the 13th century B.C. in Egyptian texts that place him among the Shasu-bedouin of southern Transjordan… But archaeologically Yahweh is invisible in Iron I villages… The apparent silence of the archaeological record may be misleading, however, because we lack any written texts, and these would be necessary to characterize early Israelite ideology in any depth. (p. 128)

That means that, on the basis of archaeology alone, one could conclude that there existed no YHWH worship among the Iron I settlers on the hill country. This conclusion is made by the minimalists, of course; and there is no strong archaeological argument that could hinder them. Negative archaeological evidence is taken by them as proof of non-existence. Yet Dever tries to escape this conclusion by admitting that the given 1

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archaeological evidence may be misleading, noting that because we “lack any written texts” we would need to make a reasonable decision. Thus he admits the lack of an important type of archaeological source material, material which would be necessary for a proper reconstruction of an important detail in the early history of Israel. Dever agrees with the revisionist in claiming time and again the priority of archaeological sources over the biblical text (p. 71). And I think nobody would oppose this methodological statement had we the normal diversity of archaeological ndings in Palestine—not only nice architectural remains and many artifacts, but also some interesting inscriptions and literary texts, as is usual in many other regions of the Ancient Near Eastern (Egypt, Asia Minor, Northern Syria, Mesopotamia). Yet among the ndings unearthed by archaeological excavations in Palestine, inscriptions are relatively sparse and literary texts are lacking completely. All that has been found are a few inscriptions, some letters, many notes, a lot of seals and seal impressions, and some interesting grafti. In spite of every effort, archaeologists working in Palestine have yet to nd any major palace or temple archive, and they not yet found even a single royal inscription of an Israelite or Judahite monarch. Dever mentions the fact that all of the more important texts were written on papyri, yet almost none of these has survived—most likely because of the wet winter conditions experienced in Palestine (2001, 209). In my opinion, however, he did not seriously consider the far-reaching consequences of this fact. Taking the lack of textual ndings into account, I would like to question whether one can still claim, as Dever does, that the “archaeological evidence must now become our primary source for writing (or rewriting) any history of early Israel” (2003, 223), or writing history more generally (2001, 89). In my opinion, this methodological rule would overtax the archaeological evidence gathered from Palestine thus far. No matter what one thinks of the historical value of the Hebrew Bible, by any account it offers some detailed textual information. It is clear that, mainly because of the lack of usable texts found so far, the archaeological results available at present are not sufcient for writing a history of ancient Israel in any detail. This statement can easily be veried by the fact that the minimalist historians are able to deny the existence of an ancient Israel before the ninth, the fth or even the second century B.C.E. on the basis of the same set of archaeological data. Thus I plead for the giving up of ambitious claims that archaeology should have methodological priority, so long as no further inscriptions and literary sources are found. Facing the given sparseness of our historical data concerning ancient Israel, we should place equal weight on the archaeo1

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logical and biblical data. Whether we can reconcile converging biblical and archaeological data, and deciding which element of data should take precedence cannot be decided generally, but can only be handled on a case-by-case basis. In order to make this decision, in my view, a much higher degree of exegetical sophistication is required. The last methodological demand is not too far away from what Dever has argued in his two books. Nevertheless, I think that he should have given a more rational assessment of the limitations of the present state of the archaeology of Palestine, pointing out what it realistically can contribute to the writing of Israelite history and what not. Despite Dever’s claim that, “As an archaeologist, I could easily write a 1000-page, richly documented history of an ‘ancient Israel’ in the Iron Age and the early Persian period” (2001, 296), I have my serious doubts about what kind of history that would be.

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A RESPONSE TO RAINER ALBERTZ William G. Dever

I am delighted to have an opportunity to respond to the review of two of my recent semi-popular books (Dever 2001, 2003) by Professor Rainer Albertz, whose work I have long admired. As he notes, my reviews of his magisterial 1994 book on ancient Israelite religion were very enthusiastic (Dever 1995, 1996). I have also written for his forthcoming Festschrift (as he did for mine), honored to be invited. Thus, I am mystied by his complaint that twice I rebuffed his attempts at the dialogue we have both advocated since our fruitful meeting in Bern in 1993. I honestly don’t know to what he is referring. (Since I retired some years ago from the University of Arizona and moved away, and since I don’t use e-mail, it may be that his overtures never reached me.) As for my neglecting to mention him in these two books, I can only explain that the topics here did not involve Professor Albertz’s major interests except tangentially. Had he added a review of my Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (2005), he would have found frequent and uniformly complimentary references to him and his work. Professor Albert’s attempt to “psychoanalyze” me (which my candid and rhetorical style did indeed invite) seems to me to rest largely on mistaken readings. I don’t have any sense of a “tragic experience [of being] overtaken by others, who were more radical.” Even if my “deconstruction” (his term) of aspects of Israelite history had been radical (it was rather mainstream), I don’t know which extremists I am supposed to be envious of. As for my “denying any distinguished people of this name” (i.e. ancient Israelites), that is precisely what I criticized the “revisionists” for doing. Finally, it is simply not true that the background of my forays into the subject of Israelite historiography lies in my espousal of “the American foundation myth school.” As a child of the Enlightenment, I do defend the so-called Western cultural tradition in general, but that is very peripheral to my work. (And I have many misgivings; I am certainly not 1

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a “triumphalist”). I am simply trying to be an honest scholar who happens to be an American, a professional archaeologist sticking to the facts where they can be conrmed. If that makes me a “positivist,” so be it. All my work for the past two decades on this topic at hand has been devoted to using archaeological data to illuminate a real “Israel” in history. Professor Albertz doubts my underlying methodological assumption that the archaeological data constitute our “primary sources,” as many text scholars understandably do. But I am reassured to see that this stance is supported by Lester L. Grabbe in his invaluable new vade mesum, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (2007). If by “primary” we mean “contemporary, eye-witness,” then by denition archaeological data can be “primary sources”—and by the same token most of the biblical texts are admittedly “secondary.” I will return to archaeology, hermeneutics, and history-writing below. When Professor Albertz turns from his “Prologue” to the actual reviews, I am gratied to see that his close reading is not only eminently thorough and fair, but is also in general agreement with my interpretation of both texts and artifacts. He is, however, puzzled by what he thinks is a contradiction between my generally positivist view of the archaeological data, and my admission here and there of uncertainty. But this is simply an acknowledgment of the state-of-the art, i.e., the limitations of our knowledge at present. I hope that my acknowledgment of the “ambivalence” (Albertz’s term) of archaeology is not due to any particular ideology, but is simply being realistic. Albertz quotes me at length on the “archaeological invisibility” of a Yahweh cult in the early hillcountry “Proto-Israelite” villages, concluding that I believe this indicates “that there existed no YHWH worship.” But my point was simply that we have no specic non-textual evidence. I then go on to say immediately that the “apparent (italics mine here) silence of the archaeological record may be misleading, however, because we lack any written texts” (2003, 128). In fact, I allow for the possibility of Gottwald’s assertion that Yahwism was a fundamental factor in the emergence of early Israel. But as an archaeologist, I do not know that. Professor Albertz contends that “for Dever ‘popular religion’ is dened purely negatively.” Again, I am mystied. Throughout my book I insist that in contrasting “book religion” and “folk religion” I am trying not to make value judgments—indeed, I eschew theology. If, however, I do betray any sympathies, it is with “folk religion,” since on the strength of numbers alone it represents the dominant cult beliefs and practices that I am hoping to describe as a responsible historian. 1

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Professor Albertz disagrees with my assertion that we archaeologists could now write a history of ancient Israel based largely on non-biblical evidence. But it all depends upon what kind of history we want and think possible, as I have argued elsewhere at some length (Dever 1994, 1997a, 1997b). Archaeology can (and should) produce “natural histories,” i.e., of the environment and changing adaptations such as settlement type and distribution; socio-economic histories, even if somewhat truncated; and, above all, histories of technology. Are these, however limited, not “histories”? Professor Albertz is not sanguine about the future of archaeology unless more texts are brought to light. As he puts it, “It is clear that mainly because of the lack of usable texts found so far, the results of Palestinian archaeology today are not sufcient to write any history of ancient Israel in some detail.” But this is not “clear” at all—at least to any archaeologist I know. This pessimism is simply another version of Noth’s dictum half a century ago that “archaeology is mute” (German dumm), mindlessly repeated by many Biblicists since. I am reminded of Knauf’s trenchant observation many years ago that this is a slander: “the archaeological evidence is no more silent than the Torah is to somebody who cannot read Hebrew” (Knauf 1991, 41). Since then, especially in the past twenty years, archaeologists have been learning to “read” material culture in the same ways that biblical scholars read texts—and with the same hermeneutical tools, as I have pointed out elsewhere in detail (Dever 1994, 1997a, 1997b). For archaeology to speak to you, you must learn the distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of artifacts. That we usually cannot attach a personal name to a particular object does not mean that it tells us nothing. Give me a typical Iron II pot, and I can ascertain in all likelihood when it was made, where, how, and for what purpose, and even some general characteristics of the class of the person who made it. Naming the maker (as we can often do with Greek pottery) would add very little to the pertinent information—all of it source material for writing history of a sort. It all depends upon what we mean by “history.” And here we must listen carefully if reluctantly to Garbini’s complaint that few of us in either biblical studies or archaeology are trained as professional historians (1988, 3–15). Yet archaeology is history, or it is nothing (as New World archaeology has long been said to be “anthropology or nothing”). So we need artifacts—and texts.

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Finally, there are a few comments that are based on factual errors. For instance, the inscribed shekel-weights are not “spread out over all Judah and Israel” and “must have been introduced before the Divided Monarchy.” Neither Na‘aman (whom Albertz cites) or I said that. These weights are conned to Judah except for a few isolated examples (Shechem and Tell el-Far‘ah N.); and they are not introduced until after the late eighthcentury B.C.E. destructions in the north (thus their provenance). In conclusion, I welcome Professor Albertz’s detailed critique, not only because it helps to clarify issues, but also because it is evidence that some Biblicists do reach out to us archaeologists in an attempt at a muchneeded dialogue. I regard him as an esteemed equal partner in that quest. And such exchanges as this on historiography are surely the place for us all to begin. I do think, all things being considered, that any further advances in writing well-balanced, persuasive, satisfying histories of ancient Israel will be made only by teamwork, biblical scholars and archaeologists collaborating in research and writing. Meanwhile, I know of no better prolegomenon than Lester Grabbe’s Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (2007). That was already my question in What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It…? (Dever 2001). I think that we knew more than some skeptics suppose, and the best reaction to the so-called minimalists would be to get on with the task. Bibliography Albertz, Rainer. 1994. A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. Vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy. London: SCM. Dever, William G. 1994. Archaeology, Texts, and History-Writing: Toward an Epistemology. Pages 105–17 in Uncovering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson. Edited by L. M. Hopfe. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. ———. 1995. Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up? Part I. Archaeology and Israelite Historiography. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 297:61–80. ———. 1996. Review of Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, Vol. 1. BASOR 301:83–90. ———. 1997a. Philology, Theology, and Archaeology. What Kind of History Do We Want and What is Possible? Pages 290–310 in The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present. Edited by Neil Asher Silberman and David Small. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. ———. 1997b. On Listening to the Text—and the Artifacts. Pages 1–23 in The Echoes of Many Texts: Essays in Honor of Lou H. Silberman Edited by William G. Dever and Edward Wright. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

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———. 2001. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2003. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2005. Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Garbini, Giovanni. 1988. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. London: SCM. Grabbe, Lester L. 2007. Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? London: T&T Clark International. Knauf, Ernst Axel. 1991. From History to Interpretation. Pages 26–64 in The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact and Israel’s Past. Edited by Diana V. Edelman. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic.

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“FROM MY CORNER OF THE FIELD”: A PRELIMINARY RESPONSE TO L. L. GRABBE, A HISTORY OF THE JEWS AND JUDAISM IN THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD. VOLUME 1, YEHUD: A HISTORY OF THE PERSIAN PROVINCE OF JUDAH Ehud Ben Zvi

This book represents Lester Grabbe’s synthesis of the history of Yehud. The volume is a welcome addition to the eld. It is well thought-out, well structured, and well written. It adds to our knowledge of the period, illustrates what a ‘History of Yehud’ may look like, and provides interesting discussions on a wide range of matters. Due in part to its structure, it is also a very useful volume at different levels. I am convinced that it will be widely used, and hopefully in the classroom.1 The structure of the volume is clear and reects Grabbe’s stated approach to writing history. The core of the book consists of three sections. The rst deals with sources. The second, on the basis of the previous discussion on sources, moves into a reconstruction of society and institutions in Persian Yehud. The third section provides a century by century reconstruction of the period. A methodological introduction and a brief appendix on the question of Persian inuence on Jewish religion and thought complete the volume. As a whole, the approach taken in the volume is not a surprise to anyone who has read his Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, and exemplies his approach to the role of the historian as a scholar who reads and evaluates the detailed work on the data done by specialists in different areas and then, on the basis of her/his understanding of the data, attempts to bring forward a historical synthesis. 1. For several years my (undergraduate) students found it to be a very helpful reference book—as they had found his earlier work Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian. Moreover, they were very interested in many aspects of the general reconstruction of the period advanced by Grabbe. 1

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Before dwelling on my response to the book and on how things may appear from my corner of our shared eld, a closer look at each section in the volume is not only in order but a necessary background for the comments that will follow. To begin with, it is worth stressing that the body of the book is framed around a central evaluative position concerning the period and its signicance in the larger picture. Grabbe tells his readers that “the Persian period is the single most important period for the development of Jewish thought and practice from antiquity to the present” (p. 2) and that “[i]ntellectual and religious developments [e.g. monotheism, eschatology, angelology, and demonology; EBZ] began in the Persian period that were to become dominant in later Second Temple Judaism, some of which would carry over into rabbinic and then modern Judaism… Yet it was in rst and foremost in the area of scripture that the seeds of later Judaism were sown…” (p. 360). (As a parenthetical remark may I say that I remain puzzled by the lack of reference to Christianity in the quoted and similar sentences. Did these concepts carry over only into rabbinic and then modern Judaism? Are they absent in Christianity? Would Christianity/ies have ever developed without the main theological/ideological developments in Persian Yehud anymore than rabbinic or modern Judaisms?) Grabbe considers it appropriate and pedagogically sound to preface his work with a clear statement of aims and a brief methodological discussion. The former includes, among others, an aim to (a) “[s]urvey comprehensively the sources available to us for constructing the history of Yehud”; (b) “[a]ttempt to analyze and evaluate the sources and discriminate between them as to their value, problems, uncertainties, and relative merits for providing usable historical data”; and (c) [e]stablish a rm basis on which further work can be done by other researchers in a variety of areas of scholarship, not only for historians but including those more interested in literature and theology, and other aspects of study relating to the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism” (p. 3). The latter includes both a very brief general survey on “historical method” method in general—devoted mainly to the issue of deconstructionism and historiography—and on historical methodology in biblical studies. Grabbe presents himself before the readers as one who does not “take an a priori position on any historical issue but try to evaluate each on its merits and consider the arguments advanced before deciding” (p. 13)—as, I think, most of us would do, and as a person who gives “priority to primary sources such as archaeology and epigraphic sources” (p. 16), though all potential sources must (emphasis mine) be used (see p. 15 §5), even if “subsequent study may show some sources—especially secondary 1

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sources—are too problematic to use… The point is that we make judgments a posteriori, not a priori” (p. 16). Needless to say, the main and most relevant corpus of secondary sources referred to in these sentences consists of the biblical sources (see p. 353). Grabbe is to be commended for stating his aims and methodology. Of course, by doing so, he also provides internal, explicit standards against which his work can be evaluated. The section on sources is at the core of the book, since, as explicitly stated, the claims and reconstructions advanced in the latter parts of the book are all grounded on the sources discussed here. As one would expect, archaeological and biblical sources take center place in this section. Two chapters are devoted to the former (pp. 22–69), one with the latter (pp. 70–106). The archeological sources are divided into “unwritten material” (pp. 22–53) and “written material” (pp. 54–69). The bulk of the chapter devoted to “unwritten material” consists of a series of brief summaries addressing individual sites in Judah, the coastal area (including Phoenicia), Samaria, Idumea, and Transjordan, followed by references to surveys and a brief synthesis. The inuence of the works of Lipschits and Carter concerning Judah is clear. Stern gures prominently in some other areas. Handy bibliographical pointers to main reference works (including NEAEHL, ALB II, and OEANE) turn these very brief summaries into a good starting point for further research. The chapter on “written material” provides short summaries devoted to, among others, the Wadi Daliyeh Papyri and seals, other papyri and seals from Palestine, ostraca, coins, the Eshmunazar sarcophagus inscription, and the Elephantine Papyri. Again, bibliographical references are provided. Given Grabbe’s explicit and programmatic emphasis on the primary sources, by which he means mainly archaeological and epigraphical sources, and the fact that the book is after all about Persian Yehud, not Palestine, it is a bit of a surprise that only nine pages (pp. 22–30) are devoted to the crucial discussion of the sites and surveys in Judah, including conclusions raised on the basis of these data and bibliography. Perhaps this is due to editorial constraints about the length of the volume. Needless to say other surveys are also quite brief. (On these matters see below.) The discussion of the biblical sources is also brief (pp. 70–106, including bibliographies). Moreover, about forty percent of it concerns only one book: Ezra–Nehemiah (pp. 70–85). It is worth stressing, however, that Grabbe correctly prefaces the section with an explicit statement about a crucial decision he has made regarding inclusion and exclusion of potential historical sources. He writes: 1

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The implications of his decision, as seen from my corner of the eld, will be considered below. At this stage, however, it is worth noting that, according to Grabbe, Ezra–Nehemiah, on which much of his discussion is centered or based, “cannot be earlier than the beginning of the Hellenistic period” (p. 72) and was “probably nished in the third century” (p. 359; see also the statement on p. 337). Similarly, 1 Esdras, which according to him, “in its original Semitic form was earlier than the Hebrew Ezra–Nehemiah,” “must be “post-Achaemenid” (p. 72). The volume also includes a brief chapter on Persian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian primary sources (pp. 107–17) and another (pp. 118–30) on the works of Greek (e.g. Herodotus, Thucydides, Ctesias, Xenophon) and Latin sources (e.g. Strabo), which includes a short reference to Josephus (pp. 129–30). (It is worth noticing that Grabbe follows Williamson in maintaining that Josephus relied on sources in Ant. 11.297–301 [i.e. the story of the high priest Johanan’s murder of his brother Joshua in the temple]; Grabbe refers to an “[oral?] tradition” that is unattested elsewhere and cannot be checked independently, and which—he leads the reader to assume—is essentially historically correct; see pp. 130, 319–21.) On the basis of these sources, Grabbe advances a thematically organized reconstruction of the period in “Part II” (pp. 132–261). About sixty percent of the space (74 pages) in Part II is devoted to matters of administration, social issues, and economy. Only about twenty percent of “Part II” (22 pages) is devoted to the temple, its relations with the Persian 1

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government, the sacricial cult, the cultic year, music and singing, temple personnel, temple nances, and the like. This relatively short section manages to include a brief discussion of the question of whether there were synagogues/places of public prayer in the Persian period (his answer is no; pp. 236–37). About twenty-six percent of “Part II” (34 pages) is devoted to “Law, Scripture, and Belief,” but within this section “Scriptural Interpretation” receives only one and a half pages. Readers interested in the development of “scripture” are sent to read about the topic within the discussion of Yehud in the fourth century C.E., due to the focus on the gure of Ezra, and on the basis of Ezra 7, Neh 8–10. The discussion on sectarianism is a bit more developed (pp. 256–61), but even topics so close to Grabbe’s heart such as “prophecy and apocalypticism” (pp. 250–52) are only briey summarized.2 (May I mention that Grabbe’s position concerning the often debated issue of the relation between the Persian government and the temple can be expressed in a nutshell as [a] Jews received no nancial support, but taxation; and [b] Jews were allowed to build and run their own temple, following the necessary petitions to the appropriate [local] authorities.) The other main section consists of a century by century reconstruction of the history of Yehud. The early Persian period (sixth century) deals as expected with the “return,” the edict of Cyrus, the building of the temple, Sheshbazzar, Joshua, and Zerubbabel, and the relations between returnees and those who remained. Although other matters are discussed, the central historical issue in his treatment of the fth century concerns Nehemiah and his activities (probably 445–33 B.C.E.). The study of the latter is based on his understanding of the “Nehemiah Memorial”3 (NM) and his characterization of the work as providing a “good deal of usable information” (p. 325). As he turns to a synthesis of the fourth century, the center of attention is taken by Ezra and his activities. In contrast to his position concerning the NM, Grabbe is very doubtful of the knowledge about the fourth century that we may draw from the Ezra tradition (Ezra 7–10; Neh 8). He concludes, however, that “the view that an individual named Ezra existed and had something to do with the promulgation of a new lawbook is a perfectly reasonable one” (p. 343), even as he 2. See, for instance, L. L. Grabbe and R. D. Haak, eds., Knowing the End from the Beginning: The Prophetic, the Apocalyptic, and Their Relationships (JSPSup 46; London: T&T Clark International, 2003). 3. About the extent of the Nehemiah Memorial, Grabbe writes, “For convenience, this study follows the analysis of Reinmuth (2002) and takes the NM as being found in Neh 1:1–4, 11; 2:1–20; (the list in 3:1–32 has been incorporated into the narrative by Nehemiah himself); 3:33–4:17; 5:1–19; 6:1–19; 7:1–5; 12:31–32, 37– 40; 13:4–17, 19–25, 27–31” (p. 80; cf. 294). 1

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claims that “[t]he association of Ezra with the law of Moses is only one point of view; it is not a universal one… There is certainly no need to give preference to the Ezra tradition” (p. 343). In addition, he seems to indicate to his readers that the events in the fourth century surrounding Ezra played a central role in the development of the concept of authoritative writings. (At this point, one question immediately arises: Were there not authoritative writings before? What about the references to 9CHE9 CAD or CAD 9> ECHE or the like? Are all of them—or following Grabbe, their sources—fourth century or later? Were prophetic books considered to be not authoritative? And if so, what does authoritative—as opposed to canonical, a distinction that Grabbe also fully accepts—mean?) The main body of the book ends with reections on the entire project of writing a history of Yehud and some of the “big picture” matters that emerge. This section includes, among others, Grabbe’s thoughts about the difculties facing anyone who attempts to write a history of Yehud on the one hand and his conviction that a critical history of Yehud can be written (pp. 351–52). He brings up in this context again the importance of archaeological and inscriptional data and his characterization of his central biblical sources. He writes: Of the ancient secondary sources, the prophetic writings of Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 seem to contain a good deal of information for a narrow period of time. The one contemporary source still by-and-large undisputed is the “Nehemiah memorial” (§4.1.3.3). Despite its strong bias, it does give us a statement by someone who was actually an eye witness of some of the events described. More of a problem is Isaiah 56–66, though many date large sections of it to the early Persian period (§4.3.1). The Aramaic documents in Ezra 4–7, while widely accepted, are still problematic (§4.1.3.2)4 [footnote added by EBZ]; in particular, a number 4. Grabbe summarizes the discussion on these documents as follows on p. 78: “Much of what we have seen indicates that the documents are late, post-Achaemenid and likely to be forgeries (which is what Schwiderski concludes), yet there are some passages that seem to have early features. One possibility is that genuine Persian correspondence may lie behind some of the documents. This is the interpretation that I favour. If so, the original documents were worked over by Jewish scribes. On the other hand, one must also recognize that the original meaning of a document can be changed even by only a minor change of wording. In any case, I think we have a spectrum of plausibility: [NB: highest probability at the top and lowest at the bottom] Document 4 (5:7–17): Letter of Tattenai Document 7 (7:12–26): Decree of Artaxerxes to Ezra Document 5 (6:2–5): (Aramaic) Decree of Cyrus 1

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of them are strongly redolent of Jewish theology. The criticisms apply not only to the Cyrus decree in Ezra 1, which has often been doubted, but to the Aramaic documents themselves. On the other hand, it seems unjustied at this point to conclude that the documents are complete forgeries: most or all may have been genuine decrees but now considerably reworked by the Jewish writer(s), though some (or even all) may be outright inventions. For the historian the resulting uncertainty is disappointing, but the problem must be faced. Apart from the Nehemiah memorial the most accessible account (the books of Ezra and Nehemiah as a whole) is still very problematic and must be scrutinized carefully.

There a number of observations that I would like to raise in conversation with Grabbe’s work. As is always the case, readers will have qualms with particular decisions taken by the author, or the criteria followed by her or him to make them, or the usefulness of scenarios built around or grounded upon admittedly “close call”/“informed guess” decisions, or about the wisdom to do so. It is not my intention to discuss here these types of issues, nor matters of style or choice of words (e.g. the use of seemingly anachronistic expressions such as “the Jewish state” on pp. vii, 134, 283). I am more interested in a conversation about matters that directly relate to the larger scheme of his work. I will begin with a seemingly trivial, though certainly not meaningless, observation. The discussion of many or most of the sources in this volume is brief and tends towards a short summary model. For instance, Grabbe considers the archaeological data of the utmost importance, but as mentioned above the discussion of sites in and surveys of Yehud, including Grabbe’s summary of the state of the research covers, only nine pages, including bibliographies. The entire discussion of all the biblical sources outside Ezra–Nehemiah consists only of 21 pages, including substantial bibliographies. Of course, there is always room for short surveys, and at times, as here, they may function as a useful starting point for further studies or as reference material. But the entire historical synthesis must be, and was supposed to be grounded on a careful Document 6 (6:6–12): Reply of Darius Document 2 (4:9[?]–16): Letter to Artaxerxes Document 3 (4:17–22): Reply of Artaxerxes Document 1 (1:2–4): (Hebrew) Decree of Cyrus.” Grabbe’s assertion that “some passages that seem to have early features” goes back to the mixture of earlier pronominal sufxes in nouns (-km, -hm) and to later forms (-kwn, -hwn) in Ezra 7 (for the former see Ezra 7:16, 18, 24a; for the latter Ezra 7:17, 21). He writes: “The pattern is not what one might expect of random scribal assimilations over a lengthy period of copying but rather the consequence of additions made to an earlier document” (p. 77). 1

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examination of the sources. To be sure, Grabbe does not promise an indepth analysis of sources, but his strong and correct rhetoric about the essential role that sources and the study of sources should play in historical research, as well as the message conveyed by the structure of the book, strongly suggest that nothing less than such in-depth analysis of the sources will serve his purposes. After all, Grabbe decided not to write a “typical” historical narrative, with a few footnotes sprinkled here and there explaining why the author advances such and such positions, but rejects others. To be fair, although minor shifts in the allocation of space for the discussion of sources might have been possible, the central issue is that there is not enough room in one single volume aimed at a larger public for an in-depth discussion of all the possible sources about the Persian period and a historical reconstruction of the period. But if this is so, then there is a clear incongruence between the genre and the size limitations of a single volume and the required in-depth analysis of all the potential sources whose aim is to lead to, and provide the support for, any synthesis. In other words, I am raising the question of lack of coherence between the programmatic task that Grabbe explicitly sets for himself and implicitly for other historians in the introduction to the volume (i.e. Chapter 1), and in a more general formulation, between the logic of commonly stated goals and aims in historical writing and the literary genres in which “histories of X” are often published, along with the practical limitations of the corresponding end-products, namely the usual 300–500 page volume. To be sure, I am not proposing any departure from the mentioned lofty, and widely agreed-upon, goals nor any attenuation of the strong rhetoric that accompanies them, but perhaps to achieve them we need a different kind of publication, and “end-product.” Incidentally, perhaps we may also look at models of authorship based more on collaboration among different experts in the diverse areas, each of whom may write an in-depth study of a particular type of sources, to be capped off by several contributions in which, among others, thematic and chronological syntheses are advanced.5 Grabbe claims that one should give priority to primary sources and mainly to archaeological and epigraphic ndings. Yet, it has to be noted that even when dealing with archaeology and epigraphic artifacts one does not deal with “primary facts” but with scholarly constructions of them, I—and I would assume most historians—tend to agree with him. 5. For instance, a fully interlinked multi-authored CD or website that includes indepth discussions of the pertinent sources by experts in the relevant areas, and historical syntheses developed on the basis of these in-depth discussions. 1

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But archaeology and epigraphic ndings can take us only so far in many central areas for understanding/reconstructing the world of historical Yehud. For instance, archaeology cannot construct for us an ideological/ theological discourse about exile and return. To be sure, it can tell us that there are no clear archeological footprints pointing to or attesting for such a return, and therefore, if there was one it could not have involved massive numbers of people. This is an important observation. It raises the question of why literati would develop the portrayal of the return that they actually did. It raises questions regarding historiography, ideology, and literature. The archaeological datum certainly contributes to our understanding of why concepts of exile and return, being inside or outside the land and the like, became so central in Yehud’s (elite) discourses. The full impact of the archaeological observation for historical reconstruction—history includes “intellectual history—however, is recognized only when the archeological information is integrated with a substantial corpus of information derived from texts and books that eventually became part of the Hebrew Bible (hereafter, “biblical”).6 Similarly, archaeology may show a process of slow development in Jerusalem and surrounding areas that co-existed with a slow decrease in settlement or population in the area of Benjamin through the Persian period. Again the possible importance of this observation is fully recognized once biblical texts are brought to bear. Archaeology does show us that Yehud was poor and Jerusalem small, but it cannot explain why so much literary activity took place in Jerusalem, nor by itself raise the question of not only why, but also of which kind of infrastructure was needed to maintain such activities. To be sure, the results of archaeological studies are needed not only for reconstructions of economic history, for instance, but also for any in-depth study of biblical texts as social products. But archaeology by itself can go only so far. Much of its potential contribution for the writing of histories of Yehud will be lost if its results are not integrated into a larger picture in which biblical sources play a very substantial role.

6. Archaeology by itself cannot explain why the land was constructed as absolutely empty, why the return was patterned to some extent on the Exodus imagery, or the like. (Years after writing and presenting this essay at the ESHM meeting, I tried my hand at addressing the issue of why the land was construed as absolutely empty. See my “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud,” The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and its Historical Contexts [ed. E. Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010], 155–68. These issues require approaches to the reconstruction of [intellectual] history slightly different than those foregrounded in the volume discussed here, see below.) 1

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Biblical texts are characterized by Grabbe as secondary, and certainly as a problematic source for historical studies. To be sure, they are very problematic as sources about the events they describe, but they are by themselves social products created in and for a particular society. From that perspective they are as much primary sources as are coins and seals and the like, only a much better source of information. To be sure, there is the problem of dating, but also other primary sources have similar or even worse problems. Biblical books, if understood as social products, are among the best possible sources for understanding the worldviews of those who wrote and accepted them as authoritative. Although we may never know for sure if, or to what extent, the worlds portrayed in books such as Malachi, Haggai, or Ezra–Nehemiah accurately depict “historical circumstances” or to what extent Chronicles projects back the world and cult of its own times in monarchic days or to what extent it portrays a utopia7—it may well do both—we are on far more solid basis when we ask questions such as what kind of worldview do they reect and shape, what kind of main social and ideological concerns do they attest to, as well as questions of what was so worthy in them as local centers of power that they provided the resources necessary for the writing, reading, studying, copying, editing, and the like of these Hebrew texts primarily aimed at a few bearers of high literacy. These considerations bring me to some concerns about the way in which Grabbe discussed the biblical sources in this particular volume. Although in other areas he may be relying on experts such as Briant, Lipschits, Carter, or Stern, historical approaches to the Hebrew Bible is one of his main areas of expertise. This being so, I am a bit puzzled that as a historian he considers relevant sources for his study only “those books that would be accepted by a reasonable number of Old Testament scholars as being Persian in origin or substantial composition. No attempt is made to give a complete introduction to each writing but only to discuss some of the issues that relate to using the work as a historical source” (p. 70, emphasis mine). I have no idea what precisely a “reasonable number of Old Testament scholars” is supposed to mean. In any case, “popularity” is not a critical criterion for an argument. Of course, this holds true also when he writes: Most scholars would agree that a number of writings that existed in an earlier written version were nevertheless edited or substantially added to in the Persian period. Many of the Latter Prophets would be thought to fall into this category. (p. 70) 7. See S. J. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles (LHBOTS 442; New York: T&T Clark International, 2007). 1

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Bandwagon arguments are a well-known form of fallacy and cannot take the place of the required analysis of some of the most important sources for any comprehensive synthesis of the history of Yehud.8 I assume that Grabbe followed this path for the sake of keeping the work within a certain length and manageable, but still this is a troublesome decision which bears implications for the historical synthesis that he proposes; after all, the latter is shaped to a large extent by the sources he decides to use and those he decides to reject. This said, for the sake of the argument let us assume that the reported majority/substantial number of scholars is completely on target every single time. But even if this were so, why would the social processes of editing existing books and adding substantial portions to these books during the Persian period—processes whose existence Grabbe afrms— be of no relevance for the writing of a “full” history of Yehud? Would the nature of these editions and additions tell nothing about the intellectual milieu in Yehud? Would not the book look different with and without them? What do these changes say about those who made them and their readerships? For the sake of the argument let us go farther and assume for a moment that every single one of the books Grabbe excludes from the list of all the potential sources about the Persian period was neither composed nor edited at all during the Persian period. Even if these were the case, were these books not read and re-read, and copied during the Persian period? Would the supposed fact that they were never edited during that time be by itself a very meaningful datum? Can there be any doubt that these books contributed much to the shaping of universe of discourse and worldviews of, at least, intellectual elites in ancient Yehud? Can we understand the intellectual and ideological world of these elites without reference to these books? Can we talk about the temple in Jerusalem without referring to the discourses that made it unique and give it meaning?9 These considerations are particularly relevant since Grabbe maintains that “all potential sources” must be used (p. 15). Moreover, the absence of a substantial treatment of them is more difcult to understand given that Grabbe’s aim is a wide range historical synthesis. 8. Grabbe tends to give a strong, and at times decisive voice to perceived majority opinions in several of his discussions of biblical sources. On occasions (for instance, in relation to Chronicles) such decisions have larger implications for Grabbe’s historical synthesis. See, for instance, pp. 98–99, 343. See also below. 9. These discourses are reected mainly in the books later included in the “Former and Latter Prophets,” but also in Chronicles and Psalms—the former is briey discussed; Psalms are not included among all the relevant sources. 1

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It is also worth noting that despite his wording, Grabbe does not really focus on biblical books from the Persian period per se. On the one hand, he does not dwell much on questions of structure, setting, or intention of the books as such, nor does he discuss how they reect and attest to large ideological meta-narratives in society. On the other hand, he includes among his sources the P-document and Ezra–Nehemiah even if he argues (correctly, in my opinion) that the latter is later than the Persian period. To be sure, Grabbe does not have to restrict himself to books, but may look at earlier texts he argues are embedded in later, biblical books, or at his reconstructions of sources that underlie existing books. Of course, in all these cases, as Grabbe is well aware, one has to deal with the tentative or hypothetical character of many of these claims, as exemplied in his own discussion of the Aramaic documents in Ezra 4–7.10 But he still, even if hesitantly, builds much on them. This being the case, and since working with Persian period books does not require that level of guessing, the absence of serious consideration of them as sources of historical reconstruction is probably more noticeable. Perhaps the key lays with another aspect of the process of selection of sources. Grabbe explicitly maintains that the focus is supposed to be on the contribution of the texts as a historical source. But at times, the question is what does he mean by “historical” in this context? To be sure, there are cases in which he raises questions about, and discusses the ideology/ies of the text—and particularly so when these have something to do with ideologies expressed in Ezra–Nehemiah—but matters are often not fully developed even with the set of texts he assigned to the Persian period. To illustrate, the book of Jonah—which in my opinion is the only meta-prophetic book and as such attests to at least some ways in which other prophetic books and other authoritative texts were understood at least by some literati in Yehud—is only briey mentioned on p. 95. The book of Ruth is referred to only briey on pp. 105, 182, and Prov 31:10–31 again only too briey on pp. 102, 185—even if Grabbe, following Yoder,11 maintains that the latter text reects the ideal wife of upper-class young men in Yehud, certainly a very important observation for historical studies of gender relations and constructions in ancient Yehud. None of these (and similar) texts, despite the fact that they are explicitly associated with the Persian period, play an important role of his history. Ezra and Nehemiah, however, do. Why is this so?

10. See n. 4. 11. See C. R. Yoder, Wisdom as a Woman of Substance (BZAW 304; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001). 1

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Grabbe seems at least to me, a bit more interested in a “traditional” political, social, and economic history than in “intellectual/social” history; a bit more interested in a historical writing that consists in the main of an explicit or implicit sequential narrative about a series of events or periods in the past that likely happened as portrayed, than in constructions of webs of ideological/theological worldviews and discourses, images of the past, and examinations of worlds of knowledge among ancient societies and the activities, along with the social infrastructure, that supported their development. Grabbe appears to me more interested in whether a certain claim advanced in the world of the book can be used (and how it can be used) to reconstruct a particular circumstance/event (e.g. the time of Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, or Ezra) than on what can we learn from the fact that claims and characterizations about certain gures appear in particular literary contexts and are produced (by and) for certain primary readerships. He seems to me, at least, more interested in learning what was in the mind of the historical Nehemiah from what he seems to consider his most reliable biblical source (the NM)12 than focusing on questions such as why authors and readers portrayed Nehemiah in the way they did. Grabbe’s approach and interests, or in other words, “his corner of the eld,” may lead him to focus more on minor particular linguistic differences so as to date and evaluate (putative) sources in Ezra 4–7 so the latter may be used in his historical reconstruction than on questions such as the emergence in Yehud of a new written “dialect” of Hebrew (Late Biblical Hebrew), the kind of social phenomenon that such emergence reects, and why Late Biblical Hebrew appears only in a relatively small 12. He writes, for instance: “The archaeology of Jerusalem indicates that it lay desolate or had been only a small settlement after its destruction in 587/586 BCE until the mid-5th century… There was probably no pressing reason to rebuild the walls, and to do so would require considerable resources for the small population of both Jerusalem and the province of Yehud. Considering Nehemiah’s personality that emerges in the rest of the NM, he might well have reacted as he did based on a rather extreme interpretation of a situation that the local people found acceptable” (pp. 293–94; emphasis mine); “it would be thoroughly within Nehemiah’s character to give the completion of his building work a divine dimension” (p. 302). Incidentally, instead of focusing on the personality of Nehemiah, I would prefer to follow Lipschits’s idea (personal communication) that the building of the walls was related to its becoming the seat of the Persian governor (i.e. the capital of Yehud). I would also suggest that the shift of the seat of the governor to Jerusalem and the fortication of the city had to do with the growing importance of the temple in Jerusalem along with those whose occupations were based on the temple, and the likely role of the temple in gathering at least some taxes. 1

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number of books.13 In all these cases, a certain implied concept of history seems to be at work. I would like to stress at this point that it is certainly not my intention to criticize Grabbe, but to engage critically with the type of research project and historical writing embodied in his volume. Nor I am trying to suggest that Grabbe is not interested in intellectual/social history.14 There is much in this volume that would belie such a claim, and I know him personally too well to make such a claim. To be sure, no synthesis can deal with all aspects. The matter is certainly not of whether an economic, political, or social history is more or less important than a social/intellectual one, or whatever one may call it. Nor can these “histories” fruitfully exist completely separate from one another. I would argue—and I assume Grabbe would agree with me— that ideas and worldviews are social products that are produced and “consumed” at certain times, by certain groups, under particular circumstances, even if they are not fully determined by them; and conversely that accepted ideas and worldviews inuence social, economic, and political behavior. Instead I would like to point out that the book shows that certain choices were made. I do not think that these were random choices. Rather, it seems to me that Grabbe tends towards a particular, though common, approach to what constitutes history or, at least, what stands t the “core” of history and, therefore, towards what is a “historical” concern. Thus Grabbe’s choices and criteria in relation to the treatment of biblical texts and their main uses for “historical” purposes have led him to develop his work in a way that accentuates some aspects (e.g. political history). Genre restrictions concerning the extent of the work by necessity exacerbate the underdeveloped character of those elements that were relegated This said, from “my corner of the eld” some aspects of the book still seem a bit strange, particularly given that Grabbe considers the most important contribution of the era to be in the area of intellectual and religious developments and especially scripture. If so, why do activities 13. One consideration that one has to keep in mind is the point often advanced by I. Young that scribes may change the linguistic prole of books (see, e.g., I. Young, “What is ‘Late Biblical Hebrew’?,” in A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics and Language Relating to Persian Israel [ed. E. Ben Zvi, D. V. Edelman and F. Polak; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2009], 253–68 [260]; see also I. Young, “Notes on the Language of 4QCantb,” JJS 52 [2001]: 122–31). The big Isaiah scroll demonstrates the matter beyond any doubt. Incidentally, if we had never seen a copy of Isaiah before the discovery of this scroll, what date would we have assigned to the book of Isaiah on linguistic grounds? 14. Including history of gender relations and constructions. 1

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such as writing, editing, reading, interpreting, reading to others, and copying books and the contents of these books not come strongly to the forefront? The section explicitly dealing with the entire issue of “Jewish identity,” which includes, among others, a discussion of self-identity discourses, questions such as why people in Yehud chose to identify themselves, for internal and ideological purposes, as Israel, and matters of social boundaries such as whether outsiders, and particularly women, may join the community through marriage, is given only ve pages (pp. 167–71).15 Certainly the concept of Israel and matters of boundaries played central roles in much of the biblical literature of the period,16 but this is not reected at all in the allocation of space to different themes in the book. The central ideological topos of Jerusalem/Zion, which raises a myriad of questions, is also not fully developed.17 Of course, every work or comment reects the perspective that comes with the corner of the shared eld in which the author situates her-/ himself. This holds true for Grabbe’s History of the Persian Province of Judah and for my comments here as well. Moreover, dialogues do not go far enough if the participants dwell all the time about matters on which they do agree. My intention here is to open dialogues, to develop an ongoing conversation. To be sure, Grabbe and I are not in the very same corner of the eld, and it is clear from these comments that that our paths diverge in some areas. This said, I would like to stress that our positions are not necessarily so different concerning many matters and indeed are very close in others (e.g. the demographic situation, the relations of the temple to the Persian administration). I have learned much by reading Grabbe’s history. As usual, I appreciate his work. His History of Yehud makes an important contribution. It is precisely because it is an important contribution that it deserves serious critical engagement. I welcome this opportunity to open a conversation about choices and approaches in reconstructions of the history/historical circumstances in Yehud,18 and look forward to its continuation. 15. Grabbe treated again some of these issues, although briey and in a form strongly inuenced by Ezra–Nehemiah (see pp. 356–58, “Reformers and Bigots?”). 16. Matters of identity, self-understanding, and boundaries seem to permeate, at least, much of the Pentateuchal, prophetic, and historiographic literature. 17. Non-elite activities and worldviews fare even worse: the entry for “popular religion” consists of only one and a half pages, and “magic and esoteric arts” only about two pages. 18. I would also welcome a discussion of the ways in which we may deal with the intrinsic limitations that the genre “histories of X” imposes on the work of ancient historians and the resulting incongruence between stated (and correct) methodology and space (and from the perspective of individual authors, also time) constraints. 1

DAMN, I THOUGHT HE WOULD NEVER NOTICE: A RESPONSE TO EHUD BEN ZVI’S REVIEW OF A HISTORY OF THE JEWS AND JUDAISM, VOLUME 1 Lester L. Grabbe

One of the interesting things about publishing a new book is to see how well the reviewers spot its weaknesses. You, the author, know very well where its weaknesses are. Once you have nished your doctorate, you no longer have supervisors, committees, and examiners breathing down your neck. You feel free, nally, to write what—and how—you want. But you soon nd that this freedom is a complete illusion. For one thing you soon discover that the pressures of doctoral research were like leisure time, because now the pressures of employment, teaching timetables, administrative responsibilities, students, employers, marriage, family, making a living all combine to make deadlines impossible to meet. So if you have year-long sabbatical to write your magnum opus, as I did, you soon learn that it could easily consume two years or even three or four. It is not just that you foolishly accept further invitations to read papers or attend conferences. The fact is that the intricacies of the topic need much more time to address properly than you have. You are committed to submit the manuscript by a certain date, and you are not making sufcient progress. You nd that some things you wanted to examine in detail are treated much more supercially. You plan to include certain topics and simply run out of time or space. Your research is not always as wide-ranging or as in-depth as you would like. When the manuscript nally goes off in the post—or into the ether—the enormous relief does not dispel the feeling that you have left embarrassing and alarming gaps. You know where you cut corners: will the readers and reviewers? Part of the problem, though, is space. I proposed a book of 150,000 to 200,000 words. The contract specied no more than 200,000 words. I write fairly concisely, but I had to omit some material, such as a chapter on the Samaritans that I had wanted to include. Yet I still sent in a manuscript of 220,000 words. Fortunately, the publishers made no comment. If they had required cuts, I simply do not know where I could 1

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have made them. I know the weaknesses in my book, but you will have to nd them for yourself—I do not intend to make it easy by telling you what they are. I have to begin by thanking Ehud for his kindness and generosity in his comments and for the many positive and even complimentary comments. His review conrms in me the delusion that the book is useful and makes a contribution to the eld. Perhaps I have misunderstood him; if so, it is his fault. But I do feel that my book lls a gap, because it has been a long time since a comprehensive history of the Jews in the Persian period has been written. I hope it has challenged a number of views and conventions, but I also hope it is useful by bringing together a lot of primary source material and secondary studies and highlighting some of the issues that need to be addressed. Ehud is generous in referring to some topics as an occasion for further discussion. He could have said he had some criticisms—or that I was wrong about certain things! But it is much nicer to engage in dialogue. Here is a very bald summary of some of his main points, though much more detail could have been added: x

x

x

x

Some important topics are treated only briey (e.g., magic, popular religion); only nine pages are given to archaeological sites and surveys, and only 37 to the biblical sources; “scriptural interpretation” receives only a page and a half. Accepting that we begin with primary sources, archaeology and epigraphy take us only so far and say little about intellectual history; the biblical texts may be secondary sources for events to which they refer but are primary sources for when they were written. The choice of biblical writings could affect the history, and more could have been said about the ideologies and perspectives given in the literature; the sociology of the literature, and writing, editing, reading, and producing books, could have been discussed at greater length. There is no discussion of the new written dialect of Hebrew often called “Late Biblical Hebrew” as a social phenomenon.

Rather than answer Ehud’s queries or confront his points directly, I shall take up the various points in my own way. I hope, though, to respond eventually to most of Ehud’s concerns. My rst point is one already harped on above: there was not enough space in the book to cover all the topics that should have been covered nor at the length they should have been covered. Both magic and popular religion are important topics, but I have dealt with magic and the esoteric 1

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arts at greater length elsewhere (Grabbe 1995). Ehud feels that the chapters on sources, whether archaeology or textual, are too short. I am sure that Ehud could have discussed the books of Chronicles, for example, in much greater detail. Yet how many histories of this or any other period discuss sources at any length? Show me a history book that spends 20 percent of its text in surveying the sources in their own right. Ehud has not suggested that any section in my book is too long; so how was I to make this section longer? I could have done so only by cutting elsewhere. In the end, I thought the compromise was acceptable, since most space should rightly be used with applying the sources rather than discussing them. There is another issue to be considered here, though. I did not discuss some topics at greater length because I did not feel that I (and I shall generously include most other scholars) knew enough with any certainty to say more. For example, Ehud rightly asks for a discussion about the production and place of books: their writing, editing, production, reading, function in society. I would love to give such information, but where is it? We simply do not know about how books were edited, now many books were available, how many people had access to them, how inuential they were. Perhaps they were read publicly; perhaps the contents of the available books were widely known by farmers, bakers, and sheepherders. Or perhaps they were not. Maybe the number of copies and the number of literati was extremely limited, and books had little place at the time. As Ehud says, the biblical books are sources for the time when they were written, and I accept that I could probably have engaged more with the biblical books themselves. For example, Ehud has studied the books of Chronicles much more extensively than I, and he could probably have integrated them more into a history than I have done. But there is a limit on what we can do in this direction, I think. Until we know who read books, how many were available, the process of editing, and the like there will remain large gaps in our knowledge. I could no doubt have said more, but I think a lot of it could be no more than speculation. On the language question, much could have been said about language, but it would have to take into account the whole linguistic situation. I am not sure what could be said about the development of Late Biblical Hebrew. Some see it as only a writing style; others as a change in the literary language. What place did Aramaic have among the population at this time? What was the signicance of Hebrew versus Aramaic as a language of literature? Again, I do not know how many of these questions can be answered, but I think the question is much wider than the appearance of Late Biblical Hebrew. 1

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I confess I have no response to the comments that a different selection of biblical writings would change the history, except that I am not sure it would, or at least not necessarily very much. If one gives precedence to the primary sources, the inclusion or exclusion of some biblical books might not make such a difference. But of course some would. Yet I do not know what to say other than that every historian would have to make a choice of which books to include as potential sources. I do not think my choice was arbitrary, and I think there would be a dispute only on the margins. This subject took a fair amount of space in Ehud’s review, and I confess I do not understand why. No doubt I have missed something. Yet I want to make what I feel is a vital point: one of the things I was determined to do was to write history, not theology. The fact is that most treatments of the Persian period have been treatments of biblical literature and discussions primarily of theology. The Bible is a source, sometimes an important one, but it should not determine the contours of one’s history. Intellectual history is an important part of history, as Ehud notes, but before we can talk about it we have to know what place religious books had in society. I think we are a long way from knowing. For example, I spent a good deal of space trying to establish whether the Pentateuch was completed before the end of the Persian period. I would like to have discussed how it was edited, by whom, and exactly when. But those are things I do not know—and I am not convinced anyone else does, either. What I do know (and this is something I should have emphasized more) is that the Elephantine papyri say nary a word about the Pentateuch, about Moses, or about a collection of books known as the torah. I make a case that the Pentateuch and a number of other books existed (though the exact form and shape could often be debated) and had some sort of authority (what authority, I cannot say—it is information we do not have) by the end of the Persian period, but it is difcult to go beyond that in the present state of knowledge. This is also why I gave so little space to biblical interpretation: we do not even know how much there was of a “Bible” at this time, so how much can we say about “biblical interpretation”? Future volumes will, however, have more to say. I think this question is probably one of the areas where Ehud and I differ most. For it seems to me that his “intellectual history” is mainly theology. I think discussion of history has been too dominated by theology, again because the biblical books have been the starting point for most such enterprises—however much they throw the term “history” about. This is another reason that primary sources must be given precedence. They act as some sort of control on the written material. They help to make us focus on historical events, including society, 1

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economy, the actual practice of religion, how the people lived under Persian administration, rather than on the biblical writings. They are also able to ll in some gaps in the Persian period, which is full of gaps. They show us why some biblical material simply cannot be accepted for historical reconstruction. Another point I would like to make is that I was, after all, writing about the Persian period. On some topics, we have much more knowledge in later periods. For example, Ehud wondered why I said so little on apocalyptic, but I’m not sure how much information we have about the Persian period. A better place to consider the topic is in a later volume at a time when apocalypses were much better attested (see now Grabbe 2008, 260–62, 306–11). Ehud is right that I would like to have said much more about popular religion but, again, how much do we know about the subject for the Persian period? More will be said in later volumes. As for Jewish identity, I think it is better dealt with at a later period when we have more extensive sources (cf. Grabbe 2000, 292–311). Finally, I would like to make the point that one of my aims was to challenge a number of widespread views about the Persian period. It is for this reason that I have perhaps given greater space to some topics, because I feel that a correction needs to take place. Ehud has noted a number of these, though at times this has been in passing. Here I think correction of some pervasive views among biblical scholars is more important than rehearsing a well-worn topic once again. This is only a short response to Ehud’s review. I have probably misunderstood or misremembered a number of things in his text. Clarication would be a great boon. Again, I appreciate his comments and look forward to reaction to the book from others as time goes on. Bibliography Grabbe, Lester L. 1995. Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel. Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International. ———. 2000. Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to Yavneh. London: Routledge. ———. 2008. A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Vol. 2, The Coming of the Greeks: The Early Hellenistic Period (335–175 BCE). LSTS 68; London: T&T Clark International.

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EVADING THE FACTS: NOTES ON JENS BRUUN KOFOED, TEXT AND HISTORY: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE STUDY OF THE BIBLICAL TEXT (2005) Niels Peter Lemche

In a couple of publications and reviews1 I have already discussed a recent trend in evangelical scholarship arguing that its engagement with critical scholarship in the form of “minimalism” and its demand to be respected as an interlocutor on the same level as the critical scholar has little to recommend itself. As it turned out, the attacks by evangelical scholars like Ian Provan and Victor Long on the members of the “Copenhagen School” were part of a campaign conducted against a straw man, the real opponent being historical-critical scholarship in its classical form. In recent years, several conservative studies have appeared that have addressed this question, including the major co-authored “History of Ancient Israel” offered by three evangelical scholars.2 The “textbook” by Provan, Long, and Longman is especially important in this connection, as it includes both an extensive discussion of methodology, as well as a reconstruction of the history of ancient Israel—which is more or less a paraphrase of the biblical version. In the present review I will address the new thesis offered by the Danish evangelical scholar Jens Bruun Kofoed in his Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text,3 a work which appeared 1. Cf. Niels Peter Lemche, “Conservative Scholarship—Critical Scholarship: Or How Did We Get Caught by This Bogus Discussion: On Behalf of the Dever–Davies Exchange,” The Bible and Interpretation, available online at http://www.bibleinterp. com/index.htm, 2003; see further Lemche, “Conservative Scholarship on the Move,” SJOT 19 (2005): 203–52. 2. Iain Provan, V. Philips Long and Tremper Longman, III, A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003). 3. Jens Bruun Kofoed, Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005). 1

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in the spring of 2005. In spite of being written by the staff member of an evangelic school, Kofoed’s work was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Theological Faculty of the University of Aarhus in 2002. It might—for the casual onlooker—seem like a hybrid study linking two institutions: Kofoed’s own Lutheran School of Biblical Studies in Copenhagen, and a more traditionally oriented critical institution as the statesponsored theological faculty of Denmark’s second major university. However, its acceptance by a school specializing in critical biblical studies shows that Kofoed’s contribution includes a serious analysis of critical scholarship. It is not simply another evangelical diatribe against traditional biblical criticism. In his rst chapter, “Introduction” (pp. 1–32), Kofoed presents an overview of recent trends in historical studies, especially those related to biblical studies, asking the relevant question of how things have changed from the Albright/Alt and Noth consensus of the 1960s to the present almost anti-historical trend, and from modern to postmodern ideas about history. He pays particular attention to the impact of the general historical Annales School, with its different levels of action, and he is rightly greatly concerned by recent developments that more or less make the concept of history obsolete by linking historical research to postmodern theories about reading texts, not least ancient texts, skipping every sense of objectivism. It is in this connection strange that he does not really discuss two developments within general history in the 1980s and 1990s: on one hand, sociological history writing—the Annales can only be considered one version, and actually an early one of this trend—and on the other the impact of virtual history, the “what if” kind of historiography. Especially the last-mentioned type of modern historiography may be of interest since much historical reconstruction by evangelical contributors may in the eyes of the historical-critical scholar seem very close to this type of historical “reconstruction.”4 According to Kofoed, especially the Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies made extensive use of the approach of the Annales methodology. More relevant to Kofoed’s project is the use of literary theory within this 4. It is to Kofoed’s credit that he is well aware of the problematic jump from what is possible to what is actually there. Thus he may not really sympathize with Kenneth Kitchen’s position, such as we nd in Kitchen’s recent On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), or as expressed in Kitchen’s now famous methodological maxim: “Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.” Kitchen’s reasoning—which, from a supercial perspective, looks logically sound— is, of course nonsense, since it invites a kind of “historiography” that would accept a sentence such as “That we have so far not found any green cheese on the moon does not mean that it is not there” as valid. 1

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school and especially its adoption of a “great story,” transforming history according to its own worldview, something on which Kofoed is certainly not the rst to argue. Indeed, William G. Dever has said the same for more than ten years, although generally in a much more “rustic” tone. In the event that Kofoed—and Dever—are right, the Copenhageners should denitely be reckoned as postmodern. This is, however, not so obvious to everybody. In other publications—and he returns to the subject later in a later chapter—Kofoed has argued that the minimalists are directed by ideology, and that their ideology can be exemplied by linking their general worldview to their condemnation of biblical sources as historical documents. Here it is only stated that scholars like Thomas L. Thompson, Philip R. Davies, and the present writer are directed by ideology and that their minimalism is the outcome of this preconceived ideology.5 However, this argument has always and is still misleading and has perhaps— and this would be the kind evaluation—to do with Kofoed’s relatively limited knowledge of the process involved in the deconstruction of ancient Israel’s history. If we review Kofoed’s otherwise extensive bibliography, it is obvious that he only quotes four works by Philip Davies, ranging from 1992 to 1998. When it comes to my own words, the time frame of Kofoed’s reading goes from 1991 to 2000. In the case of Thomas L. Thompson, the time span is a little broader, with Kofoed including Thompson’s dissertation on the Abraham tradition from 1974 and his monograph on the Genesis–Exodus tradition from 1987. Otherwise, the bulk of the literature by Thompson quoted by Kofoed covers the period from 1991 to 1999. However, all three scholars—by now approaching the end of their academic careers—have been active in biblical research for up to forty years and have been publishing extensively for most of this period. By limiting his inquiry to only the most recent writings of these scholars, Kofoed is evidently committing a serious methodological sin of not tracing the possible route that led the three scholars he discusses to their respective positions—a position presumed to be a special anti-biblical ideology.6 Had he not been a Dane by birth, Kofoed’s lack of 5. For some reason Keith Whitelam is often mentioned in this connection, as is also Whitelam’s former collaborator, Robert B. Cooke. I am not sure that either of them would really admit to being “minimalists” in the Shefeld–Copenhagen sense. Although innovative, they are both much closer to the standard biblical historian, although especially Whitelam has produced historical reconstructions closely resembling, for example, the ones of Thomas L. Thompson. 6. One is reminded of William G. Dever’s and Gary Rendsburg’s attack on the minimalists for being directed by all manner of evil spirits; see, for example, 1

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engagement with my earlier works, which were mostly published in Danish, might have been understandable. However, since he is Danish, with full access to my earliest writings (which go back to the 1970s), Kofoed cannot be excused for dealing only with my most recent scholarly output—my reconstruction of the historical development of modern minimalism.7 It has been a trademark of the so-called minimalists that we will remain skeptical as to the historical value of information in the Old Testament, if not supported by other, non-biblical, evidence. In this connection Kofoed includes an extensive discussion of primary and secondary sources, it apparently seeming to him that his opponents have relegated the documents of the Old Testament to the scrapheap of nonrelevant sources for the study of the history of ancient Israel. Now, few historians will deny the importance of primary sources. In fact, staying with the topic of primary and secondary sources, when it comes to the development of minimalism, or the “Copenhagen School,” anything by Lemche and Thompson should be considered a primary source, and their reconstruction of the history of research in their time the reports of eyewitnesses. Although, of course, eyewitnesses may be mistaken or present distorted “evidence” for personal reasons or as the result of bad memory, it is from a historian’s point of view a fatal sin to ignore such evidence, especially if it effectively contradicts Kofoed’s thesis that the Copenhageners have been directed by ideology, by the invention of their “great story.” Any perusal of studies published by the minimalists back in the 1970s and early 1980s demonstrates that they did not begin as ideologists but belonged squarely to the fraternity of critical scholars, and were part of a growing community of scholars who reacted more and more strongly against the established truths of the past, such as Albrecht Alt’s reconstruction of the settlement of the Israelites and Martin Noth’s hypothesis of the Israelite Amphictyony.8 Personally, I have to say that Rendsburg’s notorious online attack on the minimalists: “Down with History, Up with Reading: The Current State of Biblical Studies,” http://jewish30yrs.mcgill. ca/rendsburg/index.html. See too Dever’s What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), passim. I responded to that kind of caricature in my “Ideology and the History of Ancient Israel,” SJOT 14 (2000): 165–94. 7. Niels Peter Lemche, “Hvad er det vi har lavet, og hvor går vi hen?,” Forum for Bibelsk Eksegese 5 (1994): 130–43. 8. On this from a Danish point of view—and therefore easily accessible to Kofoed—see Niels Peter Lemche, Israel I dommertiden. En oversigt over diskussionen om Martin Noths “Das System der zwölf Stämme Israels” (Tekst og Tolkning. Monograer udgivet af Institut for Bibelsk Eksegese 4; Copenhagen; Gad, 1972). 1

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this also applies to my dissertation from 1985 on the origins of the Israelites9 and my textbook on the history of ancient Israel from 1988 (the Danish version of which was published in 1984).10 The reader is also invited to consult Thomas Thompson’s monograph on early Israel from 1992 in order to ascertain personally whether this work of historiography is really “postmodern” and in what sense.11 However, a not so kind evaluation of Kofoed’s use of ideology in his criticism of the minimalists will tell the reader that it represents a kind of misprision that severely distorts Kofoed’s review of minimalism. We may even say that it betrays Kofoed’s evangelical background as it is denitely formed according to the same pattern as used by, for example, the evangelical scholar Ian Provan in his attacks on minimalism.12 Now, I have already demonstrated elsewhere that Provan introduced a kind of bogus discussion. Provan argued that the minimalists have denitely been impressed by an anti-biblical bias or ideology that has invited them to tear the biblical texts apart into small bits, a fate which the biblical text has never earned. However, one thing can be said for sure: the minimalists have never in any serious way been engaged in the play of higher criticism so popular among more traditional historical-critical scholars of the past. Although higher criticism was part of our basic academic training, we never produced anything in the way of a Hexateuchsynopse;13 we normally and increasingly got used to reading and analyzing texts of the Bible as they have been handed down to us in biblical manuscripts and printed editions. Thomas Thompson’s study on Genesis and Exodus

9. Niels Peter Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy (VTSup 37; Leiden; Brill, 1985). 10. Niels Peter Lemche, Det gamle Israel. Det israelitiske samfund fra sammenbruddet af bronzealderkulturen til hellenistisk tid (2d ed.; Århus, Anis, 1986). English translation: Ancient Israel: A New History of Israelite Society (The Biblical Seminar 5; Shefeld, JSOT, 1988). 11. Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources (SHANE 4; Leiden: Brill, 1992). 12. Iain Provan, “Ideologies, Literary and Critical Reections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel,” JBL 114 (1995): 585–606, and Provan, “In the Stable with the Dwarves: Testimony, Interpretation, Faith, and the History of Israel,” originally published in Congress Volume: Oslo, 1998 (ed. André Lemaire and Magne Sæbø; VTSup 80; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 281–319, and republished in Windows into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument, and the Crisis of “Biblical Israel” (ed. V. Philips Long, David W. Baker and Gordon J. Wenham; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 161–97. 13. Referring to Otto Eissfeldt’s (in)famous Hexateuch-Synopse (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1922). 1

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from 1987 is an obvious early example of minimalists’ way of reading biblical texts. A review of the attack on minimalism by Provan and other evangelical scholars therefore made it clear that Provan was not attacking the Davieses, Lemches, and Thompsons of this world—he was attacking critical scholarship at large, although his attack was concealed as an attack on only a fraction of critical scholarship.14 In this connection it is easy to explain Kofoed’s use of the concept of ideology. By introducing this concept, he does not intend to say that the Copenhagen School has a different critical approach to the study of biblical texts not shared by other critical scholars; on the contrary, he indicates that critical scholarship at large is and has always been guided by “ideology.” This ideology can, however, by characterized as the ideology of the modern age—one, of course, constantly changing over a period of more than two hundred years. Perhaps Kofoed, as well as those scholars before him, including Provan, are mostly thinking about Hegelianism—and we know from James Barr that in the mouth of the evangelicals Hegelianism is a bad word!15 In the eyes of Kofoed, Provan, and other evangelical scholars, it is an obvious conclusion to link ideology to methodology, or rather to identify these two concepts. And by throwing in the accusation that the minimalists are being postmodern, it is a natural consequence to assume that they will use their personal so-called postmodern ideology to formulate their ideas of ancient Israel and of the Bible as a source—or, rather, a non-source—for the history of ancient Israel. And being postmodern, they will gladly accept the subjective character of their explanations, a subjectivism that sometimes approaches arbitrariness. We will come back to this below, because the evangelical scholars use this argument in two ways, seemingly in conict: while they on one side maintain that the reconstructions of critical scholarship are arbitrary and subjective, they on the other side use the same argument to present their own reconstruction of biblical history as (only) one among a serious a different historical models, and in a postmodern world there is no reason to prefer one model from any other, leaving a space within—in this case—historical research for the evangelical scholars. In his second chapter, “The Lateness of the Text” (pp. 33–112), Kofoed addresses the problem of using the biblical historical accounts as historical sources. He is especially concerned with the importance of oral tradition, and here this writer’s verdict, that oral tradition is difcult to

14. Cf. Lemche, “Conservative Scholarship on the Move.” 15. James Barr, Fundamentalism (London: SCM, 1977), 148. 1

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use because it cannot be controlled 16 and always changing according to situation, functions like a red thread running to the very end of the chapter. Kofoed opens with a discussion of the kind of sources used in historical reconstruction. Basically—and there should be a basic agreement between historians—there are two groupings of sources: on one hand primary sources vs. secondary sources, and on the other rst-hand sources vs. second-hand sources. Kofoed’s discussion is not totally clear, and he may be too cautious in places. He, however, correctly denes a primary source as not necessarily being identied with the testimony of an eyewitness; a primary source is simply the rst mentioning of an event or person supposed to belong to history. A primary source will include new knowledge; secondary sources will be dependent on primary sources, although they may produce different interpretations. Yet the information found in a secondary source is—as far as their evidence is already known from the primary source—only secondary. Let me quote a well-known example from history: Pope Urban II’s famous speech to the assembly at Clermont in 1095, a speech that instigated the First Crusade. The exact wording of this speech to the assembly of Western leaders is not known, since the minutes of the meeting are no longer in existence. However, a primary source does exist, namely, a résumé by Fulcher of Chartres, who evidently was present at the convention. Another version is also in existence, though here scholars debate the probability that its author, Robert the Monk, who wrote his report some twenty-ve years later, may not have been present at Clermont. The author of the third source, the Gesta francorum et aliorum Hierosolymytanorum, is anonymous, but the Gesta was written only a few years after Clermont. This Gesta formed the basis of later reconstructions of the speech. Thus the characterization of a certain document as a primary or secondary source is not dependent on the date of the narrative in question. A document postdating a certain event by, say, ve hundred years, may still be a primary source if its content is original, simply because the information in this document has not appeared in an older source. Accordingly Kofoed mentions the importance of Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandri for modern historical reconstructions of Alexander’s campaigns, even though Arrian wrote his history of Alexander in the second century C.E. The reason that Arrian’s work is considered primary is simply that no older source includes the kind of information found in his writings. 16. As already in my Early Israel, 380, although this discussion is seemingly unknown to Kofoed. 1

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One reservation is necessary when we are trying to assess the importance and relevance of a primary source, and that has to do with the second group: rst-hand witnesses vs. second-hand witnesses. It is obvious that, for example, Arrian’s report on Alexander’s campaigns, although a primary source, can never be reckoned a testimony from a rst-hand witness. Arrian never met Alexander. In court, however, the testimony of a rst-hand witness is reckoned to be decisive, although it will still have to be tested, especially if doubts can be raised about the integrity of this rst-hand witness. The testimony of a second-hand witness is considered to be less important, simply because this witness is not an eyewitness but was told by somebody else, who may or may not be a rst-hand eyewitness. To mention an example—this time from the eld of classical Old Testament scholarship—it was usual when the idea of the Thronfolgegeschichte Davids was rst proposed17 to attribute the authorship to some contemporary of David and Solomon, usually Abiathar, thus making this narrative the report of an eyewitness and accordingly a most important source for the reconstruction of the royal history of the mid-tenth century B.C.E. As in the case of Arrian and his Alexander history already described above as a primary source, it is clear that he was not also an eyewitness; he can only be ranked as a second-hand witness, because his information about Alexander was either borrowed from older sources, sources no longer in existence, or he may simply have invented parts of his history. So, to clarify the situation: primary sources are primary whether early or late, because they provide new knowledge. Secondary sources are dependent on primary sources and do not have this quality of providing new information. A primary source can go back to an eyewitness as was the case of Fulcers résumé of Pope Urban II’s speech, but it may not be so. A primary source can be contemporary but it may also be later, even much later than the events which it refers to. An eyewitness report is always contemporary with the event, a second-hand source may be or it may not be contemporary. Accordingly, the most valuable source is one that represents new evidence, that is, functions as a primary source, and includes the report of an eyewitness. Now the time factor becomes decisive. All types of documents so far discussed are written documents. But there are other types of documentation in existence, especially documentation in the form of artifacts from archaeological excavations. Now, never forgetting that the results 17. See Leonhard Rost, in his famous Die Überlieferung von der Thronnachfolge Davids (1926), reprinted in his Das kleine geschichtliche Crodo und andere Studien zum Alten Testament (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1965), 119–253. 1

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of archaeology are always transmitted as language, written or oral, and that archaeological results are no better than the archaeologist who dug at the site in the rst place, it is still the case that evidence from, say, the tenth century B.C.E. must be understood as a kind of eyewitness report on events of the tenth century. In its own way the artifact is also a primary source, and in this connection of greater importance than, say, a secondary source, or a second-hand testimony. The important part is, though, the relationship between a rst-hand testimony in the form of archaeological artifacts and a primary documentary source that is later, maybe much later than the events to which it refers. What is most important, contemporariness or the fact that our primary document is a written source? In the event that the archaeological evidence, which is here considered to be an eyewitness report, although conveyed into writing only in modern times, contradicts the evidence of a later primary source, will we have to dismiss the evidence of this rst-hand testimony? This is hardly the case, because the primary source can technically still be a second-hand testimony. If archaeological excavations, for instance, one day contradict the essential parts of Arrian’s Alexander report, then we will by necessity have to dismiss these parts as primary evidence. Arrian’s work may still from a literary point of view be a primary source, but it would certainly have failed as a testimony from an eyewitness. Xenophon’s report on the Anabasis of the 5,000 Greek mercenaries in Persian service and Caesar’s Commentaries constitute a different case. These sources are both primary sources and rst-hand testimony as their authors were themselves part of the events described in their works. Here the burden of proof will denitely lie on the archaeological evidence that may seemingly contradict parts of these reports—should it ever happen. If we on the other hand are discussing the sources for David’s empire, the situation is closer to the one of Arrian and his history of Alexander. Few critical scholars would nowadays entertain the idea that we have in the books of Samuel and Kings eyewitness reports about the reigns of Saul, David, or Solomon. Somehow the documents, the primary documents of the Old Testament, are second-hand testimony from a period following the rule of these three Israelite kings. However, the biblical narrative is still a primary source, if only because it is the only one. It is not a contemporary source, and at this point it has to be seen in light of whatever contemporary evidence exists. Logically, the biblical primary source can never substitute other extant contemporary evidence, for the simple reason that this evidence, even in its modern translations, is contemporary. In the case that archaeological remains do contradict biblical documents, the biblical documents have to step aside and make way for the contemporary evidence. 1

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Whatever Kofoed has to say about sources, primary and secondary, he cannot get beyond this point and still claim to work according to the accepted standards of professional historians. Although the discussion in Kofoed’s second chapter on sources—expanded in certain respects here—is generally sober, it is, however, soon distorted by the following rhetorical question that introduces an aspect totally foreign to the discussion: Is a text guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven guilty? First of all, Kofoed’s language is in this place denitely loaded with ideological presuppositions as he introduces two categories foreign to a scholarly historical discourse, innocent and guilty—we may ask: Innocent or guilty of what?! It is, of course, possible that Kofoed’s language betrays his evangelical background: if the text is guilty, it must be of not procuring historical facts; accusing a text of being guilty means in this language that it is accused of lying to its readership. Such texts of course exist. We normally dene their genre as propaganda—especially political propaganda. In connection with the Hebrew Bible, to argue a text’s innocence is only possible if we assume that the text’s historical information is really “historical.” However, the assumption that such texts are historical builds on a circular argument, a practice very popular among biblical scholars of the conservative school. Indeed, conservative scholars assume in advance that their text is a historical one; it never dawns on them that it may not be historical at all. After having established—although it is hardly a valid argument at all—that the text is historical, its worth—guilty or not guilty—is judged according to the degree of precise historical information found in this text. There is only one way to get any further here and that is to conduct a Popperanian falsication process for the assumed historical content of such a text, and in the case of biblical “historical” texts this procedure is actually often possible, although nothing of the kind is found in Kofoed’s work. He is therefore blind to the possibility that the Old Testament, because it includes texts from a special religious community, that is, Judaism, may in fact be reckoned as religious propaganda. Such a realization, of course, makes possible the assumption that the texts of the Old Testament are propaganda, and therefore “lying.” On the other hand, no Christian should be afraid of admitting that the Bible includes propaganda: How should we otherwise characterize the gospels, UP FVBHHFMJPO, “the good message”? That Kofoed has until this point not included one single example of a biblical text that has been mishandled in the said manner by critical scholarship, that is, found guilty at court, is a serious drawback. However, 1

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when it comes to his long discussion in this chapter of oral tradition, the results are somewhat catastrophic. His discussion is a direct reversal of my own characterization of oral tradition by this author: …We also know that oral tradition is infested with one, although very serious problem: it cannot be controlled…18

It is most unfortunate that Kofoed is not familiar with the origin of this discussion, namely, in my Early Israel.19 Here two warnings are raised against an easy reliance on oral tradition. The rst objection has to do with the medium of communication, on one hand the oral formulated narrative, and on the other the written record likely to be based on such an oral narrative—a point duly considered by Kofoed. The second warning has to do with the controllability of oral tradition, or as I formulated it at that time, the necessity of acknowledging that we have no means of controlling it.20 Most of Kofoed’s discussion has to do with this second point and he presents a number of qualications that should allow us, as modern readers, to use late documents such as those in the Old Testament as sources for the reconstruction of the history of Israel, say in the period of the Hebrew kingdoms. Now, as long as we have no evidence apart from the testimony of the biblical narrative, we cannot decide with any degree of certainty whether a certain biblical passage reects historical events or should rather be seen as historical ction. One scholar may assume that the content is historical in the narrow sense of the word, while his colleague may at the same time think that everything told by this narrative is invention. While the rst one will probably use his interpretation to create a kind of virtual history, based on assumptions of informative value, a kind of “what if” historiography that cannot really be controlled because it is founded on an originally orally transmitted document, the second will probably refrain from using this document at all as a historical source. If we compare the two different kinds of historiography provided by these contrasting scholars, it may be the case—as maintained by Kofoed—that the rst scholar will produce a reconstruction of ancient Israel that laypersons will love to read, a kind of historiography belonging to the presently extremely popular genre of historical novels. Most people enjoy this form of historical reports and they read them in the same 18. N. P. Lemche, “The Origin of the Israelite State: A Copenhagen Perspective on the Emergence of Critical Historical Studies of Ancient Israel in Recent Times,” SJOT 12 (1998): 45–46. The quote in Kofoed is more extensive; see his p. 59. 19. See my Early Israel, 379–84. 20. Ibid., 380. 1

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manner as they devour modern novels about King David, such as Stephan Heyim’s The David Story, or Joseph Heller’s God Knows. It is, however, a problem if a scholar produces something that is closer to ction than to historiography in the traditional sense of the word and at the same time asks the reader to believe that his/her story is history.21 It is characteristic for such ctitious products that they focus on persons and ignore historical processes such as climatic changes or economical developments. It is the fate of individuals that attracts the reader, but the story must be presented in such a way that it is of interest to a reader living at the start of the twenty-rst century. The characters of the novel may belong to the past, but they are placed in a modern setting which is disguised as the past. They must think, act, and reason like modern human beings. If they were placed in their proper intellectual context it would make them incomprehensible for modern readers not sharing their value systems, their philosophy, their beliefs, fears and hopes—not to say the many hidden codes embedded in ancient literature.22 The ironic fact is that in order to make this world of foreign and unusual meanings understandable to a modern audience a modern staging is needed, as exemplied in the modernistic staging of, for example, Shakespeare’s plays and Wagner’s operas. The rationale behind this “modernization” of ancient plays and operas is the inability of people of the present age on the one hand to abstract from the past a history and on the other to understand its many changing value systems. The spectator needs a translation of the past into modern forms in order to be able to understand— decode—the content of the novel, play or opera.23 He is distracted by its ancient forms and manners. Nobody has better understood the inability of the modern mind to understand the past on its own terms (if only these could be established) than the evangelical scholar. And he has made proper—or improper— use of this state of affairs. Over a period of more than three decades the evangelical scholar has been witnessing the ongoing deconstruction of 21. This is my main objection to Baruch Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), because of its totally irresponsible way of blending fact and ction. 22. Cf. Hans Jørgen Lundager Jensen, Den fortærende ild: Strukturelle analyser af narrative og rituelle tekster i Det Gamle Testamente (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2000). Sadly, this major work has never been translated, though at least the Danish edition includes a summary in English (pp. 643–53). 23. It is clear that this was especially important in the case of Richard Wagner and the abuse of his work by the Third Reich. By applying demythologization and showing his operas in a, so-to-speak, “come-as-you-are” staging, his works are seemingly able to survive on their own terms. 1

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the historical novel of biblical Israel found in the Old Testament. In the eyes of the critical scholar this process has been conducted not because of presupposed anti-biblical ideologies, but as the consequence of a never-ending falsication process. Furthermore, deconstruction does not necessarily mean destruction—a common misprision. Deconstruction—a concept coined by the late Jacques Derrida—means exactly what it says, and can be seen as a postmodern attack not least on structuralism by deconstructing its basic presuppositions.24 When we use deconstruction as a way to describe a generation’s critical analysis of the biblical historical narrative, it has only a limited relationship to, for example, Derrida’s deconstructionism. As has been noted, the “deconstruction” in biblical studies has removed the necessary relationship between biblical texts and their assumed historical background. This process is, however, not postmodern in the technical sense of the word. On the contrary, it is absolutely modern. However, as already mentioned, the conservative scholar equates methodology with ideology, at least when he talks about his critical colleagues. Perpetuating this misprision, Kofoed’s aforementioned lack of knowledge of the process of historical falsication in biblical studies over the last forty years makes him blind to the ongoing falsication process—although critical scholars cannot and never will stop this process, which is a necessary part of scholarly rationale.25 In Kofoed’s and his colleagues’ eyes, the critical scholars have simply turned historical narrative into ction and have presented nothing to substitute the loss of history. By denying the very existence of a process of falsication among critical scholars, the evangelical scholars have repeatedly accused critical colleagues of being ideologist who because of their ideological presuppositions deny the biblical text its right to speak for itself, that is, to produce historical information from Israel’s past. When it is a presumed that there is no history in the texts of the Bible, there is no reason to look for a history that is not there. On the other hand, it must be argued that although the evangelical scholar has cleverly ignored the historical consequences of the deconstruction process, he has at the same time embraced its literary consequences. Nobody has been so eager to pursue literary studies and has accepted modern literary analysis as 24. For an excellent review of the possible impact of Derrida on Old Testament studies, see Helge S. Kvanvig, Historisk Bibel og bibels historie: Det gamle testamentes teologi som historie of fortelling (Kristiansand: Høyskoleforlaget, 1999), 36–38. (Kvanvig’s is another important Scandinavian work never translated.) 25. It may be a coincidence—although I hardly believe it—that Karl Popper is never mentioned in Kofoed’s otherwise well-documented discussion. 1

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relevant as the evangelical scholar, who, however, appreciates such methodology because it shows the artful way biblical authors have produced their accounts of the past. Knowing his audience, the evangelical scholar has mixed literary analyses with his own evangelical presuppositions and has rephrased the biblical narrative as if it was a modern text, thereby at the same time turning it into a kind of historical novel and historiography, because he follows his audience, an audience that on one hand cannot see the difference between a historical novel and a historical report from the remote past, while it on the other demands conclusions that guarantee the historical content of this narrative. The evangelical scholar cannot escape the background demand that he has to show that the Bible is God’s word, inspired by God and accordingly infallible. Yet, placed in a modern age, this infallibility has to be shown not in ancient but in modern terms. The second subject of Kofoed’s second chapter—the reliability of oral tradition—moves to the conclusion that oral tradition might in fact contain useful historical information. In spite of being described at advocating something else, the present writer has few problems with such a statement. There can be no doubt that such information can be present also in a source that dates to a period much later than the event referred to in the tradition. Neither do I have any problem with a statement that says that everything should be done to carve out such information—if possible. I will, however, remain loyal to my earlier statements. If there is no tertium comparationis we have no way to decide whether or not a statement in a biblical text has any relevance to historical reconstruction. In a free world all scholars are allowed to make claims such as that King David is denitely a historical person and to consider parts of the David tradition in the Old Testament to be historical. However, such a claim only has scholarly value if it can be falsied. Otherwise it is no more and no less than virtual history. It is akin to saying: we assume that David belongs to real history, and on this basis we reconstruct his history by extensively paraphrasing the information about David especially in the books of Samuel. If the opening thesis about the historicity of David can be the subject of a falsication process, the argument is a valid one. If this is not the case, the production of a “history of David” has nothing to do with scholarship—it belongs to the genre of historical novels. Now, in the case of David such a falsication process is indeed possible and has been executed many times. We may say that the falsication process has led to two different, though interrelated, results. While it may be impossible to establish nally whether a king of this name lived in the tenth century B.C.E., it should still be possible to establish a 1

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general description of David’s time, of social, political and economic conditions in Palestine. The staging of this historical David is indeed possible and many scholars have contributed. However, this staging of David’s history—and today most scholars believing in the historicity of David will probably agree—does not allow for the existence of the great king of the Old Testament. Accordingly, the “positive” approach to the historicity question will assign David a more modest role, as, perhaps, a chieftain ruling the southern highland of Palestine at the beginning of the rst millennium B.C.E. The tertium comperationis consists in this case of the archaeological material from Palestine in the tenth century, evidence from other parts of the ancient Near East at this time in the form of documents and inscriptions—as a matter of fact very little has survived—and, when it comes to the establishment of the name of this local chieftain, the mentioning of “the House of David” in the Tel Dan inscription, an inscription probably dating to the ninth century, although some scholars reckon it to belong to the eighth century, with some noting that this inscription does not refer to a person but perhaps to a principality of some kind ruled by a princely family called “the House of David.”26 Therefore, evaluating the possible historical remembrance in the David tradition of the Old Testament, one believed to rely on originally orally transmitted information, we have to conclude that there may be a very limited core tradition, but also this has been garbled by tradition. Thus we have no evidence outside of the Old Testament of a person of this name in Palestine in the tenth century. Maybe we only know of a princely family or a principality carrying this name. Here many scholars will prefer to think that this family goes back to a person bearing the name of David, although it is just as possible that the biblical gure of David was deducted from the presence of a royal family in the later kingdom of Judah called “the House of David.”27 The conclusion is that we cannot deny the possibility of originally orally transmitted information in the Old Testament from, say, the tenth 26. On the Tel Dan inscription, see the comprehensive discussion in George Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation (JSOTSup 360; CIS 12; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2003), and Hallvard Hagelia, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Critical Investigation of Recent Research on Its Palaeography and Philology (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 22; Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2006), and Hagelia, The Dan Debate: The Tel Dan Inscription in Recent Research (Shefeld: Shefeld Phoenix, 2009). 27. I deal further with this further in my “Jerusalem and King Solomon: How Writers Create a Past,” in Recenti tendenze nella ricostruzione della storia antica d’Israele (Contributi del Centro Linceo Interdisciplinare “Beniamino Segre” 110; Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2005), 73–86. 1

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century. Since we do not know if it really existed, it is only an assumption. But even if this assumption may be close to the truth, it does not say that we are in control of this tradition. If there really lived a David in the tenth century, tradition has changed this possibly historical character into something quite different. Contrary to the opinion that we have access to valuable historical information from the time of David, we only have evidence of the degree of transformation made possible by an extensively orally transmitted tradition from the past. There is, in spite of Kofoed’s opposition, nothing that speaks in favor of his thesis of a reliable oral tradition. On the contrary, all evidence we possess tells a totally different story: oral tradition remains beyond control whatever objection Kofoed may propose. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 include discussions about the linguistic dating of biblical texts (pp. 113–63), the comparative material (pp. 164–89), and Genre (pp. 190–247), that is, the genre of history writing. I will not spend much time on the chapter on linguistic differentiation. It is not the author’s main interest, although he shows a marked restraint when it comes to claims based on the supposed differences between Early Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew. And, while he nds evidence in language of the books of Kings vis-à-vis the language of denitely late books such as Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, he also admits that the lack of Hebrew texts from the sixth to third centuries B.C.E. makes it impossible to nd an anchor for any dating of the transition from Early Biblical Hebrew to Late Biblical Hebrew. He prefers a date of Kings in the early part of this period, that is, in the sixth century B.C.E., maybe because he mixed up the two criteria of a terminus a quo and a terminus ad quem. Language is not in its own sufcient to date Kings. Kofoed is ghting with the same sort of problem when it comes to Aramaisms in late biblical books. These should be evidence of the inuence of imperial Aramaic in the Persian Period—a common and maybe reasonable assumption. He, however, again points to the lack of evidence that would help in dating the intrusion of Aramaic into biblical Hebrew. He should perhaps in this connection also have speculated about the status of the kind of books in which Aramaisms turn up and especially their status within the Hebrew Bible. Thus the nal redaction of Ezra– Nehemiah may be extremely late in comparison to many other books of the Old Testament, and the corpus may not have obtained its present canonical form (at least as far as the Jewish and Western Christian traditions are concerned) at the time of Ezra–Nehemiah’s composition. Furthermore, it is no way certain that these books belong to the formative period of classical Hebrew literature, whenever that was. The very 1

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limited presence of these books among the Qumran literature may indicate not only that they were composed at a late date, but also that their status among the future biblical books was far from settled as late as the rst century B.C.E. However, Kofoed’s general restraint in this chapter must be praised, although his reliance on Sandra Gogel’s grammar of the Hebrew inscriptions should be now be tempered given that quite a few of her anchor texts have been shown to be fakes, or at least subject to questions of authenticity (e.g. the ivory pomegranate from Jerusalem, the royal steward inscription from Silwan, and the Mousaïeff Ostraca).28 Less convincing is his discussion in Chapter 4 of comparison and the comparative method—for a long time a preferred pastime among conservative scholars. Kofoed devotes only twenty-ve pages to this traditional conservative subject—maybe an indication that he does not really put too much stress on it. He uses his ancient Near Eastern parallels as an argument for a considerable amount of historical information in Kings, not least when it comes to names and order of Israelite and Assyrian kings. The amount of correct information counters any claim that there was no such knowledge of the history of, for example, the Assyrian Empire among the authors who wrote the biblical book of Kings. This is undoubtedly a correct observation, although some qualications are necessary. First of all, we must ask what kind of information is typically supplied. The answer is: names and dates of kings—and here it is correct that in Judah for at least the second half of the eighth century the authors of Kings got it right. They placed Judaean kings in the right sequence and generally at the right time. However, before ca. 800 B.C.E. no comparable information about Judah is in existence—not a single foreign source mentions this state or its kings before that date. However, a study of the royal chronology of the kings of Judah as presented in the two books of Kings shows that neither was such information—this time from Palestine—at the disposal of the authors of Kings, who created their own chronology by using numbers with a special meaning, most notably seven and forty.29 However, for the latter part of the history of this Palestinian petty state enough information exists to make possible the creation of some kind of coherent list of rulers and likely calculations of 28. It seems that the outcome of these accusations will be decided by the Israeli court. At the time of writing the only thing published ofcially is the document of indictment, involving not only antiquity dealers but also at least one well-known epigrapher. 29. Cf. my “Prægnant tid i Det Gamle Testamente,” in “Tiden” i bibelsk belysning (ed. Geert Hallbäck and Niels Peter Lemche; Forum for Bibelsk Eksegese 11; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2001), 29–47. 1

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their periods in ofce. Some have proposed that the authors of Kings had access to archival material, and that they relied on the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah found here and there in Kings. However, these references are slippery, sometimes referring to a period from which there was hardly a historical remembrance of any importance. Unfortunately, Kofoed is not aware of the information void we have when dealing with the ancient state of Judah. Had he been, it is doubtful that he would not have been so eager to introduce Kenneth Kitchen’s speculations about the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Jerusalem, supposedly in the days of Solomon.30 Kofoed also introduces a study of the state of South Arabian trade in the tenth century and onwards by Mario Liverani in support for the historicity of the tradition, although Liverani in his book on Israelite history states that the historicity of this tradition is highly questionable.31 Kofoed has evidently—and that will presumably also be Liverani’s opinion—again confused the terminus a quo with the terminus ad quem, and has lived up to the demands of truly conservative scholarship, which always goes for the oldest possible date.32 Kofoed introduces as his second example the famous speech by Rabshakeh, the Assyrian ofcer, in front of Jerusalem. Here Kofoed, against scholars who rightly doubt the historicity of this speech (or at least speculate about the original content of such a speech)—because it is highly unlikely that a high Assyrian ofcial should know Hebrew, “the language of Judah”—quotes more or less fanciful explanations by scholars who speculate about the identity of this character. A careful rephrasing of Kofoed’s thesis about Kings as a valuable source of information might argue that it would perhaps be possible to nd at least a historical framework for the period following 800. But again we have to question whether, even were this is the case, we have enough information on which to claim rm knowledge of the seventh

30. For some reason Kofoed seems most interested in the Ethiopian version of the story of the visit and speculates about the transmission of this story from Palestine to Ethiopia, where it is preserved in a late rst-millennium source (pp. 177–78 with n. 35). Here it is strange that he totally ignores the expanded tradition of the Queen of Sheba appearing in the Quran, Surah 27. 31. M. Liverani, Oltra la Bibbia (Rome: Editori Laterza, 2003), 113: “storicamente poco plausibili.” 32. Cf. Barr, Fundamentalism, 85–89 (“Maximal conservatism”). As Barr says, the scholar who places a certain psalm in the Maccabean age “would be shocking in his extremism” whereas the one who places this psalm in the period of the exile “would still be very bad, but would be better,” while dating it to the time of Isaiah, or shortly after the dissolution of the United Monarchy “would still be better.” 1

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century B.C.E. A few stray notes about Manasseh have been handed down to posterity, as has a long novelistic report on Josiah’s reform. And yet, in spite of the widespread acceptance 2 Kings’ version of Josiah’s restoration politics by the majority of previous scholarship, the matter of its historicity has not been denitively settled. Robert Carroll’s questioning of why there is not even a hint of the Reform of Josiah in Jeremiah, despite the fact that Jeremiah is supposed to have been an eyewitness of the reform, is still a valid one, although one generally passed over in silence.33 Evidently, while the authors of Kings constructed the story of this reform, which is supposed to have taken place in 623 B.C.E., their construction was not accepted by the redactors who edited the book of Jeremiah—although these redactors belonged to the same theological school as the authors of Kings—and was certainly almost entirely rejected or at least severely censored by the authors of Chronicles. When it comes to the biblical storytellers’ ability to invent whole stories on a perhaps very meager foundation, I would refer to the discussion which I published a few years ago about historical remembrance especially in Kings. The tradition about Sennacherib’s attack on Jerusalem in 2 Kings was the particular focus of this study since it is here possible to demonstrate how the biblical storytellers expanded a short note about Sennacherib’s campaign into a comprehensive and legendary tale. We must assume also for the latter part of the history of Judah as told by 2 Kings the inclusion of a fair amount of authorial construction; when it comes to the earlier part, the amount of invented material increases and it is highly doubtful that we have any historical recollections covering the fate of Judah between 1000 and 800 B.C.E. The situation as far as the kingdom of Israel or Bet Omri may be different in details, but will probably be very much the same. This leads us to the nal chapter, on genre—or, to be more precise, history writing in the ancient world. Special attention is given here to the discussion between Baruch Halpern and John Van Seters, and Kofoed reaches the interesting conclusion that although these two scholars have been at odds for years, it is generally better to consider them two sides of the same coin. Because Kofoed’s thesis is that we should pay more attention to the authors of biblical books and especially to the authors of Kings, Kofoed is led to defend these authors as serious historians, ones

33. Or better: there is practically nothing in the book of Jeremiah that can be dated to the reign of Josiah, although in the introduction to the book (Jer 1:2), he began his mission in Josiah’s thirteenth year. Cf. Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (Old Testament Library; London: SCM, 1986), 90. 1

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who, making use of the techniques at their disposal, wrote a history of the past as they believed this history to have happened. The argument says that because they wrote history to the best of their abilities, we modern historians owe them respect as ancient historians—and with that, we also owe them the benet of doubt. This argument, in my view, is not worth its salt and will only lead to scholars taking up their old apologetic stances, thereby prolonging the same old arguments within biblical studies. Of course Kofoed is—as already stated—not really acquainted with the origins of the Copenhagen School. Had he been familiar with the early output of the scholars involved in this trend, he would have known that we ourselves already gave the biblical stories the benet of doubt. We started out accepting the stories of the Old Testament as the foundation of our historical investigations, but time and again we had to accept that we were disappointed in our expectations. Ultimately, the conclusion was reached that our hope that we would nd historical information within the biblical narratives had been nullied. As far as premonarchic Israel is concerned, no such information was found to be embedded in the narratives of the Pentateuch, or in the books of Joshua and Judges. In earlier studies I have referred to the eld of biblical studies as being somewhat like the trench warfare witnessed in World War I: scholars energetically and steadfastly defend a position until they are shot to pieces and overrun; often they move a few steps backwards and continue the ght. The process will repeat itself almost indenitely. In my view, a distinct disadvantage of this system of defence is that it always limits students of the biblical history, since apologists are never able to take the initiative. By “take the initiative” I mean in the sense of pushing forward, remoulding the tactics. Instead of assuming that the biblical narrative is a valuable historical source of what happened in the remote past, it is far more rewarding to accept that this is not the primary purpose of the text, choosing instead to concentrate on what we are in possession of, namely, the biblical narrative, in order to study authorial intent. Should anything historical turn up, so much the better, but this is not to be assumed in advance. Of course, as already indicated, this insight was gained on the basis of the biblical story of Israel’s fate from the very beginnings in the age of the Patriarchs right down to the period of the judges of Israel. When scholars began to raise serious questions about the historicity of Israel’s three early kings—Saul, David and Solomon—it was no surprise and did not create any serious problems: this was exactly what we might have expected. 1

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And yet, in his work Kofoed asks us to take up the old antiquated position of defending the historicity of biblical texts until they are proven not to include historical information. In this connection his choice of the books of Kings as his subject is a clever one, since there are indeed here and there scattered fragments of knowledge about the past conrmed by non-biblical evidence. It would, however, be interesting to see how he would deal with, for instance, the book of Judges, a composition for which no such external “conrmation” exists. My guess is that it will be difcult to argue that we owe these narratives the benet of doubt. Although ancient standards of history writing were, admittedly, vastly different from modern ones, this does mean to say that we should consider ancient storytelling to be historiography in any serious sense of the word. The arguments sometimes pop up that we must not judge ancient people, their literature, and institutions according to modern standards. In some degree this may be true, although the argument is at the same time meaningless. If an ancient state does not live up to the standards of a modern state, it simply falls short of these standards and needs accordingly to be evaluated at the level it attained. We cannot at one and the same time say that an ancient state was something different as far as organization was concerned but shared the ideologies and intellectual functions of modern states—not forgetting how different modern states are. The same applies to the case of ancient historiographers. Saying that they were truly historiographers does not mean that we at the same time have to accept them as historians—they were not, and it makes no difference whether or not modern authors such as Baruch Halpern, or, in this case, Kofoed, prefer to call them historians. They did not share the critical meticulousness of modern historians. Source criticism was almost unknown, although a few cases do exist (such as Livy’s qualications when it comes to the traditions about the Roman conquest of the Etruscan city of Veii,34 or Herodotus’ rejection of the local Egyptian explanation of the seasonal tidings of the Nile—although we know now that the Egyptians, were in, fact correct35).

34. Livy, Ab urbe condita 5.21. Aubrey de Sélincourt’s translation (Livy: The Early History of Rome [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960], 349) reads: “Personally I am content, as a historian, if in things which happened so many centuries ago probabilities are accepted as truth; this tale, which is too much like a romantic stageplay to be taken seriously, I feel is hardly worth attention either for afrmation or denial.” 35. Herodotus, Histories 2.22. 1

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Discussing Greek and Roman historiography, Kofoed does not make a real distinction, as was usual in Antiquity, between the two different styles of history writing. On one hand, Herodotus employed the broad literary style admired for its elegance; on the other hand, Thucydides employed a shorter, more exact style. Both categories existed side by side down to the end of the classical period, represented, for example, by Suetonius, a talkative successor to Herodotus, and by Tacitus, denitely a true heir to the tradition of Thucydides. Thus Kofoed ignores ancient discussion about the reliability of these two historiographers.36 In his discussion of Greco-Roman historiography, Kofoed also forgets that both Herodotus and Thucydides wrote contemporary history, dealing with events they had either heard about—in the case of Herodotus—from eyewitnesses, or—in the case of Thucydides—had themselves participated in.37 Other classical historiographers were able to combine historiography with active participation in politics, civil or military, as was the case not only for the famous Caesar, but also the Hellenistic general Polybius (ca. 203–120 B.C.E.)—a fact that has to do with the antique educational system. This erudite type of academic historian existed—we need only mention Livy—but many of the leading historians of the Greek and Roman world were active politicians and generals, meaning that their histories (like Xenophon’s Anabasis) were most of all a kind of memoir. In this respect they are very much like Winston Churchill, who, after his leadership in World War II, compiled a multivolume history of the conict. Herodotus sets out in his histories—he never wrote a history (singular)—in order to trace the origins of the conict between the Orient and the Greek world, but also to preserve the memory of the past.38 By so doing, he wrote a kind a world history, a Universalgeschichte, embracing all of the relevant parts of the known world—Asia Minor, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia—before moving on to the events that led up to the 36. I will skip over the couple of times Kofoed places Herodotus in the wrong century—the sixth century. According to the classical tradition Herodotus was born shortly before the Persian Wars and died before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War of 431 B.C.E. 37. Thucydides was born ca. 460 B.C.E. and may have died ca. 400 B.C.E. He was an acting general in the opening phase of the Peloponnesian War but was banished from Athens in 424 B.C.E. after having being totally outsmarted by the leading Spartan general Brasidas. 38. Cf. Herodotus, Histories 1.1A perusal of Liddell and Scott’s Greek–English Lexicon will show that the Greek JTUPSJBcan best be translated as “research,” the related verb meaning “to inquire into a thing,” “to examine,” “to observe,” but also, closer to our concept of history, “to give an account of” (LSJ, 842). 1

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clashes between the Persians and the Greeks. Thucydides, on the other hand, includes a short introduction to his history of the Peloponnesian War, but this overview of the past is both short and concise and limited to the events that directly led up to the conict. Thucydides never indulges in the luxury of painting with a broad brush—or writing with a broad pencil—in the same way as Herodotus, who travelled around making “ethnographical” observations. Thucydides was much more to the point and was highly regarded in Antiquity on account of his concise style. He was also found to be a more trustworthy historian than Herodotus. We should not overlook that when scholars have in recent times paid attention to the relationship between Greek and Old Testament historiography, their interest is not limited only to single books or compositions, such as the books of Kings. What is really interesting is the whole structure taking us from Gen 1 to 2 Kgs 25. Kofoed concentrates on only a minor part of this long history—a great history, if he prefers that term—and it may be that this limitation in scope has also made him blind to other characteristics of these biblical storytellers. We cannot really evaluate these ancient biblical providers of tales from the past by truncating their work. We have to review their work in totality, whether or not we subscribe to a thesis of a separate Deuteronomistic History over against a different work included in the Pentateuch (or perhaps we should say the Tetrateuch). It might therefore be that the reason for Kofoed’s accusation that the members of the Copenhagen School have imposed their own “great story” on the biblical historiography is simply that he, because of his limited outlook, has ignored the existence of the great story of the historical narrative in the Old Testament, moving from the creation of the world to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. It is therefore a limitation to his discussion that he is especially weak on the issue of authorial intent. More precisely, while he discusses extensively the authors’ intention to write history, he does not pay much attention to the function of history writing in general. He quotes Van Seters’ denition of history as an intellectual pastime (based on Jan Huizinga’s denition),39 as the way a nation creates an account of its past. This was something that happened in Europe in the Romantic Period, when the new nation states, having disposed of their former masters, were in need of legitimation. Now, the ancient world did not know of nation states in the modern sense of the world: the people themselves did not rule and accordingly were not in need of a historical 39. See pp. 216–19 of Kofoed’s study. Cf. John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 1. 1

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legitimation. When Herodotus wrote his Histories, he, however, came close to the modern concept of legitimation through history, vindicating the claims of the Greek “Nation” through history; yet he also lived in the short period in which, after the fall of the tyrants, the Athenian democracy was created. It is a major, though not impossible task to trace the intentions of the biblical storytellers, and I hope to be able to present my own conclusions in the not-too-distant future. Until then, I have to refer the reader to the thesis presented in my The Israelites in History and Tradition. Here I argued for the biblical Israel being a projection in history of a sectarian religious movement—early Judaism—that tried to vindicate its claim as a religiously exclusive organization by transferring the origins of the sect back to the beginning of time and bringing about no lesser gure than God himself in order to reveal his intention to rule the world through his chosen people—Deus vult! Summing up, we have to admit that compared to the situation thirty years ago, the methodological discussion between Old Testament scholars has indeed deepened. Most histories of the twentieth century were short on methodological reection. This has certainly changed, and Kofoed’s new thesis is in many ways a valuable contribution to this discussion. However, by ignoring practical case studies—the few presented in the chapter on the comparative method hardly make up for the lack of practical examples—his discussion may at times seem like a “metadiscussion” never tested. It may very well be that his reconstruction of the history of Palestine in ancient times is uninteresting. Provan, Long and Longman’s recent textbook, A Biblical History of Israel, has already told such a history. Their version of a biblical history opens with a 100-page-long introduction to the history of biblical Israel. This introduction includes several elements also found in Kofoed’s study— hardly a surprise, given that Kofoed has already aligned himself with these scholars and published under their guidance.40 However, after having invested time and energy in a long methodological introduction, the subsequent “history” by Provan, Long and Longman is simply uninspiring—I am tempted to say that it is not only traditionally conservative, it is just boring. Maybe conservative scholarship has little new to tell us. Maybe it has not developed very much for generations. It would have been highly interesting to see how Kofoed might handle the time of David and Solomon. Most likely he would 40. Cf. Jens Bruun Kofoed, “Epistemology, Historiographical Method, and the ‘Copenhagen School’,” in Long, Baker and Wenham, eds., Windows into Old Testament History, 23–43. 1

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accept these kings as gures belonging to the real world. Here his methodological advances help him little, since he has to take into consideration the three-tier approach—a gure of speech Kofoed seems to love—to knowledge by Karl Popper. Popper’s three “worlds,” of course, are: (1) the physical world; (2) the world within us; (3) the common world of culture, language and knowledge which we share with other human beings.41 When scholars of this time so often refer to Popper’s concept of falsication, and at the same time object against objective knowledge, they are seemingly split between two different considerations. Maybe we should, despite living in a postmodern world, not totally forget to include also Popper’s rst world. While admitting that every human experience is presented as a narrative, and therefore the subjective version of events reecting the person who told this narrative, we at the same time have to admit that it is often amazing to see how narratives from different persons point in the same direction. Although we may in our time prefer more fancy literary models—such as those formulated, for instance, by Paul Ricoeur—we still have to accept that Popper’s rst world must exist. How should we otherwise be able to conduct a falsication project?

41. Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 71–72. 1

FACTUALIZING THE EVASION: A RESPONSE TO NIELS PETER LEMCHE Jens Bruun Kofoed

Though asking an author what he thinks about his critics is somewhat like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs, I am somehow attered by having my monograph Text and History reviewed as a part of the academic discourse in the European Seminar in Historical Methodology and thankful for the opportunity to respond to the criticism raised in the review by Niels Peter Lemche. I will not in the following comment on every detail in Lemche’s critique but limit the response to a discussion of the major points of disagreement. (Page references without name or date are citations of Lemche’s review of my work appearing in the present volume.) Ignorance The rst major issue raised by Lemche is that it is my “limited knowledge of the process involved in the deconstruction of ancient Israel’s history” that allows me to argue that Thomas L. Thompson, Philip R. Davies and Niels Peter Lemche “are directed by ideology, and that their ideology can be exemplied by linking their general worldview to their condemnation of biblical sources as historical documents” and that I commit “a serious methodological sin of not tracing the possible route that led the three scholars he discusses to their respective positions” (p. 141). Now, it is true that there is no meticulous tracing in my Text and History of the route that took these scholars to their current positions, but this is not, as Lemche argues, because I have failed to acquaint myself with earlier works of their forty years’ wandering in the academic wilderness, but for two other reasons. First, because I have done this elsewhere, namely in my 1998 monograph Israels historie som teologisk disciplin, where I describe and pay tribute to the methodological clear-sightedness of, for example, Heike Friis and Niels Peter Lemche back in the 1960s 1

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and Thomas Thompson in the 1970s as the beginning of the end for the old schools of Alt–Noth and Albright–Bright (Kofoed 1998, 28–33). This is also where I acknowledge explicitly what Lemche accuses me of not acknowledging, namely that the “minimalists have never in any serious way been engaged in the play of higher criticism so popular among more traditional historical-critical scholars of the past” (p. 143). I cannot help but return the argument, therefore, and comment that if the reviewer had not been a Dane by birth, he might somehow have been excused as this work was published in Danish. Secondly, criticizing me for not doing something I didn’t set out to do is—as I have made clear in an answer to a similar reproach by Thomas Thompson—“pointless, jousting a knightless Rosinante” (Kofoed 2007). What I am trying to do, however, is to ask whether other interpretations than those of Thompson, Davies, and Lemche can account for the same data, and—provided this is the case—to what degree the presuppositions underlying the minimalist paradigm inuence the choice of interpretation. And as I am not questioning the possibility of these scholars’ positions, it is only natural to base such an investigation on the basis of literature written at the end of their academic careers. This is also why, in describing Lemche’s interpretation of the sources, I prefer to use the more neutral term “pathdependent” (Kofoed 2005a, 109–12) to the phrase “directed by ideology” (p. 141). Lemche uses the latter to describe my take on his approach, but just as I have no intention of tracing the academic route that took him to his present position, I have also no interest in determining the possible geistesgeschichtlice drive behind Lemche’s deconstruction. What I do call for in my Text and History is that “either ‘camp’ in the battle between maximalists and minimalists needs to recognize the ‘path-dependent’ character of their results” (Kofoed 2005a, 110) but nowhere do I attempt to pin down the incentive or personal motivation for the deconstruction. I also look in vain for passages in my Text and History describing reconstructions of historical-critical scholarship as “arbitrary and subjective” (p. 144). Subjective, yes, but only in the sense that all—not only historical-critical—reconstructions are based on presuppositions that guide the selection and interpretation of the sources, and since Lemche seems to acknowledge precisely this kind of subjectivity in historical reconstructions elsewhere,1 I nd it hard to understand why he criticizes me for taking the same path in my Text and History. Arbitrary, no, since all reconstructions under discussion in my Text and History are described 1. Lemche asserts that “there is no such thing as objective knowledge” in the “immensely changed scientic world” in which “the criticism of the minimalists should be truly understood” (Lemche 2003). 1

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as accounting for the evidence in a path-dependent manner. I disagree with the point of departure for these paths, yes, but I do acknowledge the consistency in which the various reconstructions follow these paths.2 Source Criticism Another major point of critique has to do with source criticism, not in its historical-critical sense but in the term’s historiographical meaning. I have elsewhere interacted with Lemche’s confusion of the heuristic categories primary/secondary and rst-hand/second-hand sources, and nd it satisfying that Lemche in his review has corrected this confusion. I fully agree with Lemche, therefore, when he writes that “Arrian’s report on Alexander’s campaigns, although a primary source, can never be reckoned a testimony from a rst-hand witness” (p. 146) since Arrian never met Alexander but based his reconstruction on the now non-extant rst-hand witnesses Ptolemy and Aristobulus. This is what Arrian acknowledges himself, when, in the preface, he writes that “in my view Ptolemy and Aristobulus are more trustworthy in their narrative, since Aristobulus took part in king Alexander’s expedition, and Ptolemy not only did the same, but as he himself was a king, mendacity would have been more dishonourable for him than for anyone else” (Arrian 1976, Preface I,1–3). Arrian not only refers to his rst-hand sources, however, but also acknowledges what modern epistemologists, psychologists, and criminologists have become increasingly aware of, namely that eyewitness accounts are far less reliable than many people may think and that even the most innocuous questions can be leading and inuence the witness’s memory of the events.3 Arrian seems to be way ahead of his time, therefore, when he acknowledges the need for eyewitness authentication by arguing that “both [Ptolemy and Aristobulus] wrote when Alexander was dead and neither was under any constraint or hope of gain to make him set down anything but what actually happened” (Arrian 1976, 1:3). This is not so important for our present discussion, however, since the real problem lies elsewhere, namely in Lemche’s dening the mute, non-inscriptional archaeological sources as rst-hand sources on equal terms with rst-hand speaking sources, that is, written sources, thus making the rst-hand archaeological sources the interpretative framework for the interpretation of second-hand primary sources, in casu

2. Kofoed 2005a, 110–11; cf. Kofoed 2005b. 3. Wells and Olson 2003; Wells, Olson, and Charman 2003; Loftus 1996 (1979). Cf. Also Coady 1992. 1

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the histori(ographi)cal texts of the Hebrew Bible. In principle Lemche is right, of course, that any piece of contemporary archaeological evidence is a rst-hand witness, and that such rst-hand archaeological evidence must serve as the interpretive context for the textual data, not least the biblical traditions. What Lemche fails to discuss, however, is how the difference between mute, archaeological evidence and speaking, written sources are to be handled in the actual historical reconstruction. It is a heuristic triviality that archaeological evidence has major deciencies in that the evidence gathered cannot speak for itself, but needs interpretation, and—as has been argued convincingly by Fredric Brandfon—that it very often presents a fragmented or wide-scale picture that can be warped by the interests of the archaeologist, the vagaries of preservation, and the nature of the material that tends to be preserved.4 Mute archaeological evidence, therefore, only provides us with a broad interpretative framework and it is most often the speaking sources that help us decide which of several possible interpretations is making best account of the available archaeological and textual data. This distinction between mute and speaking sources is precisely what the (positivistic) father of Danish historiography Kristian Erslev acknowledges when he suggests a ner heuristic discrimination between (a) relics (Danish “levninger”) from people of the past and their natural environment,5 (b) all products (Danish “frembringelser”) that have been preserved from peoples of the past, and (c) present life inasmuch it can be used deductively to describe and understand the past.6 The vast majority of the sources, Erslev asserts, fall into the second category, and “from this group one should only single out sources containing a message—in words or pictures—from the producer; sources that are best labelled ‘speaking sources.’ ”7 Criticizing Droysen’s distinction between Bericht and Überrest Lemche has elsewhere expressed his gratitude that “[i]n Scandinavia—and especially in Denmark—we are privileged because of an early criticism of Droysen’s distinction by a historian who in my country is considered the father of

4. Brandfon 1987; cf. the standard textbook in the Danish curriculum on historical theory by Kjeldstadli 2001, 179ff., for a discussion on the important distinction between non-informant (“ikke-meddelende”) and informant (“meddelende”) sources. 5. Note that Erslev here uses the Danish translation “levninger” (English “relics”) of the German “Überreste” in a more restricted sense including only artefacts, autographs, and the like, while, e.g., second-hand sources fall in Erslev’s secondcategory products, “frembringelse” in Danish. 6. Erslev 1911, 10. All translations in the article from Erslev’s book are mine. 7. Ibid. 1

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Danish historiography, Christian Erslev, who around 1900 wrote an introduction to historical method, denouncing Droysen’s distinction as an insufcient instrument when studying an ancient historiographic text” (Lemche 2004). It is hard to understand why Lemche only a few years ago could endorse this distinction, when he, in the present discussion, fails to acknowledge the importance of that very distinction for the use of second-hand speaking witnesses in the interpretation of rst-hand mute evidence. I am fully aware, of course, that the reliability of the secondhand biblical sources must be established before they can be used in the interpretation of the archaeological evidence, and that is precisely what I set out to discuss in my Text and History, taking for granted that if such a “character witness” could be established, mainstream historical theory would require them to be used as complementary sources with the archaeological evidence in the reconstruction of ancient Israel’s history. Whether or not the biblical text has been established as such a “character witness” is still a matter of debate, of course. Something that is not true, I believe, as far as the relationship between mute rst-hand and speaking second hand sources in general is concerned. True Historians A related point of criticism is Lemche’s assertion that we should not accept ancient historiographers as true historians. Saying that they were truly historiographers does not mean that we at the same time have to accept them as historians—they were not, and it makes no difference whether or not modern authors such as Baruch Halpern, or, in this case, Kofoed, prefer to call them historians. They did not share the critical meticulousness of modern historians. Source criticism was almost unknown, although a few cases do exist (such as Livy’s qualications when it comes to the traditions about the Roman conquest of the Etruscan city of Veii, or Herodotus’ rejection of the local Egyptian explanation of the seasonal tidings of the Nile—although we know now that the Egyptians, were in, fact correct). (p. 159)

My argument goes, in Lemche’s wording, “that because they wrote history to the best of their abilities, we modern historians owe them respect as ancient historians—and with that, we also owe them the benet of doubt,” but this argument, Lemche adds, “is not worth its salt and will only lead to scholars taking up their old apologetic stances, thereby prolonging the same old arguments within biblical studies” (p. 158). It goes without saying that modern critical historical research is based on more sophisticated methodologies than those of their ancient colleagues, 1

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but it is a non sequitur that they for that reason cannot be regarded as reliable historians, since such an evaluation is based on a particular, ideologically based source criticism. I have discussed in extenso in my Text and History how a number of factors like trust, the concept of truth, and literary conventions need to be taken into consideration. I argue, for example, that even though the redactional techniques employed in writing, collecting, and editing the historical texts of the Hebrew Bible betray “antiquarian efforts” and that they reveal an intention that “is specically inimical to that of historiography,” this would be primarily an observation on the formal differences between Greek historiography and Israelite history-writing, however, and not an argument against genuine historical consciousness and historical intent in the Israelite texts. Lemche fails to discuss these factors, leaving us in the open about his reasons for his sweeping underrating of ancient historiography. Comparative Historiography It is a triviality, for example, that Arrian is not a rst-hand witness to Alexander’s anabasis. The point is, however, that he does refer to his sources (cf. above) and states that he is basing his account—second hand as it might be—on rst-hand witnesses. It is also obvious that he is biased and builds on sources from the Macedonian side, something that is especially clear from his account of Alexander’s killing of the Macedonian general Clitus in a drunken rage (Arrian 1976, 4.8), as it clearly does not t into his preconceived picture of Alexander. But to simply assert, as Lemche does (p. 146), that “he may simply have invented parts of his history” without taking the abovementioned factors into consideration is simply unwarranted. One thing is to be pro-Alexander; however, another thing is to be lying. It is far more easy to spread suspicion of invention or forgery than the opposite. The burden of proof lies on the historian, as I will argue below, but Lemche provides us with no arguments for the suspicion that Arrian “may simply have invented part of his history.” The same is true of Lemche’s approach to the biblical sources, where Lemche simply omits to discuss whether other source-critical approaches than his own axiomatic scepticism can account for the various sources. The Use of Legal Metaphors Lemche goes on to criticize my use of legal metaphors in the discussion on source criticism. This is a critique I nd puzzling bordering on the absurd, since it has been commonplace to use the idea expressed by the 1

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Latin legal maxim in dubio pro reo—“When in doubt, in favor of the accused” roughly equivalent to “Innocent until proven guilty”—in the disciplines of epistemology and philosophy since the discussion between David Hume and Thomas Reid in the sixteenth century, and nothing could be closer to source criticism than epistemology (Hume 1999 [1748] and Reid 1983 [1785]). Commenting on testimony—or when to consider a source reliable—Michael S. Pardo provides a fresh example of how precisely this legal metaphor continues to be at the center of the debate: The contrasting views of David Hume and Thomas Reid provide a common starting point for examining this issue. Hume, who like the other classical empiricists strongly favored rst-hand experience, argued that beliefs based on testimony were never justied unless the hearer had evidence establishing the reliability of such testimony. Likewise, he argued that all knowledge based on testimony is ultimately reducible to someone’s rst-hand perceptual experience. Reid, by contrast, argued that beliefs based on testimony are a priori justied even when the hearer has no specic information about the speaker. He posited principles of veracity and credulity whereby beliefs based on testimony were prima facie justied because people spoke the truth naturally, unreectively, and much more often than they asserted falsely; he also posited that hearers possessed a corresponding disposition to believe most assertions. More recently, C. A. J. Coady has offered two additional arguments for the a priori justication of testimonial beliefs. First, he relies on other philosophical work arguing that in order for understanding and communication to be possible, most of our beliefs, and those we ascribe to others, must be true. Therefore, Coady argues, most of what we and others assert must be true, and thus, testimonial assertions are prima facie more likely than not to be true. Second, he argues that our testimonial followed precisely because they are more likely than not accurate ways of conveying information; if they were not (if people were more likely wrong in their assertions), we would cease to rely on testimonial assertions and thus we would cease to engage in the practice. (Pardo 2007, 14–15)

The point is not whether Hume, Reid, Coady, and Pardo are right but that it can only be due to ignorance when Lemche asserts that, by using such a legal metaphor, I introduce “an aspect totally foreign to the discussion” (p. 148). In my Text and History plenty of bibliographical references can be found to recent discussions on the epistemological basis for source criticism, not least the works by C. A. J. Coady and Arthur Danto.8

8. Coady 1992; Danto 1985. Cf. the references in Kofoed 2005a, 25ff. and 43. See now also Owens 2000. 1

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Falsication All this leads Lemche to another series of allegations regarding my failure to recognize how falsication—not ideology—has been decisive for the deconstruction of the biblical history of ancient Israel. And furthermore, Over a period of more than three decades the evangelical scholar has been witnessing the ongoing deconstruction of the historical novel of biblical Israel found in the Old Testament. In the eyes of the critical scholar this process has been conducted not because of presupposed anti-biblical ideologies, but as the consequence of a never-ending falsication process. (pp. 150–51)

He continues: the conservative scholar equates methodology with ideology, at least when he talks about his critical colleagues. Perpetuating this misprision, Kofoed’s aforementioned lack of knowledge of the process of historical falsication in biblical studies over the last forty years makes him blind to the ongoing falsication process—although critical scholars cannot and never will stop this process, which is a necessary part of scholarly rationale. (p. 151)

Now, if the assertion “that the conservative scholar equates methodology with ideology, at least when he talks about his critical colleagues” is aimed at me, Lemche is denitely barking up the wrong tree. Method and ideology are obviously connected, but I state clearly in my Text and History that methodologies are governed—not equated—by philosophies (Kofoed 2005a, 27), and in the my published rejoinder to Thomas Thompson I wish for an atmosphere of open discussion in acknowledgment of the path-dependency of one’s own interpretations and with respect for other scholars’ differing axioms and controlling beliefs (Kofoed 2007). Not everything done by the historian is equally inuenced or controlled by deep-level commitments. There is no theistic or atheistic radiocarbon dating, for example, only theistic and atheistic uses of radiocarbon dating, and I would suggest therefore, a distinction between analytic tools, which are agreed on as “joint property” by, for example, the theistic and atheistic scholar alike, and the axiomatic grounded method that makes use of a particular tool—between the data and theories on the data, in other words. I am fully aware of the borderline character of such a distinction, since deep-level commitments are often decisive not only for which interpretation we choose, but also for which tools to use. But even with this caveat in mind, I think the distinction is useful as a guide for determining the border between what is the 1

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common basis for our historical enquiry, and where our deep-level commitments begin to inuence the way we work with this common basis. Instead of creating dishonest scholarship and axiomatic betrayal, such a rened “bracketing” of our controlling beliefs or metaphysical commitments increases the “transparency” of our interpretations and historical reconstructions and thus helps us understand, respect, and acknowledge the validity and coherence of our opponents’ views within their interpretational framework. In this way it becomes clear to both our interpretative opponents and ourselves how far we can get on the agreed-on-level and where it is our deep-level commitments that guide our interpretational choices. By so doing we preserve our own scholarly integrity while, at the same time, paying respect to scholars with differing views, thereby acknowledging (with a reformulation of Gerhard von Rad’s famous dictum) that the scholarly community of historians searches for a critically assured minimum—the picture painted by the individual historian tends towards his axiomatic maximum. Falsication and Metaphysics As far as the falsication process is concerned, at least two issues must be raised that seriously question Lemche’s understanding and use of Popper’s falsication principle as a heuristic tool in the reconstruction of ancient Israel’s history. First, Popper is well aware that his own falsication principle is metaphysical in nature. In a discussion on metaphysical ideas—including his own—Popper states that “they were criticizable, though not testable. They were metaphysical ideas—in fact, metaphysical ideas of the greatest importance… I proposed a new metaphysical view of the world” (Popper 1976, 151).9 What Popper argues is that his own theory has an axiomatic basis that cannot itself be falsied, but that such non-falsiable axioms, namely, metaphysics, is very helpful indeed for scientic progress. His description of Darwin’s theory of natural selection as a metaphysical research programme does not, in Popper’s view, result in an abandonment of the theory. In Popper’s own understanding, therefore, metaphysics can have scientic value even if it is not itself scientic, that is, falsiable. Secondly, it is curious that Lemche criticizes me for not mentioning Popper while at the same time putting arguments forward that are inconsistent with Popper’s own approach by confusing science with scholarly value:

9. The same thought can be found in Popper 1963 and Popper and Eccles 1977. I owe my philosophical colleague Jakob Olsen these references. 1

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In a free world all scholars are allowed to make claims such as that King David is denitely a historical person and to consider parts of the David tradition in the Old Testament to be historical. However, such a claim only has scholarly value if it can be falsied. Otherwise it is no more and no less than virtual history. It is akin to saying: we assume that David belongs to real history, and on this basis we reconstruct his history by extensively paraphrasing the information about David especially in the books of Samuel. If the opening thesis about the historicity of David can be the subject of a falsication process, the argument is a valid one. If this is not the case, the production of a “history of David” has nothing to do with scholarship—it belongs to the genre of historical novels. Now, in the case of David such a falsication process is indeed possible and has been executed many times. (p. 152)

For Popper, falsication is about “science” not “scholarly value,” and it must be asked, therefore, how—if at all—a falsication principle designed to be used in die Naturwissenschaften should be applied to a geisteswissenschaftliche Diziplin like history, especially if one does not subscribe to a radical positivistic approach to historical research. And in the light of this and Popper’s abovementioned appreciation of the value of non-falsiable axioms for scientic research, it must be asked of Lemche whether he subscribes to such a positivistic axiom. And if this is the case, why does Lemche not acknowledge that the criteria for his falsication process are just as metaphysically based as are, for example, historistically or idealistically based criteria? And if he does not subscribe to the positivistic paradigm, he is still under an academic obligation to expose his axioms and deal with the question of how these axioms or control beliefs affect his critical method. In other words, On what basis does he argue that the biblical picture has been falsied? If the falsication principle is to be applied in historical research it has to be recognized then that (1) the principle is based on non-falsiable axioms itself, (2) that such axioms inuence the choice of source-critical method, and (3) that the nature of the data in historical research are so different from data in the eld of naturwissenschaften that we cannot talk about falsication in the same sense as in the natural sciences. Lemche’s falsication of, for example, the biblical picture of David, Solomon, and the United Monarchy, is not a falsication in the (natural) scientic meaning of the word, but at the most a making-it-less-probable effort. And the dividing line between those who still believe that we can rely on the historical information on the United Monarchy in, for example, the books of Kings, does not go between those who endorse the falsication principle and those who don’t, but between those who falsify on the basis of source-critical criteria that make the extant archaeological record the 1

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interpretative framework for evaluation of the historical information in the biblical text and those who falsify on source-critical criteria that appreciate the speaking sources as complementary to the mute archaeological sources. And Lemche clearly belongs to the former group in his making the extant archaeological record a source-critical straitjacket for what can be accepted in the other primary sources of the biblical text: … today most scholars believing in the historicity of David will probably agree—does not allow for the existence of the great king of the Old Testament. Accordingly, the “positive” approach to the historicity question will assign David a more modest role, as, perhaps, a chieftain ruling the southern highland of Palestine at the beginning of the rst millennium B.C.E. The tertium comperationis consists in this case of the archaeological material from Palestine in the tenth century, evidence from other parts of the ancient Near East at this time in the form of documents and inscriptions—as a matter of fact very little has survived—and, when it comes to the establishment of the name of this local chieftain, the mentioning of “the House of David” in the Tel Dan inscription, an inscription probably dating to the ninth century, although some scholars reckon it to belong to the eighth century, with some noting that this inscription does not refer to a person but perhaps to a principality of some kind ruled by a princely family called “the House of David.” (p. 153)

It has to be asked in this connection: On what grounds does Lemche falsify the claim that there is no evidence of a United Monarchy as described in the biblical text? Again Lemche’s choice of words is telling, since Lemche, by asserting that such a “positive” approach reduces David to a more modest role, not only betrays a positivistic approach to source criticism—falsication, if you want—but also fails to live by his own standards, academically speaking, as there are positive analogies, for example, for a series of similar monarchies or petty kingdoms in the period of decline and recession of Egyptian and Assyrian hegemony in the Levant from the twelfth to the tenth centuries B.C.E. (Kitchen 2002). Lemche does nowhere state his reason for not accepting these strong analogies, so we are left again to speculate as to whether it is guided by a radical positivistic approach to the biblical sources or some other reason for not accepting contemporary, analogical evidence. Even more devastating to Lemche’s concept of falsication is the fact that the vast majority of professional archaeologists, that is, non-biblical scholars, come to very different conclusions from Lemche, who bases his writing off the biblical picture of David, Solomon, and the United Monarchy on the archaeological minority report of Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, something that is probably most clearly evidenced in the recent work of Finkelstein’s own Israeli colleague Avraham Faust, who, on the basis of 1

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the very same archaeological data, demonstrates that the archaeological record not only allows for but is better explained by the biblical accounts (Faust 2006)—a study that must be an especially bitter pill to swallow for Lemche, since Faust is making his case on the basis of precisely the same anthropological and ethnological approach that Lemche used to question the biblical picture of the United Monarchy in his foundational Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy (Lemche 1985). Summing up, I do not claim that it is a “presumed [by the critical scholar] that there is no history in the texts of the Bible” (p. 151). On the contrary I acknowledge that (s)he is performing a falsication procedure. What I do question, however, is whether the underlying assumptions of this falsication process are valid, especially since other studies have demonstrated that different theories better account for the same data. The Possibility of Oral Transmission My nal comments in this rejoinder will be on Lemche’s critique of my take on the possibility and probability of oral transmission. My use of Lemche’s statement on the uncontrollability and unreliability of oral transmission is, admittedly, more a point of departure than a discussion on the context in which it appears. As far as controllability is concerned, Lemche repeats, however, in his review article that “[i]f there is no tertium comparationis we have no way to decide whether or not a statement in a biblical text has any relevance to historical reconstruction” (p. 152), and that “[t]here is, in spite of Kofoed’s opposition, nothing that speaks in favor of his thesis of a reliable oral tradition. On the contrary, all evidence we possess tells a totally different story: oral tradition remains beyond control whatever objection Kofoed may propose” (p. 154). Though it seems impossible to present an argument that will make Lemche change his mind, I at least need to recapitulate what I have stated explicitly in my Text and History, that I only argue for the possibility of a reliable, prolonged oral tradition by analogy. Lemche complains that “[i]t is most unfortunate that Kofoed is not familiar with the origin of this discussion, in my Early Israel” (p. 149) where he raises two warnings, namely “the medium of communication, on one hand the oral formulated narrative and on the other the written record likely to be based on such an oral narrative—a point duly considered by Kofoed. The second warning has to do with the controllability of oral tradition, or as I formulated it at that time, the necessity of acknowledging that we have no means of controlling it” (p. 149). Lemche concludes that “as long as 1

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we have no evidence apart from the testimony of the biblical narrative, we cannot decide with any degree of certainty whether a certain biblical passage reects historical events or should rather be seen as historical ction” (p. 149). I fully agree with Lemche that these are crucial issues in any discussion on the reliability of oral transmission, but is it true that we have no evidence apart from the biblical narrative? As I state in my discussion, “we have for obvious reasons no direct access to oral traditions of the distant past and can only argue for a certain understanding of ancient orality by analogy” (Kofoed 2005a, 69). It should probably come as no surprise that Lemche rejects analogies, since this is precisely what he does in the case of the United Monarchy (as argued above), but is it really in line with mainstream historical scholarship not to consider parallels and analogies at all? The analogies to oral transmission in ancient Israel are, admittedly, not contemporary, and that may invalidate the analogies. But such an invalidation has to be argued for, and I fail to nd any discussion in Lemche’s review on the validity of these analogies, only assertions. Lemche owes the scholarly guild, therefore, an explanation as to why and how he considers these analogies from modern African and Middle Eastern illiterate societies invalid. A second evasion has to do with another of his explicitly stated concerns, namely the media of communication. In my discussion I suggest that the question of genre has not been taken duly into consideration and that more research on transmission of oral prose has to be done before we can extend the applicability of the so-called grandfather-law from poetry to prose. Lemche nowhere comments on this and seemingly sticks to his dated discussion in his Vorgeschichte from 1996. I may be wrong in assuming that it is indeed possible that historical information was handed down orally in a reliable way in ancient Israel, but instead of discussing my arguments from analogy, Lemche chooses the rather mocking insinuation that I defend a biblical history of ancient Israel “that laypersons will love to read, a kind of historiography belonging to the presently extremely popular genre of historical novels” (p. 149). I may be wrong, as mentioned, but I hope Lemche can do better than that, and put forward arguments worthy of an academic discussion. As mentioned in the beginning of the rejoinder, I am attered by having my Text and History reviewed by a prominent member of the European Seminar in Historical Method. Summing up my response to the critique of the review, I must conclude, however, that the reviewer has failed to factualize the evasion he reproaches me for, and I look forward, therefore, to more substantial arguments in the discussion of the issues I have raised. 1

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Bibliography Arrian. 1976. Anabasis of Alexander. Loeb Classical Library 236. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Brandfon, Fredric. 1987. The Limits of Evidence: Archaeology and Objectivity. Maarav 4:5–44. Coady, C. A. J. 1992. Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Clarendon. Danto, Arthur C. 1985. Narration and Knowledge. New York: Colombia University Press. Erslev, Kristian. 1911. Historisk teknik. Den historiske undersøgelse fremstillet i sine grundlinier. Copenhagen: Jacob Erslevs Forlag. Faust, Avraham. 2006. Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance: Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology. London: Equinox. Hume, David. 1999 (1748). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kitchen, K. A. 2002. The Controlling Role of External Evidence in Assessing the Historical Status of the Israelite United Monarchy. Pages 111–30 in Windows into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument, and the Crisis of Biblical Israel. Edited by V. Philips Long, David W. Baker, and Gordon J. Wenham. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Kjeldstadli, Knut. Fortiden er ikke hvad den har været. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitets Forlag, 2001. Kofoed, Jens Bruun. 1998. Israels historie som teologisk disciplin. Copenhagen: Dansk Bibel-Institut. ———. 2005a. The Critical Danes and History: How to Avoid Being Hit by the Boomerang from Copenhagen. Online: http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Kofoed_ Critical_Danes.htm. Cited 1 April 2008. ———. 2005b. Text and History. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. ———. 2007. The Role of Faith in Historical Research—A Rejoinder. SJOT 21, no. 2: 275–98. Lemche, Niels Peter. 1985. Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2003. Conservative Scholarship-Critical Scholarship: Or How Did We Get Caught by This Bogus Discussion. Online: The Bible and Interpretation website at http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Conservative_Scholarship.htm. Cited 1 April 2008. ———. 2004. How to Do History? Methodological Reections. Paper presented to the Social-Scientic Studies of the Second Temple Period Section at the 2004 SBL Annual Meeting in San Antonio. Online at http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/ Doctwo/howto.pdf. Cited 16 March 2008. Loftus, Elizabeth. 1996 (1979). Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Owens, D. 2000. Reason Without Freedom. London: Routledge. Pardo, Michael S. 2007. Testimony. Tulane Law Review 82, no. 1:119–90. Online: http://ssrn.com/abstract=986845. Cited 1 April 2008. Popper, Karl. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 1976. Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. London: Routledge. 1

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Popper, Karl, and John C. Eccles. 1977. The Self and Its Brain. New York: Springer International. Reid, Thomas. 1983 (1785). Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. In Thomas Reid’s Inquiry and Essays. Edited by Ronald E. Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer. London: Hackett. Wells, Gary L., and Elizabeth A. Olson. 2003. Eyewitness Testimony. Annual Review of Psychology 54:277–95. Wells, Gary L., Elizabeth A. Olson, and Steve D. Charman. 2003. Distorted Retrospective Eyewitness Reports as Functions of Feedback and Delay. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 9, no. 1:42–52.

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A DIFFERENT KIND OF MINIMALISM: MARIO LIVERANI’S OLTRE LA BIBBIA Joseph Blenkinsopp

In his essay on the history of Israel from ethnogenesis to the emergence of Judaism in the fourth century B.C.E.,1 Mario Liverani (hereafter ML) aims to move beyond the current stalemate between maximalists and minimalists. He is dissatised with histories which more or less paraphrase the biblical text even when they question the historicity of this or that segment or episode. He accepts that the historical traditions up to and including the United Monarchy are ideological retrojections from the dominant social element in the province of Judah within the Persian empire. This assumption allows him to view Israel and Judah as two distinct units among about half-a-dozen mid-sized kingdoms in the SyroPalestinian corridor, the main difference being that the “bibles” of these other states have not survived. At the same time, ML is prepared to nd authentic source material behind the late ideological constructions, and therefore believes it possible to write at least a thin history of the two kingdoms from ethnogenesis to the liquidation of the Judean state. The novel element in ML’s project is that he makes a clear distinction between this “normal history” and the ideologically constructed “invented history” which replaced it, and to write up each separately. The impulse towards the “invented history” was the crisis and collapse of the sixth century B.C.E. which affected large areas of the Middle East and not just the Kingdom of Judah. It grew out of the need for a foundation or charter myth for the new commonwealth which was coming into existence during the rst century of Persian rule. In his closing remarks ML makes it clear that the integration of these parallel histories remains as a task for the critical historian, who is reminded that the “normal history” is not 1. Mario Liverani, Oltre la Bibbia (Rome/Bari: Editori Laterza, 2003). This work was published in English as Israel’s History and the History of Israel (trans. C. Peri and P. R. Davies; London: Equinox, 2005). 1

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without ideological values and the “invented history” is not without reference to real events. It remains unclear, however, what this eventually integrated critical history from the emergent “new society” of Late Bronze and Iron I to the fourth century B.C.E. would look like. The author’s own ideological impulse can be sampled in an article with the title “Ancient Propaganda and Historical Criticism,” in which he emphasizes the seriousness of the critical historian’s task of unmasking dominant ideologies which attempt to dictate how the past is to be mediated into the present, those of contemporary politicians no less than those of the anonymous authors of the biblical narratives.2 The story begins with Palestine in the Late Bronze Age (1550–1180) during most of which time the region was under Egyptian control. During the transition period (1200–1100), what would eventually emerge as Israel was in process of formation along the north–south central highland ridge and in Gilead, far from the centers of Egyptian control in the Beqa, along the coast and the inland trade routes. ML accepts the standard interpretation of “Israel” on the Merneptah stele (ca. 1230) and the linguistic identication of habiru with ‘ibrîm, and even nds a reference to “Abrahamites” (Banu-Raham) on the stele of Seti I discovered at BethShean. He reviews the three principal hypothesis for Israelite ethnogenesis (conquest, sedentarization of transhumance pastoralists, peasant revolt) without declaring in favor of any one of them. He gives due weight to the climatic factors leading to major disturbances and shifts of population. The weakening of the Egyptian hold on the Syro-Palestinian region, amply documented in the Amarna correspondence (ca. 1370– 1350), and the general collapse of the palatine centers of the Late Bronze period, left space for developments in the north–south uplands of a purely indigenous kind since, apart from Philistine encroachment, there is no evidence for immigration into the region. The developments in question were in the direction of sedentarization, agglomeration with other nomadic and pastoral groups, technological advances, and the eventual emergence of an agro-urban culture. The freedom afforded by the absence of imperial control, which permitted the development of independent kingdoms including Israel and Judah, came to an end with the westward expansion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the eighth century beginning with the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III.

2. Mario Liverani, “Ancient Propaganda and Historical Criticism” in The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-First Century: The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference (ed. J. S. Cooper and G. M. Schwartz; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 283–89. 1

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ML’s summary account of Israelite ethnogenesis invites further discussion at several points. It is still difcult to know how much weight the “Israel” (or “Jezreel”?) of the Merneptah stele can bear, and not all will be prepared to accept the habiru–‘ibrim equation. Furthermore, I would doubt that we can simply take as a given the (Israelite) ethnic character of the Iron I settlements in the central hill country and the “colonization from below” (p. 61) described in some detail by ML. A related issue not discussed by ML is the southern origins of the Yahveh cult, located according to ancient hymns in the Sinai peninsula, or Seir, or Mount Paran, or the Yemen; and he does not deal with the now classic Kadesh hypothesis as expounded by Julius Wellhausen and Eduard Meyer which I would maintain is due for rehabilitation. The old problem of bringing Yahveh from the deep south into contact with Israelites in the central highlands is exacerbated by ML’s reinterpretation of the exodus as no more than a metaphoric and formulaic way of stating a change of political status (“going out” from imperial control). But perhaps we are looking for the Ur-Israel in the wrong place. The next stage in ML’s “normal history” is transitional (1050–930 B.C.E.). At that time the salient features in the region were the Philistine cities in the southern coastal region, the Aramaic city-states in the north (Hamath, Lu’ash, Bit Adini) and the emergent Transjordanian kingdoms. The dimorphic (tribal-urban) centers of Shechem and Jerusalem, already foci of Habiru concentration in the Amarna period, could have served as models for similar formations in the central and southern hill country. Saul’s kingdom was a small Habiru chiefdom limited to the tribal areas of Ephraim and Benjamin, while the historical nucleus about the kingdom of David, contemporary with that of Saul, and barnacled over with a vast amount of novelistic elaboration, points to a brigand chiefdom based on Hebron which expanded in the direction of Jerusalem, Ammon and Zoba. The author does, however, accept the Dan inscription as independent conrmation that David established a dynasty. Moving on, the gure of Solomon has been mythologized beyond measure. The extent of his kingdom, “from the Euphrates to the river of Egypt,” corresponds to the boundaries of the Transeuphrates satrapy under Iranian rule, the dimensions of Solomon’s palace and temple, impossible for the tenth century, are based on such Persian models as the Persepolis apadana, and, following Finkelstein’s low chronology which ML accepts, the (in)famous Megiddo stables and the impressive remains at Hazor were the work of Omri not Solomon. The transitional period ended with the expedition of Sheshonq (925 B.C.E.). The route taken by the Egyptian army conrms that the two kingdoms were separate and still quite small, and that Israel had not yet expanded into the Galilee. 1

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Here, too, the need to economize on space, and perhaps also time, prevented the author from arguing his case each step of the way. There are archaeological issues still not resolved (e.g. the date of the SteppedStone structure to the north-east of the City of David), and the rejection of a United Monarchy would call for much sifting through the relevant biblical narrative (e.g. concerning David’s incorporation of Saul’s domains). Once clear of the disputed United Monarchy, ML follows more or less the line of the biblical narrative. The Kingdom of Israel, basically the tribal area of Ephraim and Manasseh, took over the ancient name from the Merneptah stele and adopted Jacob as its founder and patronym. With the Omri dynasty and the founding of Samaria it became a palatine state and came to the attention of the Assyrians as bit umria. ML estimates its population in the eighth century at 250,000 and that of Judah at 100,000 which, incidentally, raises a question about his later claim that the gure of more than 200,000 deported from Judah by Sennacherib is realistic (p. 165). The eventual decline of Assyria instigated the ambitious program inscribed in Deuteronomy during the reign of Josiah. It entailed the idea of a “Greater Israel” (“from Dan to Beersheba”), a law book of recent production but deemed to be ancient, a covenant based on the Assyrian treaty formulary, and the myth of an exodus from imperial control resulting in free and undisturbed occupation of the land. ML’s fearless approach to demographic data shows up again with the account of the Babylonian conquest resulting in a spectacular population loss of the order of 85 to 90%. One other effect of the conquest was the establishment and expansion of the Arab Kedarite kingdom which the author maintains provided the model for the Israelite twelve-tribal system—an interesting point which unfortunately ML does not develop. The author’s storia inventata originated in the Babylonian diaspora and was further elaborated in the course of the resettlement in Judah throughout the rst century of Persian rule. ML’s account of this process is limned with broad strokes and raises numerous queries. Examples include: his identication of Sheshbazzar with the Shenazzar son of Jehoiachin (1 Chr 3:18); the Babylonian background of the Garden of Eden story; the authenticity of the edict of Artaxerxes II in Ezra 7. ML is also not alone in overestimating the role of the priesthood during the Persian period and underestimating that of the governor and his court. The “invented history,” inspired by the increasingly integrationist ideology of the bnê haggôlâ, can be extracted from the rst seven biblical books. Stories about the ancestors, Abraham in particular, represent the soft ideology of the early stages of the settlement which allowed for the 1

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assimilation of the indigenous population subject to certain conditions. Abraham, unknown in the pre-exilic period, enters Palestine as a gr vtôšv, purchases land at the going rate, and does so in accord with Neo-Babylonian land contracts. He cultivates benign relations with the local peoples and marries not one but two Arab women. No threat of extermination hangs over the indigenous peoples; indeed, Jacob takes his sons to task for their vendetta against the Shechemites: “You have made me hateful to the inhabitants of the land” (Gen 34:30). ML notes that these stories show little interest in Jerusalem, and to make the point clearer he deletes Melchizedek king of Salem (šlm) from Gen 14:17– 24, assigning the blessing of Abraham to the king of Sodom instead. Here, too, there are issues which call for more discussion than the author could allow himself. One question would be whether this scenario is compatible with the “Zionism” of the early settlers. ML holds that aspirations for the re-establishment of the monarchy were prominent only in the early period, which may be the case, but these aspirations show up only in the Priestly version of the ancestral narratives (Gen 17:6, 16; 35:11), which version is, for the author, a characteristic product of the hard ideology associated with Ezra and Nehemiah. This later ideological phase appealed to an original entry into the land as a globalized, twelve-tribe military operation under one leader. This Deuteronomic–Josianic ideology called for the extermination of the native peoples. The ideological, utopian (or dystopian) and unhistorical character of this conquest narrative is apparent. Replacing one people by another was impossible before Assyrian cross-deportation. The canonical list of (mostly) seven indigenous peoples is ctive, and includes none of the peoples actually present in the early period—Edomites, Philistines, Phoenicians, etc.—with the one exception of the Canaanites. As the author succinctly puts it, “They exterminate those who are not there, and the fact that they are not there proves that they have been exterminated” (p. 304). Special explanations must be given for those who somehow managed to escape extermination, namely, Gibeonites and Shechemites. The Joshuan (Josian?) Blitzkrieg ends with the distribution of the now ethnically cleansed land, historically incredible, but perhaps reecting procedures for land distribution during the resettlement in the Persian period. The exodus tradition is sometimes explained as a response to the need for non-autochthonous origins, parallel therefore with the tradition of the Trojan origins of Rome, the theme of Virgil’s Aeneid. As I mentioned earlier, the author goes well beyond this idea by interpreting the exodus tradition as generated by a “displacement formula” (codice motorio), a 1

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change of political status, a passage from imperial control to autonomy rst attested in the Neo-Assyrian period (in Hosea). The rest is fairly standard: the wilderness narratives reect issues and problems connected with the resettlement in the Persian period; the murmurings in the wilderness reect anxiety about leaving the eshpots of Babylon, encounters with uncooperative and insensitive peoples on the way, and so on. The census lists in Numbers can be read in the light of those in Ezra– Nehemiah, and are doubtless connected with the allotment of land. The location of the biblical exodus–wilderness–conquest narrative after stories about ancestors was dictated by the need to write a consecutive history, but had the effect of leaving a gap between the occupation of the land and the monarchy. This being a period for which ML believes the biblical authors had no information, they lled the gap with folklore stories about miscellaneous warlords and bits of oating traditional narrative. Maybe the author’s nerve failed him at this point, but in fact Judges can be read as reecting the internecine struggles and ideological confrontations of Neo-Babylonian and early Persian Judah more clearly in some respects than other narrative segments of Genesis to Judges. I mention only Judean–Benjaminite hostility in evidence at the beginning and end of Judges, corresponding to what we know or can reasonably surmise about the political situation in the region in the century following the fall of Jerusalem. Coming, nally, to the “invention of the law,” ML is ready to concede that the law codes contain much ancient jurisprudence. He follows a fairly standard dating for the laws: Deuteronomic law is Josianic, the Holiness Code contemporary with Ezekiel, and the Priestly matter postexilic, perhaps to be associated with Ezra. Covenants with the ancestors from Abraham to David mirror the historical covenant assemblies from Josiah to Nehemiah and beyond. The development is away from the political and in the direction of a specically religious and cultic model. Law observance comes to take the place of political structures no longer available as a principle and source of distinctive and exclusive selfidentication. In the post-exilic period the impulse towards religious and ethnic self-closure dominated (p. 391), though the movement towards a more eirenic approach has left notable traces in the record. ML brings the story to an end in 398 B.C.E., which he takes to be the date of Ezra’s arrival in the province rather than 458 B.C.E., its currently more popular alternative. The period from the fall of Jerusalem to Ezra he views as primarily retrospective, the time when the foundation myth was being elaborated. By the time of Ezra the formation of ethnic identity was complete. In retrospect, ML’s project is not so very different 1

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from other critical attempts to write a history of ancient Israel and, for the later period, not even so different from Wellhausen’s Prolegomena. The author brings to his task expertise and long experience as an Orientalist, specializing in the languages and history of the ancient Near East, so it is no surprise that the most convincing part of his history deals with the Late Bronze and Iron I periods before the formation of the two kingdoms. The original element is, of course, the separate treatment of the normal and the invented histories. As ML’s article referred to earlier suggests, the inspiration behind this strategy derives from the semiological and literary techniques developed in the 60s and 70s precisely for the purpose of subverting and dismantling political “messages” and using them as a source of counter-information in the endless battle against the massive propaganda of political systems.3 His essay is therefore more a propedeutic to a history than a history of Israel per se in spite of the adoption of a straightforward chronological order. As such, I suspect that it would have been improved by incorporating a more thorough discussion of the relation between ideology and critical historiography in the manner of the article referred to earlier. This could also have removed the suspicion, however unjustied, of a certain naiveté in supposing that the ideology can be sifted out of a historical record leaving the historian with an ideologically unadulterated record of the past. Since the parsing out of the different levels of ideological historiography dictates how a normal history, that is, a history informed by an awareness of ideological overwriting, should be written, and since the ideology was the product of successive elites during the two centuries of Persian imperial rule, one could also make out a case for reversing the order in which the two histories, normal and invented, are presented. All of this notwithstanding, ML has given us a bold historiographical essay which raises in an original format some of the most basic issues which all historians of ancient Israel have to confront.

3. Note the following comment by Liverani, “Ancient Propaganda and Historical Criticism,” 286: “As time passed, new possibilities appeared for a positive use of the new methods of analysis. First, the exposed political bias was a piece of information in itself, and an important one, allowing for the reconstruction of a kind of ‘reverse’ history, a history no longer following the chain of the ofcial statements but rather the chain of the problems that such statements were presumed to confront or exorcise. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the need to test the reliability of the ofcial political messages stimulated the historical use of non biased (or differently biased) materials, from administrative texts to archaeological remains, from the collection of omena to settlement patterns or paleobotanical remains.” 1

WAY BEYOND THE BIBLEBUT FAR ENOUGH? Philip R. Davies

Mario Liverani’s book, Oltre la Bibbia (2003)/Israel’s History and the History of Israel (2005) is welcome in so many ways: a “History of Israel” written by an Italian ancient Near Eastern historian brings to the overloaded genre some new perspectives. In important ways these perspectives are extremely valuable, and the book deserves to make a major impact on the discussion. In some respects it also leaves further work to be done, both on substance and on method. Nevertheless, it offers an important new paradigm for that future work. The two major claims that Mario Liverani (hereafter ML) makes about his approach are (a) that it avoids both the excessive credulity and excessive scepticism about the biblical narratives that characterize the two kinds of recent and contemporary writing about ancient Israel. But he sketches these two alternatives in a somewhat simplied way: there are some examples that are neither. Creating a middle way between extremes is, however, a well-known rhetorical device, and in the current polarized state of affairs it has sometimes become almost necessary to claim a mediating position to try and avoid being labelled (Finkelstein has adopted the same strategy, and with as much or as little justication). Actually, ML’s course seems to me to be hardly a straight line down the middle of the road. Rather, he sometimes veers from one side to the other: he is at times extremely positive in an afrmation of history, or at least historical details, sometimes on the basis of a few hints; while he is equally positive about the wholesale invention of whole historical periods as well as individual events. It is thus at times both credulous and sceptical. The structure of the book itself partly assists this kind of distinction. It has two major parts: “normal history” and “invented history.” The former is a conventional account of Palestinian history from the ending of the Late Bronze to the beginning of the Persian period; the latter an explanation of how a past was created as a project to establish the identity of a newly returned community in Judah. On this, more presently. 1

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The other major claim, which is to my mind a highly suggestive and fruitful one, is that the history of ancient Israel can be set between two crucial “caesuras” as he terms them: the rst, the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition, which created the nation of Israel (along with many others); the second, the sixth century, which saw the end of a certain kind of imperial politics, an economic and cultural collapse, deportation, and then, in the aftermath, new forms of religion and political governance, and new religious and philosophical ideas, not just in Palestine but throughout the Oriental and Mediterranean civilizations. In the case of Palestine, the rst caesura produced ancient Israel, the second, Judaism. These two moments, then, create a logical set of termini for the beginning and the end of “ancient Israel.” These two caesuras thus generated the two different kinds of history that the book distinguishes. The rst, the “normal” history, comprises the creation, growth, decay and destruction of Palestinian societies and kingdoms. Nothing exceptional here, notes ML: everything can, and should, be understood in the light of the larger context, and neither Israel nor Judah displays anything particularly remarkable in its historical life. The second caesura produces the “invented history,” in which a new Israel with a newly invented past emerges. ML treats this in the second part of his book, and here we encounter something exceptional and long-lasting in its effects on human history. This treatment seems on the whole to be following the kinds of ideas that so-called “minimalist” scholars have set: “invention” cannot but invoke Whitelam’s 1996 Invention of Ancient Israel, even if the arguments are not all the same. And although ML does not specically contrast “historical” and “biblical” Israel, this in effect is his argument. He is not too far, after all, from the prospect of writing a “normal” history without the Bible and the “invented” history exclusively from it, a procedure that some would regard as methodologically the purest, though in practice not easily sustained. The Bible is, on ML’s view, largely an invented history, but it does preserve records of a normal history. I nd nothing in which he would substantially dissent from my own position: he does distance himself, as already remarked, from those who would argue that the biblical narratives are always or entirely invented, even when they can be shown to be written later than the events they narrate. But any reasonable person must accept the possibility, indeed probability, that historical events underlie even ctional narratives. The point at issue is actually whether we can with any condence retrieve these. Where ML tries to do so is where I think he is on weakest ground. But I certainly do not deplore the effort. 1

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Rather curiously, ML speaks of the challenge of “integrating” these “parallel” histories, but I am really not sure what he means. He is in one sense right to use the word “parallel” since parallel lines do not converge, and the biblical and historical accounts of Iron Age Israel and Judah travel along parallel lines, with different starting points and endings. Yet parallel lines never touch, and in fact ML sees them touching at several points. But the invented history is embedded in the normal history: it is the result of real people, real ideas, and real historical contexts. ML offers an excellent, and to my mind largely convincing historical account of the invented historymostly as the outcome of strategies developed by returnees, and against those who might be called (and are so called in the English translation) “remainees.” The job of integration, then, has been done: not perfectly, but still rather well. At a point in history, a new Israel emerges with a new history, one that overwrites (without obliterating entirely) the real history of old Israel. This is in fact the position that Thomas Thompson was over ten years agoand perhaps where he should still be, but that is another matter! I applaud the clarity of the scheme, its presentation, and, not least, its rhetorical power. We have a model to be followed, one that no longer simply “removes” unhistorical “inventions” to one side, but evaluates them positively as reecting real historical processes, though of a different time and kind from those which they portray. The way in which ML maps the monarchic and priestly options for the new Israel, the strategies for coping with foreigners, and the indigenous people of Yehud, with the scenarios of patriarchal settlement, exodus, conquest, and judges, is probably too simplistic. But there is a limit to how precise one can be, and the broad lines of his reconstruction strike me as persuasive. They would, of course, since I, along with several other members of the ESHM, share them. Liverani’s great asset is his wide knowledge, and insight, into ancient Near Eastern history and literature. He shows, for example, how the Jerusalem–Shechem Bronze age axis reappears centuries later, how the Egyptian presence in Palestine remained an enduring motif even when Egypt was withdrawn and weak (he explains the Exodus on this basis, and even if it does not entirely persuade me, he has some ancient Near Eastern texts to support him). He offers a brilliant synthesis of the cultural as well as political effects of the dawning of the Iron Age and of the evolution of Assyrian imperial ideology and practices. There is nevertheless, I think, a corresponding weakness in his biblical scholarship. This is not simply a result of unfamiliarity (though this is presumably part of the reason): indeed, ML makes a very good effort 1

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to represent scholarly positions; but he sometimes accepts a scholarly consensus when it seems almost certain to me that were his expertise as rst-hand as in other matters, he would not. He also makes some quite peculiar assumptions, in the manner of the “maximalist.” Thus, while he regards both Ezra and Nehemiah as books written much later after the events, he accepts the historicity of Ezra and his missionto an extraordinarily precise degree: Ezra’s mission (which can be precisely dated to 398, despite a number of problems). (p. 363)

He is dubious about some of the correspondence quoted in Ezra, but not all of it: he says at one point that it “reects a plausible scenario” (p. 331) a phrase that will, or should, worry us. It also surprizes me, for I am sure that ML does not really accept that plausibility is a genuine criterion of historicity. Another example of inexplicable credulity is that he accepts an early date for the “Samaritan schism”actually dating it to 425on the grounds that: the Samaritan Pentateuch diverges from that of Jerusalem and the schism must therefore have taken place before Ezra. (p. 334)

But the differences between them are so minor and largely insignicant as to point to a quite different conclusion, as most modern specialists now maintain, which puts the schism later. And did Ezra really nalize the Pentateuchal text (let alone the contents)? This would amount to an incredibly old-fashioned orthodoxy (and also ignore the evidence from Qumran). In other cases, too, ML seems just to reproduce some dubious scholarly orthodoxies: he speaks of “priests from the north in the days of Hezekiah and Josiah” (p. 340) as an explanation of developments in Judean religious practice. But while these migrations are common assumptions, there is really no evidence for these, and no need to postulate them. The most serious example of this lack of rigour, I think, is the case of Josiah and Deuteronomistic History. In speaking of the “invented history,” where he convincingly sets the ideological features of both Deuteronomy and the DH (single sanctuary, anti-“Canaanite,” “all-Israel”) in a postexilic context, he regularly has to remember that he has subscribed to a Josianic Deuteronomy and DH, and note an exceptional “anticipation.” Whether or not he is correct is not the point; what is the point is that the Josianic theory actually undermines his wider thesis: if such historiography were possible under a Judean king, what else remains impossible? He does actually seem aware now and then, and has to resort to the 1

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notion of “later revision”; but this revision is not based on any literarycritical arguments, but just on the fact that the date and the historical context he is invoking do not coincide! On purely historical matters ML is understandably much more secure; yet, apart from the case of Josianic golden age, there are other dubious cases. He paints a very dark and minimal picture of the neo-Babylonian period, regarding Judah as virtually desolate; while he offers us a lively and religiously fertile set of exilic communities preparing for their return. Perhaps he has again here been inuenced by what biblical scholars tell him as much as by the data? At all events, recent publications on the neoBabylonian period, which suggest a rather different scenario, ought to be considered. Certainly, the contest between Mizpah and Jerusalem and also Bethel and Jerusalem seems to constitute a major facet of the “invented history.” I nd it hard, overall, to discover any consistent criteria used by ML in working with biblical texts as a historian. That of course puts him in a majority, but does leave a major task yet to be done. But there are several interesting statements pointing in the general direction. He is a discipline of neither the German nor the American tradition. He has a different sort of literary approach which is interesting and fruitful. His work on ancient texts has thus been informed by Propp, Levi-Strauss, and Greimas, and much of it seeks to understand the codes by which texts convey their ideology. In a recently published collection of essays translated into English (Liverani 2004) the reader will nd studies of the Babylonian myth of Adapa, which is analyzed in terms of codes of hospitality, on the Idrimi inscription from Alalakh, on the motif of “leaving by chariot for the desert,” on the Amarna letters from Rib-Adda of Byblos on righteous suffering, and on the biblical examples of Joash and the book of Judges. In several cases, however, ML goes out of his way to maintain that the demonstration of stereotypical codes and formulae does not contradict the historicity of the events described.1 It is for this reason that he castigates those sceptics who are so mindful of late ideological elements that they do not ask why the story was transmitted, and do not attend to features that belong to an earlier age. ML states: late elaborations usually impose modern ideological characteristics on what is ancient material. (p. 366)

1. Thus on Idrimi, he concludes “The story of Idrimi is therefore a ‘true’ story even if its narrative pattern preceded it. That pattern was used to narrate that story with a precise purpose” (Liverani 2002, 96). 1

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Again, The entire ideological process of the Persian era had a retrospective character, referring to previous events while simultaneously providing them with a meaning—certainly an additional meaning, yet one that became an integral and indispensable part of those events. (p. 364)

Here, I am sure, Thompson would have an answer: stereotypical features cannot date texts. But equally they cannot be proof that no history is there. Are we at an impasse? I think we are close to the nub of the problem, which is that historians as a whole want to do two things (some only want to do one, or more one than the other): to perfect their critical techniques and to write as much history as they can. These two impulses are often in evident conict. Perhaps too much of the former results in little or no history (as is often asserted) while the latter can result in what Niels Peter Lemche and I have called “pious rationalizing” of a sacred text. As for ML’s own preferences, I would observe that Lévi-Strauss dealt with myth and Propp with the folk-tale; how do such techniques transfer to records claiming to narrate historical events? How do they help deliver any verdict on historicity? Liverani’s assertion (which I would not deny) that the best propaganda does not lie but presents the truth in a certain way is reasonable, but this surely applies mainly where the audience is in a position to know or discover the truth. And how can we decide which bits are close to the truth and which not? Did the authors of the propaganda in fact often know? It is, however, an important step to recognize that all texts are written for a purpose, are propaganda, and that it is essential for any modern interpreter to ask what information or disinformation is being conveyed. Good history begins with good reading, and it is a commonplace of nearly all modern historical work that literary-critical analysis is indispensable, which is why archaeologists on the whole should stick to prehistory. But how in practice ML apportions ctionality and history to the propaganda worries me. He speaks of Hosea’s marriage as if it were something that happened, and the contents of the prophetic books generally as if they were what the prophets said: Hosea (c. 760–720) lived in Israel until the destruction of Samaria, but then probably took shelter in Judah, bringing with him his experience of the national disaster in the north. Israel, according to Hosea, was destroyed by the corruption of the ruling class, but especially because it betrayed its allegiance to Yahwehan act that the prophet, out of his personal experience, depicts in the metaphor of conjugal indelity. (p. 156, my italics)

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On Micah he is a little less rash: The text of Micah (c. 750–710) has been extensively rewritten and updated by post-exilic interventions (particularly concerning the nal destiny of Jerusalem), but the overall meaning seems to go back to the moment after the collapse of Samaria. (p. 156)

I wish the “seems to” could be spelt out with the aid of some literarycritical arguments. But ML has spoken elsewhere of his mistrust of too much literary criticism: As is well known, biblical literary criticism (conditioned by the postulate of divine inspiration) normally views the original materials as organic and coherent, and attributes the “contradictions” to later interventions, to the point of postulating as many interventions or layers as there are contradictions to be regularised. It is better to restrict oneself to pointing out signicant interventions that are endowed with a literary and ideological specicity. And hence offer the possibility of an historical setting. (Liverani 2002, 190 n. 37)

This is not a bad principle; it reects the approach of a number of contemporary historians, in fact. The issue is not whether texts have complex histories (they often do), but that these cannot be reconstructed with great precision. A sociological method of literary criticism looks for distinct social groups as collective authors, and for social codes of communication, while being aware of the abundant evidence from ancient manuscripts that hardly any ancient scribe ever left a text unaltered in some way and that not every individual author can be turned into a school. The modern historian cannot reach back to individual scribes or authors or editors; we have to generalize, and I tend to agree with Liverani’s comment here. But an overall ideology will reect the nal shape of the text; we do need highly developed skills in order to practise an archaeology of ideology: isolating layers in which parts of the text contradict the whole. This has, of course, always been a component of good literary-criticism; but unless literary criticism engages fully with social history, it will invent redactors and schools ad nauseam without being able to describe these as historical entities. But ideology is everywhere in the Bible and even an experienced spotter like ML can be fooled. Thus, he asserts (as did Alt before him) that while Israel was ruled by several dynasties, Judah had a stable one. But since for the writers of Kings it was necessary to maintain that the dynasty of David had been unbroken, can we really accept that this is a reliable conclusion? 1

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Again: the Judean priesthood (called “Zadokite” because they were descendents of Zadok, one of David’s priests). (p. 326)

Or does he mean “they claimed to be descended from David’s own priest”? For that claim ts perfectly into his scheme. I wonder, in the end, if ML has developed a sound methodological principle for extracting historicity from texts. Orsomething that strikes me more with the work of Garbiniin the end does he always know why he rejects one unlikely or unveried fact and accepts another? Rhetoric and aesthetics always play a large part in history writing, of course, and ML’s book is rhetorically and aesthetically elegant; I suspect a good deal of its plausibility lies in precisely this. Being sceptical or credulous may be a matter of predilection or of method. I can accept eitheras long I know the criteria. But it is important to explain why you jump one way or the other on even minor cases. I want to end with a quotation of Liverani’s from the Albright Centennial volume (Liverani 1996), because all history is in the end about the present, and this quote explains very well what motivates him and what he thinks is the value of his approach. At a time when the debate between various approaches to ancient Israelite and Judean history has become extremely political, I nd his words comforting as well as challenging: Ideological propaganda is far from dead (and will never die); on the contrary, it is winning the battle against counterinformation. And the study of ancient propaganda is far from being an obsolete and useless exercise; on the contrary, it is becoming more and more important, if we want to preserve our intellectual freedom. (pp. 284–85)

This book is ultimately about propaganda, and it is a very ne book, an excellent resource in the battle between information and counterinformation that is currently being waged over the question of ancient Israelite and Judean history. Bibliography Liverani, M. 1996. Ancient Propaganda and Historical Criticism. Pages 283–89 in The Study of the Ancient Near East in the 21st Century. Edited by Jerrold S. Cooper and Glenn M. Schwarz. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. ———. 2002. Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Edited and introduced by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop. London: Equinox.

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A RESPONSE TO JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP AND PHILIP R. DAVIES Mario Liverani

I am very grateful to my colleagues Joseph Blenkinsopp and Philip Davies for writing critical, but rather sympathetic, reviews of my book, and I accept their observations with no counter-reply. From the general friendly tone I suspect I am considered, to some extent, an “outsider,” but one with whom some amount of “conversation” can be had. This is, in my opinion, most welcome, since biblical studies has reached such a high level of development and complexity that an outsider straying into the eld runs the risk of appearing stupid and ignorant at the same time. Rather than discussing individual points raised by my reviewers, I have decided to explain (or better: try to explain) why I decided to engage with biblical studies, having previously produced only a few and, admittedly, modest studies related to the subject. I understand that the division of my book in the two parts, dealing with the “normal history” and the “invented history,” could have been considered as the result of a strategy aimed at locating myself in between the “minimalist” and “maximalist” camps. This is not, in fact, the case: I do not think the two groups are doing the same work in different (or opposing) ways—they are dealing with different problems, ones that cannot be reconciled or mediated. My message was rather that the history of Israel has two faces, to be investigated separately albeit with reciprocal inuence. My reasons for writing the book had nothing to do with the current dispute (although I could pretend that my older articles on Near Eastern historiography did have some impact on some aspects of the minimalist approach). I had at least three reasons for writing my book. The rst reason was the willingness to prove (to myself) that I was able to engage in more complex subjects than those usually available to a historian of Assyria. Ernest Renan once wrote: “L’étude exclusive des langues sémitiques ne pourrait enfanter de grands linguistes, pas plus que 1

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le spectacle de l’histoire de la Chine ne pourrait inspirer de grands historiens” (“The exclusive study of Semitic languages is not able to give birth to great linguists, no more so than the spectacle of the historian of China being able to inspire great historians”). My task was quite challenging (I wrote my book in two years), and the results, I admit, are questionable and to be subjected to the evaluation of competent scholars of the eld. But no doubt my temporary involvement in biblical studies produced the positive result of making me more attentive to such topics as memory and tradition, cultural history, interplay of religion and politics, and so on. By approaching a more difcult eld, I was the obvious beneciary. I hope this positive effect will become visible in my future output. The second motive was the attempt to demonstrate that Israel’s history is a part of the wider ancient Near Eastern history, no matter how diverse the respective available sources might be. Since the rediscovery of the Assyrian capital cities in mid-nineteenth century, it has become common practice to insert the history of Israel within the frame of the ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Yet this common practice still needs, in my opinion, to be modied in two ways: by awarding an equal historical rank to all the involved peoples and polities, and by awarding an equal value to all the evidence according to the rules of the historical research. Since the beginning, I have held the hope that my engagement in the history of the ancient Near East would produce the positive result of a correct insertion and appreciation of Israel in its Near Eastern context. In fact, in my estimation, this proved easier when dealing with the “actual history,” from the phase of imprinting to the collapse of the sixth century—and I think the two just-mentioned phases have in fact been claried better than had been done previously. But it proved rather difcult to do the same for the “invented history,” because the cuneiform sources of the later phases are too poor (not in themselves, but when compared to the biblical ones) to provide adequate supporting (or contrasting) material. The third motive was the attempt to provide the Italian audience (both my university students and a more general readership) with a decent treatise about a crucial subject. It is well known that Italy—for obvious reasons—has suffered more than other countries the impact of the religious value of the Bible on the free development of a normal methodology in historical and archaeological research. Now the problem is (almost) overcome at the level of scientic research, but not yet at the level of popular dissemination of its results: common people still have at their disposal presentations of ancient Israel that are seriously biased by 1

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religious factors. I tried therefore to write a history of ancient Israel having in mind an audience made up of “common people,” certainly built up of interested and cultured persons, but not the “professional” audience of my colleagues. Concepts and language had to be adapted to such a level that they were accessible to a general audience, while still making possible the treatment of complex historical junctures, ideological subtleties, long-term trends, and so on. To judge from the number of copies sold, and from the subsequent translations into various foreign languages, I can be satised on this third point: many people who had never read anything on the subject have now done so. I said at the outset of this response that I did not wish to reply on individual points raised by my reviewers. I took this decision for two reasons: rst, because I accept criticisms coming from competent colleagues (and in any instance where my statements have been misunderstood, the fault is mine); and, secondly, because after completing my book I turned to address other subjects (including the history of the Sahara in antiquity, the literary motifs in Assyrian royal inscriptions, the ancient oriental city, and Neo-Hittite archaeology). I confess that these new topics are now much more interesting (to me) than those already “done.” I am still naive enough to think that my next book will be much better (more important, more interesting, etc.) than the previous one. I love what remains to be done to such an extent that I become immediately disinterested in what I have just nished. As I noted above, I devoted two or three years to my history of Israel—now I have to devote more years to other projects, in the foolish hope of exhausting my list before I die.

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DAVID AT THE THRESHOLD OF HISTORY: A REVIEW OF STEVEN L. MCKENZIE, KING DAVID: A BIOGRAPHY (2000), AND

BARUCH HALPERN, DAVID’S SECRET DEMONS: MESSIAH, MURDERER, TRAITOR, KING (2001) Bob Becking

Portraits of David Googling “King David” resulted in more than 13,000 images, ancient and modern, medieval as well as imaginative, including Michelangelo and Frank Meisler. This large number is indicative of the symbolic importance of the Israelite king in all sorts of pictorial art. Next to that, David plays a role in Shakespearean drama1 and even a German novel is named after him.2 All these images of David can be seen as appropriations of the biblical character—or at least some features of him—into the cultural and societal context of the various artists.3 Through the ages, David is modelled and remodelled into a wide variety of gures. In the Hebrew Bible, King David is portrayed as an intriguing gure. The depiction of this king is colourful and multi-dimensional. In the narratives of Samuel and 1 Kings the reader meets a character of esh and blood. The author presents the image of a king who is just, but who 1. See, for example, J. A. Porter, The Drama of Speechacts: Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); D. Evett, “Types of King David in Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy,” Shakespeare Studies 18 (1981): 139–61. 2. Stefan Heym, Der König David Bericht: Roman (Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1973). 3. On this idea from cultural anthropology that is more and more applied in historical research, see, for example, B. Meyer, Translating the Devil: An African Appropriation of Pietist Protestantism: The Case of the Peki-Ewe in Southeastern Ghana (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995). 1

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nevertheless acts immorally on occasion; who is steered by wisdom, but who nevertheless falls prey to his passion and temper. In short, this king has lived through all ambivalence of human life and suffered from its ambiguity. Within the narrative world of the Hebrew Bible, David is said to have established the so-called United Monarchy of Israel and Judah and to have brought this empire-like state to its rst period of wealth and power. The interesting question would be—for a historian—whether this image of David could be linked to history, or—phrased otherwise—to what degree is the biblical picture of David to be seen as an ancient appropriation. Is the image original and can it be construed as an adequate depiction of the “historical David,” or is a repaint from later days with no or only a few original traits? And in case it turns out to be a repaint, two questions pop up: (1) How much later is “later”? And: (2) What interest would a later narrator have in presenting this image of David?4 The Problem of the Historical David In Old Testament scholarship, the narratives in the Books of Samuel and Kings are understood as parts of the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH).5 Scholars, however, do not agree as to the date and the extent of this literary corpus.6 The DtrH is seen as an exilic text in its nal composition (although some take it to be later), but as far as the narratives on David are concerned, this late composition is based on three older narratives: “The story of David’s rise to power”; “The succession account” and “The ark narrative.”7 These stories have been construed as reports by 4. For a recent survey, see W. Dietrich and T. Naumann, Die Samuelsbücher (Erträge der Forschung 287; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995). 5. See the thesis of M. Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1943). 6. For the “Smend school,” see W. Dietrich, Prophetie und Geschichte: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk (FRLANT 108; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); for the “Cross school,” see R. D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 18; Shefeld: JSOT, 1981). A helpful overview is to be found in T. Römer and A. de Pury, “Deuteronomistic Historiography (DH): History of Research and Debated Issues,” in Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research (ed. A. de Pury, T. Römer and J.-D. Macchi; JSOTSup 306; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2000), 24–141. 7. See the theory elaborated by L. Rost, Die Überlieferung von der Thronnachfolge Davids (BWANT 3/6; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1926). 1

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eyewitnesses of events from the Davidic period. In other words: traditional Old Testament scholarship takes them as trustworthy sources for a reconstruction of the Life of David. DtrH has adopted these narratives, but have applied some new paint: the Deuteronomists construed David as the ideal king by whose standard almost all later Judaean and Israelite kings turn out to be failures. Things have changed these last years, however. The stories about David are no longer generally construed as eyewitness reports. The composition of the stories is now dated much later, although a consensus has not been reached. Dietrich sees in them a Fürstenspiegel from the time of Hezekiah.8 Others deny the possibility that 1 and 2 Samuel would contain any authentic material from pre-exilic times. Persian period and even Hellenistic origin of the stories has been proposed.9 This implies that the writing of a “Life of David” has become a delicate enterprise, especially when biblical sources are used as proof for the historicity of various events. Theories of Truth At the background of all these discussions is the quest for the historical David. On a theoretical level two remarks must be made, though. (1) It seems naïve to suppose that the life of David can be reconstructed,10 as it is equally naïve to assume that the real historical Jesus can be reconstructed.11 At most, scholars can agree about a proposal for the construction of the past. (2) Any search for the historical David implies a view on what is true. Historical studies are not always transparent when it comes to the question of which theory of truth is implied in the discourse.

8. W. Dietrich, Die frühe Königszeit in Israel: 10. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (BibEnz 3; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1997). 9. See, for example, N. P. Lemche, “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?,” SJOT 7 (1993): 163–93; Lemche, Die Vorgeschichte Israels: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des 13. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (BibEnz 1; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1996), esp. 68–73; P. R. Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel” (JSOTSup 148; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 1992), esp. 57–71; T. L. Thompson, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Basic Books, 1999); J. W. Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible (JSOTSup 345; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2002). 10. See C. Lorenz, Konstruktion der Vergangenheit. Eine Einführung in die Geschichtstheorie (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997). 11. See, for example, J. Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 1

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In current debates in the pilosophy of science, three models or theories of truth are on stage and in competition: 1. The correspondence theory of truth. This theory applies very easily to traditional research in physics. The truth of a theory can be established—or not—by referring to reality. Newton’s law of gravity is true, since it corresponds to various phenomena in reality, such as apples falling to the ground or planets circulating in ellipses around the sun. In other words, a theory or a preposition is “true when there is a corresponding fact, and is false when there is no corresponding fact.”12 2. The coherence theory of truth. The traditional correspondence theory is problematical in many regards especially since the concepts “fact” and “reality” are not as clear as traditionally assumed. Facts are only known when dressed up in language or arithmetics. “Charlemagne was crowned in 800 C.E.” is not a fact, but a sentence describing an event. A mathematical formula, such as y = ax2 + bx + c, can only be seen as an interpretation or description of reality, not as reality itself. The coherence theory of truth assumes that proposition and theories are always linked to other theories. The assumption that the Higgs particle must exist is not true because this particle can be seen in reality, but because its assumed existence is coherent with the Standard or Grand Unied Theory of particles and forces.13 A model of God and his attributes is true not because someone has seen God, but because the various propositions in this model cohere with each other.14 3. The pragmatic theory of truth. This third theory takes the epistemological crisis seriously. According to this approach any theory is true as long as it works or as long as it guides us succesfully when we act upon it.15 This way of approaching truth can be seen

12. Denition by B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958 [original edition 1912]), 129. 13. See, for example, S. E. Hawking, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 14. See, for example, N. Rescher, The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973); O. Handlin, Truth in History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1979); W. J. Abraham, Divine Revelation and the Limits of Historical Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); F. R. Ankersmit, Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language (The Haag: Nijhoff, 1983); R. J. Evans, In Defence of History (London: Granta, 1997), esp. 75–102, 224–53. 15. See basically W. James, Essays in Pragmatism (edited with a brief Introduction by A. Castell; The Hafner Library of Classics 7; New York: Hafner, 1948). 1

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in contemporary politics, but is also at the basis of the majority of empirical sciences. The importance of this distinction for historical research becomes clear when looking at a remark made by Kyle McCarter some twenty years ago in regard of the search for the historical David: The Bible is our only source of information about David. No ancient inscription mentions him. No archaeological discovery can securely be linked to him. The quest for the historical David, therefore, is primarily exegetical.16

“No ancient inscription mentions him” should be seen as an attempt to correspond features of the life of David with the reality as described in ancient inscriptions, although it should be noted that ancient inscriptions do not equal the events they describe. McCarter’s view on the lack of archaeological data for David can be seen as a remark in the mode of a coherence theory. It seems to me that he is opting for the position that a specic (re)construction of the life of David can be more true than another one, when it would cohere with archaeological ndings or theories based on such ndings. McCarter’s conclusion that the “quest for the historical David, therefore, is primarily exegetical” seems to be a pragmatic choice for two reasons: (1) when there is no other evidence the historian must work with the available sources, even when it is clear that they are late and biased; (2) the propositions in the book of Samuel on the acts of David especially when sifted by the process of interpretation are haphazard and unconnected data: The historian is in need of a more general framework within which the “data” can have their pragmatic function. Two Recent Books Recently, two “lives of David” appeared—written by Steven McKenzie17 and Baruch Halpern.18 McKenzie does not aim at a novelistic retelling of the David story or at some other literary representation of this intriguing gure. His goal is to (re)construct David’s biography in such a way that other historians could share his proposal as an adequate depiction

16. P. K. McCarter, “The Historical David,” Int 40 (1986): 117–29 (117). 17. S. L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 18. B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). 1

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of the past. His starting point is the above remark by Kyle McCarter.19 Basically, Halpern follows the same strategy, though less thematically organized. Epigraphic Evidence McKenzie’s way to the historical David is methodologically paved. The rst step is of an epigraphic character: Are there contemporary extrabiblical texts in which David is mentioned that might shed light on this gure? Here, McKenzie differs from Halpern who takes his start in the biblical text—which is, however, read with fair suspicion—and discusses the epigraphic evidence only in passing. McKenzie refers to three pieces of evidence. The rst piece of evidence is the much-debated Tel Dan Inscription(s). On 21 July 1993 a piece of basalt bearing an ancient North West Semitic inscription was unearthed during an archaeological campaign at Tel Dan, formerly Tell el-Qdi. About one year later two other inscribed fragments were found at the same site. The inscriptions, which were admirably and quickly published by Biran and Naveh,20 occasioned an intense and sometimes heated21 discussion among scholars on such questions as the authenticity of the text(s), the date and language—Hebrew, Aramaic or a mixed dialect—of the inscription(s), the possibility of a join between the fragments, and the identity of the morpheme 5H5EJ3—“House of David” or “Temple of the deity Dôd”—in line 9 of the inscription.22 I 19. In fact, McKenzie analyses the three propositions implied in McCarter’s statement in the given order. 20. A. Biran and J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” IEJ 43 (1993): 81–98; Biran and Naveh, “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” IEJ 45 (1995): 1–18. 21. As especially reected in the titles of the following studies: H. Shanks, “ ‘David’ Found at Dan,” BAR 20, no. 2 (1994): 26–39; P. R. Davies, “ ‘House of David’ Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers,” BAR 20, no. 4 (1994): 54–55; A. F. Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” BAR 20, no. 6 (1994): 47 (Rainey warns the reader in his subtle subtitle “Davies is an amateur who can ‘safely be ignored’ ”); see also N. P. Lemche, “ ‘The House of David”: The Tel Dan Inscription,” online at http://biblical-studies. blogspot.com/2005/02/lemche-on-tel-dan.html. 22. An outline of the most important contributions to the debate is found on pp. 11–14 of A. Lemaire, “The Tel Dan Stela as a Piece of Royal Historiography,” JSOT 81 (1998): 3–14. See also G. Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation (JSOTSup 360; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 2003); L. J. Mykytiuk, Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200–539 B.C.E. (SBL Academia Biblica 12; Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 110–32. 1

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will not repeat or summarize the discussion here but only state that a consensus has not been reached yet. McKenzie accepts the historicity of the inscription as well as the standard “join” of the fragments A + B1 and B2 to one coherent text. This implies that in his view, about a century and a half after the alleged life of David, this king was known as the founding father of the dynasty that ruled the southern part of Israel. In other words, the Tel Dan Inscription is seen as an independent witness to the historicity of David. Nevertheless, McKenzie warns his readers that “names are not stories.” The historicity of David does not imply automatically the trustworthiness of the stories in 1 and 2 Samuel.23 The recent analysis of the inscription by George Athas, however, underscored the view that three fragmants (A; B1 + B2) should be regarded as pieces of one and the same inscription. Fragment A contains the remnants of the upper part of the inscription while fragments B1 + B2 should be placed below fragment A.24 Athas’ view also has implications for the historical context of the inscription. In view of the archaeological ndings at Tel Dan, the inscription should be construed as referring to events that took place in the early part of the eighth century BCE. Athas makes a strong case that the “king of 5H5EJ3” mentioned in A:8–9 is Joash and that his son Amaziah is referred to in B:8.25 His analysis not only reinforces the idea that two different military conicts were related in the Tel Dan Inscription, but also that the events narrated took place several decades after the death of Jehu. Although Athas’ analysis has claried various points from the reign of King Jehu, it has no implications whatsoever for the historicity of David. The second piece of evidence that McKenzie brings in is the Moabite inscription of King Meša.26 According to a new reading of this inscription, proposed by André Lemaire, line 31 should be read as follows: And the House of [Da]vid dwelt in Horonen.27

In the following, though broken lines, Kemoš—the Moabite god—orders King Meša to reclaim Horonen and surroundings for the kingdom of 23. McKenzie, King David, 11–13. 24. Athas, Tel Dan Inscription, 189–91; the idea had previously been suggested by Biran and Naveh, “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” 11; Dietrich, Frühe Königszeit, 140. 25. Athas, Tel Dan Inscription, 255–98. 26. McKenzie, King David, 13–15. 27. A. Lemaire, “ ‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20, no. 3 (1994): 30–37. 1

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Moab. According to McKenzie, the presence of the name “David” in the Meša stela is less certain than in the Tel Dan Inscription. Nevertheless, it makes the historicity of David plausible, although the text does not give any information on the life of David.28 The third piece of evidence is the Sheshonq Relief. Finally, McKenzie29 refers to Kitchen’s proposal to read in the famous relief of Pharaoh Sheshonq carved on the temple of Amun in Thebes the following: “the highlands/heights of David (d-w-t).”30 Were Kitchen’s proposal true, then “David” would refer to a clan living in the hills of central Palestine in the ninth century B.C.E. His proposal, however, is quite speculative, as even McKenzie accepts.31 This implies that no historical conclusion can be drawn based upon the Sheshonq Relief. McKenzie’s conclusion on the basis of the epigraphic evidence is both clear and sound. The references open the lane for accepting David as a historical gure, but no information on his deeds and doings is given in them. Phrased in the language of a correspondence theory of truth, the historicity of David can be seen as true, since it corresponds to evidence from reality. This is a restricted truth, since it only holds for the gure of David, but not for the various stories on him. In his work, Halpern makes comparable remarks on the inscriptions, albeit in less detail. He accepts that the Tel Dan stela underscores the historicity of David as person.32 He makes no comment on Lemaire’s reconstruction of the Meša stela.33 The reference to “the highlands of David” in the Sheshonq Relief is seen by him as a possible reconstruction of a text that ts in what he calls “a web of references to Israelite Kings in foreign inscriptions.” The existence of this web as such is proof for Halpern of historicity of Israel’s early kings.34 With this remark, Halpern is applying a coherence theory of truth—as can easily be understood from the use of the noun “web,” signifying a coherent set of evidence. Very important is to see that Halpern uses extra-biblical sources as a model to read the Hebrew text. In fact, he takes seriously the advice by John Barton that an interpreter of texts needs to develop a literary 28. McKenzie, King David, 15. 29. Ibid., 15–16. 30. K. A. Kitchen, “A Possible Mention of David in the Late Tenth Century B.C.E., and the Deity *Dod as Dead as the Dodo?,” JSOT 76 (1997): 29–44. 31. McKenzie, King David, 15–16. 32. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, 71. 33. Ibid., 268–69. 34. Ibid., 71–72, 266–68. 1

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competence for reading these texts.35 Halpern therefore analyses the “language” of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, especially those from the times of Tiglath-pileser III, to arrive at the conclusion that these texts have an ideological bias and that much of its language is of a hyperbolic character.36 This acquired competence gives him a set of criteria by which to read the book of Samuel and to construct the historical reality behind the traditions. Archaeological Traces McCarter states that “No archaeological discovery can securely be linked to him [= David].”37 This brings McKenzie to his second methodological move. He argues that McCarter is correct—there are no archaeological traces that can be linked to David.38 It should be noted that in making the claim, both McCarter and McKenzie deviate from the traditional route constructed by the Albright school. On this road Davidic fortications and Solomonic stables were found—and sometimes are still mapped. According to McKenzie, we do not stand empty handed. Archaeological evidence reveals that at the shift from Iron I to Iron IIA an increase of the population in the Israelite and Judaean territories can be detected. According to McKenzie, an increase of the population implied a greater pressure on the natural resources and could easily lead to the spreading of the population over a greater area of land and in case these areas were already populated to armed encounters.39 Halpern devotes a full chapter to the archaeology of David’s reign.40 His presentation of the evidence runs partly parallel to McKenzie’s demographic approach, but next to that Halpern argues that a variety of archaeologically recovered remains of the past hint at considerable building activities during the period of the United Monarchy. Halpern dates the remains of city gates and fortications at Megiddo, Gezer, and Hazor to the times of David and Solomon. Halpern seems to be in favour of the “high chronology” over a “low chronology.” His argument seems to have the form of a correspondence theory, but it should be assessed as an example of a coherence theory. His references to reality are always 35. J. Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (2d ed.; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1996), 8–19. 36. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, 124–32. 37. McCarter, “Historical David,” 117. 38. McKenzie, King David, 17–24. 39. Ibid., 20–23. 40. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, 427–78. 1

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references to biblical texts, by which he xes the relative chronology of the archaeological layers. In other words: his proposal to see the footsteps of David’s soldiers and Solomon’s craftsmen in the archaeological archive is coherent with the relative chronology and with his personal reading of the biblical texts. Although I am not an archaeologist by profession, and therefore unable to check McKenzie’s and Halpern’s claims, I nevertheless am inclined to say that they both might be correct. There is, however, one great methodological pitfall that I would label “the pliancy of the double biography”41—by which I mean there are two kinds of biography for David: (a) the archaeologically based one and (b) the one based on the written traditions in the Hebrew Bible. Both have their gaps. It is time and again difcult to avoid lling the gaps in the one by details from the other. Exegesis The third and nal step is a form of close reading of the biblical narratives. This has been done by both McKenzie and Halpern, though in different ways. McKenzie correctly takes account of the Gattung of the narratives. The stories about David are moulded in apologetic language. The biblical authors portray David as a hero, albeit a very human hero with weak features. The authors want to protect their hero. McKenzie develops two reading strategies for doing his job as a detective in search of historical truth behind the biased testimony of the witnesses. At rst, he takes the stand of a sceptic who deals with the evidence using a fresh portion of good sense and distrust. Next to that he applies the technique of “reading against the grain,” or—more elegantly phrased—he bases his reading on the principle of cui bono—who prots? His reading of 1 Sam 25 is a good example. Here the triangular relation between David, Nabal and Abigail is narrated. David acts as some sort of “warlord” who asks Nabal, the local sheikh at Hebron, for protection money. Nabal refuses to pay. His wife Abigail, however, encounters David with the aim of propitiating and appeasing him. It does not take much time before Nabal is killed and David marries Abigail. Through this marriage David acquires the rights and duties of the sheikh of Hebron. The biblical writers do everything to avoid a connection 41. I owe this metaphor to Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries, 133–44, who shows that later tradition dovetailed the double biographies of Jesus and Saint Francis. 1

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between David and the murder of Nabal. But, since David clearly prots from Nabal’s untimely death, McKenzie suggests David to be an accomplice in this case (and probably many others).42 Another instrument that is applied by McKenzie is the search for adequate analogies. That seems to be trivial. We had better not compare David as king with our present-day constitutional monarchs, with their restricted roles in society and politics. David resembles more the eastern head of a clan who works towards a central power base (e.g. King Feisal or the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein43). Applying these instruments, McKenzie very carefully reads the narratives on David. Reading through his book a third criterion seems to lurk in the background. At several instances, McKenzie operates with the concept of “more logic versus less logic.” In other words, he accepts some constructions of the past since they seem to be more logical. Do we detect here the last glimpses of a positivistic view on history? To what result? McKenzie’s David is a young man from an upper middle class family who—in the absence of economic means—went his own way, who wandered about as a war-lord, offering his services to anyone who would pay—be it King Saul or the Philistines—and who in doing so built a solid power base that he later expanded through marriages. Using Hebron as springboard he was able to gain control of Judah and Israel. Once king, he turned out to be a good administrator and a tremendous strategist. In short, David was a very human being who took advantage of the changes in society brought about by an increase of population and was more of a macho than the gallant image of the little shepherd-boy would suggest.44 Halpern, too, takes his starting point in the Gattung of the narratives in Samuel and Kings. He even tries to dene this Gattung by comparison with other ancient Near Eastern narratives.45 This implies that in Halpern’s view, the biblical account of David is to be construed as propaganda “stemming from circles close to David and Solomon.”46 In a next step he reads in a way comparable to McKenzie by looking at the other side of the stories. Halpern basically reads them not from the perspective of David’s friends, but from the point of view of David’s enemies. This focus gives the reader of Halpern’s book a surprising view on the historical David. According to Halpern, “the resulting picture is 42. McKenzie, King David, 94–101. 43. McKenzie’s book was written before the second Gulf War. 44. See now G. Mobley, The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition in Ancient Israel (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 19–74. 45. The Tiglath-pileser connection. 46. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, xiv. 1

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not a pretty one.”47 Like McKenzie’s David, Halpern’s David is a round character, a recognizably human being. In fact, Halpern mirrors story and history. The esh-and-blood man David, the man without control over his demons was defended by the storyteller in the biblical picture of a brilliant and heroic king. In taking the present story as a counter-testimony to the “real David,” Halpern constructs a historical narrative with a basis in history, although he admits that his reading of an anti-David is a proposal with no other evidence and is based in part on imagination.48 A very important reason for Halpern to take the biblical accounts about David seriously, historically speaking, is his assumption, or his belief, that they were written in favor of King Solomon and henceforth would stem from the tenth century B.C.E. From a methodological point of view, both portraits of David can be seen as—probably unconscious—attempts to follow the recipe of the postmodern historian Hayden White.49 White makes a clear distinction between “research” and “writing.” Research leads to the lining-up of unconnected propositions on the past. It is the historian who, in an autonomous narrative, offers a representation that by denition is not factual and must compete with other autonomous narratives. Both McKenzie and Halpern have shown that the postmodernist distinction between the factual and the narrated is at least limited by the factual. Not every narratio on David would be adequate. Not every appropriation of this king—be it in words or pictorial form—can be assessed as successful. The, albeit scarce, evidence hinders the presentation of a historical portrait of David as the brother of Che Guevara, although from a hermeneutical point of view such a portrait might be revealing. Truth or Dare McKenzie’s and Halpern’s Davids are both daring construction. One of the greater merits is the fact that there is much internal consistency in both of them: the parts of the puzzle t each other. The unanswarable question would be whether one of the two is more correct than the other. That question, however, is unanswerable in view of the existing evidence, which is very scarce. Besides, it should be noted that the model 47. Ibid., xv. 48. Ibid., 101. 49. See especially H. V. White, The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 1

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for testing used in various sciences to verify or, better, falsify hypotheses and propositions by formulating and implementing repeatable tests. Since time is irreversible, historical propositions and hypotheses cannot be tested this way. Neither McKenzie not Halpern can be taken as incorrect or correct. From a pragmatic point of view, one has to say that both portraits work in the sense that they help to understand the complex person of King David. In the end, we have to accept that David is only at the threshold of history and that the few epigraphic references now available are as yet unable to bring him over the threshold into the room of clear knowledge.

1

DAVID AND THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION: A COUNTERPOINT IN EVOCATION Baruch Halpern

A recent study of the dog unsurprisingly emphasizes the importance of odor to that animal’s perception. It goes further, however, psychologically. Odor is borne on the wind, sometimes from what lies ahead. It is present in one’s surroundings. It can be detected by careful snifng to reveal the less immediate past.1 As someone who once wrote about dogs as local historians, microhistorians in the current terminology, I am acutely aware of the limitations not just of knowledge, and of our tendency and need to impose the logic of what is familiar on what is alien, but also of our own poor means of perception, the limitations of our epistemology. The postmodern project, which was succeeded in literary theory by the ineptly dubbed New Historicism (neither new nor rightly named to succeed something post: pure newspeak), involved the invocation of uncertainty to invalidate any positive results. All knowledge, and especially all language, is ctive, and therefore encodes subjectivity— translated in many cases as oppression. However, the recognition that language is ctive is old enough to be hackneyed. It is not just that Cassirer is explicit about the matter in An Essay on Man. The response of Samuel Johnson to Bishop George Berkeley’s reported Kantian claim that only our perceptions count, and matter may not exist—he kicked a stone, “I refute him thus”—is paleoconservative, but right enough on the correspondence theory of truth. Similarly Hume’s rueful addendum, at the end of his Dialogues on Natural Religion, after having demolished human epistemology: it matters whether I leave my room by the door or by the window. And of course the Russell–Whitehead school of analytical philosophy, whose 1. Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know (New York: Scribner, 2009). 1

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precepts led to logical positivism and such gures as Carnap, spent its time attempting to establish knowledge on a mathematical foundation— only to run into two insuperable difculties. The rst is that detailed by Russell himself at the start of his autobiography: The young Russell begged his older brother to teach him geometry. Finally, the harassed sibling gave in. Alright, he said, the rst thing you must know is that parallel lines never meet. Russell asked for proof, repeatedly, refused to accept the idea without it. He fastened onto that timeless, genetically transmitted, childhood word, “Why?,” and an equally jejune, “Prove it.” Exasperated, his tutor ultimately burst out: because, if you don’t accept that, we cannot go on. Axioms are unavoidable, even Bertrand Russell eventually gured out. An even stouter nail in the cofn of logical positivism was developed by the positivists themselves, and particularly Wittgenstein, who, in his later years, insisted that there were no philosophical problems, only puzzles. The conclusion followed, in a way, from his claim, at the end of the Tractatus, that some questions, the most important questions, could not be addressed philosophically—metaphysical questions, ethical questions—but only in silence (hence the title of George Steiner’s book, Language and Silence). This reticence was reinvented in the Vienna Circle as a rejection of metaphysics—of “nonsense”—not least by Wittgenstein himself. The gang gladly accepted the contribution of Kurt Gödel, on the logical incompleteness of all mathematical, and thus symbol, systems. And yet even this, the hammer that drove the nail home, was insufcient to spike the quixotic quest for epistemological certainty, the procrustean bed of algorithmic procedures, the fool’s gold of falsiability, or its cousin, reproducibility, as a test of signicance, and an increasing bitterness at philosophy’s frustration in its attempt to achieve theoretical rigor. Metaphysics was drivel, not the function of real philosophy. Language, if anything, got in the way of science. This brief history does no more than conrm Gödel’s strictures, which were themselves, however, mathematically proven. The point is, even the philosopher’s stone crumbles to sand when tested against the diamond hardness of demands for certainty. Similarly, the ctive nature of perception, including perception of the self, is an old idea. It is implicit already in the Heraclitan claim that dream-worlds are individual and thus solipsistic, whereas the world about which one can communicate is common (xenon), and thus in communication, language, lies a reality. In more modern terms, conditioned perhaps by Bergson, or by Alexandra Horowitz, we might say that there is an evolutionary perceptual reality to those matters that humans can speak about in common, that the relations 1

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among perception, thought, formulation and communication are complex, in part dialectical, and hardly less than a function of our changing minds. There is thus a reality out there somewhere—even Berkeley would have conceded that, however his heart might have been quickened by the discovery of quarks and quanta, and, as a probable dog-hater, Schrödinger’s Cat (there’s an arguable equivalence, completely unintended but susceptible to misunderstanding, in that collocation, at some epistemological level). We just fumble in nding ways to conceptualize it socially. We’re great at learning to predict the behavior of solids, the ight of the ball or even frisbee, even allowing for spin and wind (and that goes for dogs chasing frisbees). But talking about it in daily language, in the terms in which we actually apprehend it, rather than in mathematics—well, that’s pretty elusive stuff. “I just knew where it would hit” is not exactly a communication; and yet, in its inspecicity and old-fashioned Johnson-ism, it is a statement that sharing such perceptions, or those about any reexes, is, well, nonsense. Even when we can subsume it under the framework of Newtonian physics. All this means, the perceived is of value, other than for purely individual survival—hardly an adaptive trait—mainly in its communicability. This is hardly Hayden White, whom Arnaldo Momigliano thought outdated from the moment he burst on the scene; yet White’s Metahistory is, to my mind, stripped of its embrication in postmodernist pseudo-antiscience, a model of historiographic analysis.2 Communication is the common, the waking self in society, the evolutionary plus. But it has a limitation: it is ctive, metaphoric, representational rather than comprehensive. We perceive what evolutionary needs dictate, and not what they do not. We communicate on the same basis—although discussions of this ilk are perhaps mere spandrels. And the knowledge, even the research, is equally ctive: ideally, one starts with data to construct a chain of relations, in the hope of creating an explanation, preferably narrative; but it is the nature of the explanation, even if one is supple enough to adapt it as one goes, that determines what kinds of further data one seeks. This holds for natural science as well, and is one of its own greatest limitations, for any knowledge selects and excludes contingencies, covariants and factors. And, in fact, what data one starts with depends in no small measure on one’s frame of mind, the questions to which one is open. So, the assault on the ctive nature of knowledge, its reductionism and abbreviation and communication in a common language, would have surprised Heraclitus only for its unargued negativity. The idea of 2. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). 1

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emplotment and even tropes, central to White, has also been familiar not just to those writing about events from different sides of cultural or political divides, or reacting to predecessors (Thucydides, Polybius, Gibbon), but even to those who have considered how a story might be told for different audiences (Macaulay). Gibbon writes: As soon as I understood the principle I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted, before my mind was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the ner feelings of moral evidence, which must, however, determine the actions and opinions of our lives.3

But in postmodernist discourse, the discovery that knowledge is ctional is also central to a critique of its implication in culture. What was once an embrace of ction as a mode of knowledge is now a rejection of it as nonsense, or worse, a tool of conspiracy. The assumption that we can adopt any ction at all, that we are free to choose our ctions, implies that any fallout from the ones we do choose are deliberate, intended to maintain existing, and always oppressive, social relations. Bob Becking’s judicious review eschews the view that any ction at all will do. Fact, or at least those things we x on, the products of our axiomatic thought, limit the imagination. One can represent David as a greater or lesser hero or villain, in a larger or smaller context, more or less thematically focused—on society, politics, economics, for example. But, as Becking points out, one cannot represent him persuasively as Che’s sibling. No two representations will or should converge, though some will always be congruent with others, as in many respects Steve McKenzie’s and mine are. But the object of my own historiographic exercise was far from being a portrait of David as he was; rather, in adopting as best I could, through the exercise of imagination limited, albeit imperfectly, by facts, the perspective of some of his detractors, I hoped to show him in the round, as a public gure whose impact was in some ways measurable by us, as a genuine historical gure of some variety. What we can know about David epigraphically is that he was thought of as a dynasty founder, which in any other Near Eastern context would mean that he was one. What we can know, too, is that he required an apology, or that Solomon did. And it is in the nature of the apology that we nd the issues that evoked it. There are other forms of evidence— from geography, from philology, from various elements of archaeology, 3. E. Gibbon, “Memoirs of My Life and Writings,” in Autobiography: Illustrated from His Letters, with Occasional Notes and Narratives (London, 1846), 88. 1

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including regional settlement patterns, public buildings, architectural forms, social organization and so on, and from other typological sources. To my mind, these exclude any date for 2 Samuel after the seventh century B.C.E. even notionally. But these are matters we can all discuss: How secure is the philological or archaeological or historiographic evidence? To what degree of probability does the evidence preclude a Hellenistic date? For, in the ction of history, scholars negotiate standards of evidence and interpretation. There is more room for such negotiation than in the natural sciences, partly because, as Robert Merton repeatedly observed, the shared standards of the latter are easily won. They are won by excluding “nonsense”—propositions not subject to conrmation under rules arrived at by axiom and theorem. Most of the exclusions abide, over time. Others do not, or all geometry would still be bound to planes, the earth surrounded by ocean, the universe geocentric, gods anthropomorphic and predisposed to communicate through specialists—every one of which “advances” in “knowledge” is rst a matter of perspective, as opposed to the phlogiston theory of pyrolysis. With historical evidence, some subelds enjoy shared standards. In particular, philology can verge on the mathematical, although the absolute dating of transitions is no more secure than that of radiocarbon. But even with shared standards, there is no conclusive proof against indictment. Nor is there, ever, a +/- answer to any signicant question that will avoid the test of new information or new perspectives. Our discussions are always part of a process, although for some evolutionary reason we aggrandize our contributions to be the end of the discussion. Scholars, tasked with reopening canons, always think they have the last word. Fiction as a way of organizing knowledge has undeniable, and insuperable, limitations. But it has advantages as well. Its rejection is a function of literalism and ignorance as to the nature of literalism. Its embrace is the embrace of a world in which there is no single truth, but multiple windows on truth. So, any signicant historical claim always involves “nonsense.” In that sense, Professor Becking’s review stops just a little short—but not much.

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THE BIG MAX: REVIEW OF A BIBLICAL HISTORY OF ISRAEL, BY IAIN PROVAN, V. PHILIPS LONG, AND TREMPER LONGMAN, III Lester L. Grabbe

The terms “maximalist” and “minimalist” get thrown around a lot in contemporary discussions about the history of ancient Israel. It seems to me that they are often employed inappropriately, if we accept a widely used denition of the terms.1 By that description, only a few minimalists exist and hardly any maximalists, at least in mainstream scholarship. Yet now, in The Biblical History of Israel, by Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III (PLL),2 we see what looks to me like a genuine maximalist work. What sort of history do we get when maximalists write it? The rst thing that strikes the reader on opening the book is that out of a text of approximately three hundred pages, one hundred—a full 34 percent—are devoted to the question of how to write history. We should expect a preface or introductory chapter explaining the authors’ approach, general principles, and the like—the book would be decient without such an explanation. But why should only 66 percent of the text be devoted to the actual history? This seems strange. This long introductory chapter includes a survey of how history has been written in the past two centuries. The discussion is prolix, turgid, 1. William W. Hallo claims to have coined this denition: Hallo (2005, 50), citing Hallo (1980, 3–5, nn. 4, 11, 12, 23, 55). E. A. Knauf dened the “minimalist approach” as “everything which is not corroborated by evidence contemporary with the events to be reconstructed is dismissed” and “the maximalist approach which implies that everything in the sources that could not be proved wrong has to be accepted as historical” (Knauf 1991, 171). 2. The authors and their book will be collectively referred to as “PLL” in the rest of this review. While not entirely satisfactory, it seems preferable to more cumbersome abbreviations. 1

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and meandering, but does it accomplish its purpose? The point that seems to be emphasized is that the “scientic” approach dominated history writing from the Enlightenment until recent times. Sometimes this is expressed as “positivism,” though use of this term is potentially confusing: surveys of the development of historiography tend to use “positivism” mainly of those historians in the tradition of Comte, such as Henry Thomas Buckle, Hippolyte Taine, and perhaps John Bagnall Bury. PLL have acknowledged using E. Breisach’s overview as the basis for their survey (p. 306 n. 35). Yet when Breisach speaks of positivists in the twentieth century, he seems to use the term primarily of such individuals as Carl Hemper and Carl Popper, who were philosophers of science, though they made pronouncements on history (1994, 327–29). Other standard surveys seem to want to avoid the term “positivism” (e.g. Iggers 1975, 1997; Evans 1997), while the reference Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writings (Boyd 1999) does not have an entry on positivism. When I read the historiographic surveys of Breisach (1994), Iggers (1975, 1997), Evans (1997), and other professional historians,3 I do not recognize the PLL characterization of historiographical development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, expressed in such statements as, By the end of the 1880s, this history-as-science had replaced philosophy as the discipline to which many educated people in Europe and elsewhere in the Western world turned as the key that would unlock the mysteries of human life. (p. 21)

I began to wonder whether they are using “positivist” simply as a synonym for “objective,” since Ranke is described by the term “quasipositivism,” even though he “stopped well short of a full-blown scientic positivism” (p. 22). But then various objectors to positivism are described, including J. G. Droysen, W. Dilthey, and B. Croce (pp. 39– 43), and they hardly rejected the concept of objectivity in history writing. Also, the contrast of “science” and “philosophy” in relation to history, made by PLL (see the quote above), seems an articial one, since the application of science to history is couched in a particular philosophy of history. But then I became completely ummoxed when I read further (on p. 42): We may with condence say, then, that the whole movement of the last century was in general a movement away from the notion that history is a science and back towards the notion that history is an art.

3. See my own survey of trends in writing history in Grabbe 2004. 1

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How does this square with the earlier statement quoted above? Did “science”/“positivism” dominate history writing from the late nineteenth century or did it not? I think most working historians would see what they do as both science and art. But the fact is that most contemporary historians are not overly concerned with historical theory; at least, that has been my rm impression. When I talk to members of the History Department in my own university, they do not usually agonize over whether to use postmodernism or follow some particular philosopher of history. Indeed, it is difcult to nd anyone interested in discussing historical theory or method: apart from an introductory class or two, it seems to be taken for granted. Their concern is in having resources to visit archives or to develop the library collection in their specialist area and in having the time away from teaching and administration to do their research. This impression is reinforced by a comment by Allen Megill, “Even in the late 20th century, most historians are largely unconcerned with the theory of their discipline” (1999, 1:540). PLL’s discussion leads up to the presentation of contemporary history as choosing between being an intellectual ostrich, a postmodernist, or taking their own approach. Since most contemporary historians do not take the PLL approach, does this mean they either “deny reality” or base their work on postmodernist principles? An emphasis seems to be placed on the view that historians cannot be objective. This applies not just to textual sources but also to archaeology. Artifacts do not speak for themselves; they have to be interpreted. Archaeology is no more objective than any other source. Again, one is somewhat surprised at their discussion. Postmodernism has certainly had its inuence, but it is fair to say that there is only a handful of truly postmodernist historians. While most historians recognize that some of the issues raised by postmodernists are relevant to writing history, most also believe that the historian can maintain a certain objectivity and that some access to the past is possible. Most believe that some approaches are preferable to others and that even though there is an inevitable subjectivity in the process, proper writing of history is not the same as writing ction. (Mis)quotation of Hayden White does not make history just another form of ction. PLL do give one innovation, however: the appeal to the importance of “testimony.” It is difcult to pretend that real historians accept this view, and most space is given over to defending the concept rather than suggesting that other historians would agree. This is a difcult concept to defend, in large part because it is never made clear what is meant by “testimony.” The idea seems rst to have been raised by Provan (see Provan 2000), but neither his original discussion nor the discussion in 1

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PLL really claries what is meant.4 For example, is archaeology a form of testimony? A statement on p. 55 seems to say so, but the statement on p. 63 seems to say the opposite. If I am anywhere close to understanding what they are getting at, then any account of an event—no matter how late or how ignorant the author—has historical value. It does not seem to be eye-witness knowledge, which is castigated (p. 49). Indeed, a secondary source centuries after the event seems to have as much value as an eye-witness primary source. What is more, eye-witness testimony has no preference because it can be unreliable. They are quite right about the problems with eye witnesses and the possible distortions that eye-witness accounts may contain, but if there were no eye witnesses, how do we know anything about an event? In their enthusiasm to debunk eye-witness sources, they seem to have missed that without eye witnesses, we are unlikely to know anything about many sorts of historical incidents, at a time when photography, sound recordings, and the like were not available. PLL should have given some thought to that before getting carried away in discounting the importance of eye witnesses. When PLL nally get to the actual question of history, they do indeed write a “biblical” history of Israel—in the sense of giving a version of events that is essentially a paraphrase of the biblical account. Two questions arise: rst, why is the amount of space given to certain events out of proportion to their value as history? This seems to depend in part on the amount of biblical material available, but not necessarily. For example, the 350 years between the time of Solomon and the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar receives only 25 pages (pp. 259–84)—or 8 percent of the text. Secondly, while the biblical outline is evident, the details are often skipped over. There is not enough space, of course, to treat all the details, but this means that many problematic and embarrassing details are simply ignored. At this point, I want to focus on one major example to illustrate some of the problems I see with their approach. This example is PLL’s discussion of the settlement of Israel in the land of Canaan (pp. 138–92). Not only is this an important area where standard scholarship argues against the biblical picture, but PLL also spend a considerable amount of space discussing the topic. At rst blush, there are a number of positive 4. Those dealing in oral history sometimes use the term “testimony” to refer to the statements made in an oral context. See, for example, the various contributions to Perks and Thomson 1998. Yet I do not believe that this is the way that PLL are using “testimony.” Also, it should be noted that the term “written testimony” can be used as well as “oral testimony” (Perks and Thomson 1998, 41). 1

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features in this discussion: difculties with the biblical picture are acknowledged, caution in interpretation and drawing conclusions is encouraged, both biblical and extra-biblical material are discussed, and conclusions are presented as a personal view rather than a dogmatic assertion (but see below). After a survey of current theories, PLL begin by analyzing Joshua and Judges. This is an understandable place to begin (though I would have begun with the primary sources, a concept they reject5). Time and again the authors assert that the text has to be properly read, and castigating references are made to “at, literalistic (mis)readings of biblical texts” (p. 149). PLL advise “caution against simplistic, literalistic readings” (p. 153) and “avoidance of a simplistic approach” (p. 167). Texts “should not be read in a at, literalistic way” (p. 153) or given a “wooden reading” (p. 196). A good example of this involves numbers. When the Bible says that “600,000 men on foot” (besides women and children: Exod 12:37; Num 10:21) went out of Egypt, and a census gives the gure of 603,550 men (not counting Levites: Num 1:46; 2:32), an alternative explanation is quoted (p. 130). No judgment is made (“space does not permit a full presentation…and it may not in the nal analysis be correct”—p. 131), but the conclusion is: “Numbers in the biblical narrative frequently have purposes other than merely to communicate literal fact” (p. 131). Similarly, the chronological gures in the book of Judges: All these gures added together would yield some 573 years (plus the unspecied years of the elders who outlived Joshua), a sum far in excess of 1 Kings 6:1’s 480 years. Obviously, simply adding gures together wreaks havoc with a fteenth-century exodus, to say nothing of a thirteenth-century one. Are we to conclude that the biblical data are simply confused?… Taking all this into account, we can easily see the difculty (perhaps impossibility) of establishing a precise chronology of the period of the judges; there are simply too many open variables. This conclusion does not mean that the book of Judges is unreliable, only that it must be taken on its own terms. (pp. 163–64)

So how is the text to be read? Apparently, texts cannot be taken at face value because this would be reading them in a at, wooden, literalistic way. It is admitted that some texts are expressed “in hyperbolic terms” (p. 153); reference is made to the “hyperbolic character of the summary” (p. 153); another passage mentions “more hyperbole” (p. 154). Sometimes the text sounds “exaggerated” (p. 154). There might even be— would you believe it?—a not “total absence of anachronism” (p. 116). 5. See pp. 64–65. 1

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But all of this is presented with a slightly indulgent air—like a father shaking his head at the antics of a favourite son. For it soon becomes clear that in the eyes of PLL, the text can never simply be mistaken: we just need to understand it “on its own terms.” If you or I made such statements, other scholars—including PLL—would point out that we were misleading, inaccurate, or just plain wrong. But never the biblical text: it may be “hyperbolic,” “exaggerated,” not free of “anachronism”— but never wrong. For example: If, for instance, one were to overlook the hyperbolic character of the summary of Joshua’s southern campaign found in Joshua 10:40—Joshua “left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed”—then the discovery…that many Canaanites survived would appear to constitute a contradiction. The problem, however, would lie not with the text but with the inappropriate construal of the texts. (p. 153) The rst part of the summary (11:16–20) is an intriguing combination of generalities and specics, of history and theology, of hyperbole and restraint. In one sense, the claim that “Joshua took all that land” (v. 16) sounds exaggerated, because he clearly did not take every city (some were not taken until David’s day) and even some whole regions, such as the coastal plain, are not mentioned in the description that follows. In another sense, however, the statement may be quite accurate, claiming only that Joshua gained the upper hand throughout the land as a whole. (p. 154) …we must approach the territorial allotments listed in Joshua 13–19 with circumspection. In his helpful discussion of the allotments, Hess points out that the lists, which were originally family allotments, would have soon become administrative documents and, as such, would likely have been subject to updating as new towns emerged. Any late monarchic features found in the lists, therefore, might best be understood not as establishing the origin of the lists but as demonstrating their continued use. (p. 156)

PLL later refer to “the second half of the book of Joshua, which includes also proleptic references to the varied successes of the tribes in actually occupying their allotments” (p. 189). The question is asked, “Or might avoidance of a simplistic approach, closer attention to the distinction between initial conquest and eventual occupation…indeed yield a better understanding of the conquest and occupation?” (p. 167). The answer is quickly given: “The basic point is that misreading Joshua’s initial campaigns—central, south, and north— as “permanent conquests” and setting these in opposition to the slower “occupations” described in Judges 1 are fundamental errors” (p. 167). To support this, it is asserted,

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Simply put, an important difference exists between subjugation and occupation… The land has been given, it lies subdued, but Israel must still take possession of it and occupy it… In chapter 23, Joshua juxtaposes without embarrassment assertions of the success of the conquest…with clear admissions that work remains to be done… All things considered, the oft-cited contradiction between Joshua and Judges is ill-conceived in a number of ways… In broad strokes, then, and taking Joshua and Judges together, the biblical depiction of Israel’s emergence in Canaan is internally coherent: Israel entered and gained an initial ascendancy…, but was far less successful in consolidating its victories by fully occupying its territories. (pp. 167–68)

Can PLL so easily get away from the scholarly consensus that Judg 1 paints a rather different picture of the occupation of the land from that ending Joshua? Or is this distinction between “subjugation” and “occupation” an articial creation to get out of a bind? Apparently, it would be “simplistic” to draw attention to passages in Joshua that say the work of conquest had been nished by the time of Joshua’s death, but I shall do so nonetheless: Josh 11:23; 14:15: “And the land had rest from war.”

Joshua 13:1–7: Yhwh tells Joshua that a good deal of land remains to be taken possession of (or “subdued/subjugated”). What is this land? It is the area of the Philistines, the area of the Phoenicians, Lebanon, and north into Syria. It is clear that Joshua and the Israelites have conquered most of Cis-Jordan except for Philistia. Joshua 21:41–43: Yhwh gave to Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they subdued it and settled in it. And Yhwh gave rest to them on every side according to all that he had sworn to their fathers: no man stood before their face from all their enemies—Yhwh had given all their enemies in their hand. Not one word failed from all the good words that Yhwh had spoken to the House of Israel—all had come to pass.

Try as one might, one cannot get away from the overall picture of Joshua: the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership came from across the Jordan and conquered the land and the indigenous peoples in what was basically a ve-year campaign and then divided the country up. Those Canaanites who had not been destroyed or driven out were put into servitude. By the time of Joshua’s death the work was accomplished and the promises fullled. If any land remained unconquered, it was that outside the traditional borders of Israel, that is, the Philistine, Phoenician, and Lebanon regions. The idea that the land was “subdued/subjugated” 1

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but that the indigenous Canaanites still had to be “subdued/subjugated” is absurd—and it accords little respect to the biblical text. Of course, some passages do not agree with the picture: there are passages such as Josh 17:14–17 that suggest the Canaanites still had control of extensive areas, in agreement with Judg 1. There are also territorial lists that contradict each other: for example, Jerusalem is assigned both to the inheritance of Judah (Josh 15:63) and Benjamin (Josh 18:28); both Judah and Dan are said to be assigned the cities of Ekron and Timnah (Josh 15:45, 47; 19:43). According to the standard scholarly understanding of the biblical books, these discrepancies present no surprises. The usual explanation is that Joshua was written by a Deuteronomistic editor or editors who made use of a variety of traditions. The main message of the Deuteronomist did not always jibe with the message of the traditions, nor did the various traditions necessarily agree with each other. The tradition(s) lying behind Judg 1 and perhaps some passages in Joshua did not accord with the message incorporated into Joshua by the editor/compiler. If one is not committed to an articial compulsion to deny any conict or contradictions in the text, everything falls into place. But it does require you to read the text for what it says (disdainfully dismissed as “simplistic”), not in some convoluted (“unsimplistic”) way. Moving from textual analysis to material remains, we are immediately informed that “contrary to popular (and sometimes scholarly) opinion, actual property damage caused by the conquest may have been quite modest, so that Israel’s arrival may have left little or no archaeological mark” (p. 173). Why? Deuteronomy 6:10–12 is quoted to the effect that the Israelites would take over the houses, vineyards, and olive groves of the Canaanites, so “we have no reason to expect archaeological evidence of widespread city destructions in the wake of an Israelite conquest” (p. 173). Furthermore, “only three sites are explicitly said to have been burned in the course of Joshua’s campaigns” (p. 173). But wait: are these the same people who were warning us against at, literalistic readings? Apparently, it is all right to read “literalistically, simplistically, woodenly” if it suits your purpose. Numbers can apparently “communicate literal fact” when you decide it helps your case. So when Joshua says that “not one was left alive” of the Canaanites, we should not read that literally, but if Deuteronomy says that the Israelites will inherit the houses, cisterns, vineyards, etc., of their enemies, we can take that literally. As for the three cities burned, Joshua is not quite as precise as PLL imply: the fact is that only three towns are explicitly stated to have been burned, but is “absence of evidence evidence of 1

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absence”? They deny that it is (p. 228); have they changed their mind here?6 A similar appeal to “absence of evidence” is made with regard to other sites: In the brief summaries of the taking of these cities [Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir], much emphasis is placed on putting the populations to the sword and leaving no survivors, but there is little to suggest that the cities themselves were destroyed. (p. 153)

This statement is of course made to counter the lack of archaeology and to deny the picture of the conquest of Joshua. In so doing, the writers are quick to appeal to “at” and “literalistic”—with no suggestion of hyperbole—wording here, since it suits their purpose. A lengthy section discusses the archaeology of a number of sites given a signicant place in the Joshua narrative (pp. 174–89). Two will be given here. First is Jericho, “often cited as a ‘parade example’ of how archaeology has shown the Bible to be historically unreliable” (p. 174). It is pointed out that the archaeology at Jericho does “correlate in many remarkable ways with the biblical account” (p. 174). But has not the research of Kathleen Kenyon shown something quite different? Yes, but this is apparently just a matter of dating: “The problem of Jericho has to do not so much with the material ndings as with the dates assigned to these ndings” (p. 174). These comments might seem strange—after all, dating is vital—but when you read a little further, all is clear: Kenyon’s dating is being challenged: “A simple answer may not be apt in this case. B. Wood effectively reopened the question in 1990” (p. 175). A good number of archaeologists will be astonished to nd that Wood has “effectively reopened the question,” but we are assured that “Wood built an impressive case for rethinking the dating of the Jericho evidence” (p. 175). Why have professional archaeologists and others not debated this “impressive case”? If it is so “impressive,” why has it been made available only in an unpublished section of a Ph.D. thesis and an article in Biblical Archaeology Review—hardly the professional publication one would expect. It is admitted that “Wood’s challenge has not succeeded in gaining a large scholarly following”; nevertheless, “many observers recognize the potency of his challenge” (p. 176). Are these “many observers” the professional notice that we might expect of a signicant scholarly theory? Well, hardly—the only “observers” cited are four other conservative evangelicals. From the discussion up to this point, one would expect the 6. Josh 11:13 states that only Hazor was burned of the royal cities standing on their mounds, though the precise intent is not clear. 1

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conclusion to be that an interesting alternative interpretation was proposed 20 years ago, gained no following, and the status quo accepted. But, no: “Further, until such time as Wood’s arguments are fully aired and fairly assessed, for scholars to continue to cite Jericho as a parade example is irresponsible.” As we all know, this is a proper model for scholars to follow: whenever a Ph.D. student comes up with a half-baked theory, all scholars should drop what they are doing and see that it is “fully aired and fairly assessed” as soon as it is published. But if he or she does not manage to get around to publishing it, the only responsible thing is to forget any past conclusions and wait in silence on the question until such time as it appears—assuming of course that the student’s theory seems to uphold the Bible. The next city looked as is Ai. The identication of the site is subtly doubted before the current scholarly position is summarized: an occupational gap between the Early Bronze and the twelfth century. Mr Wood has apparently not written on the question, whether in an unpublished paper or a popular magazine so is not available to use to challenge the consensus. Instead, the authors return to doubting the site identication in a much stronger way, then a number of possibilities are listed: “the site may not be correctly identied; …the archaeological nds may not be representative of the unexcavated portions of the site; the biblical accounts may not yet have been correctly read; or the biblical accounts may simply be wrong” (p. 177). So? These possibilities apply to nearly every archaeological site. These possibilities have to be weighed and the most likely situation, in the light of current knowledge, should be given. But not according to PLL: “This uncertain state of affairs, far from commending sweeping conclusions, invites caution and a withholding of judgment until more evidence comes to light” (p. 177). Space does not allow for the discussion of other examples, but these should be sufcient for my purpose. Ultimately, what I am trying to address is the whole concept of a “biblical history of Israel.” The title will no doubt resonate with a large segment of the intended evangelical readership, but few of them are likely to think through the issue further. Exactly what is a “biblical history of Israel”? In the end, I am left somewhat puzzled about what constitutes a “biblical history” except as a slogan. But as a slogan, I gather that it means to imply that the Bible is given a privileged place—sometimes even an exclusive position—as a source for Israel’s history. If so, what is the signicance of this? I would compare it to writing a “Book of Mormon history of pre-Columbian America.” What would such a history look like? The main defenders of the BoM’s archaeological relevance are a group of Mormons associated with the Foundation for 1

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Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). They are quick to point out that “the Latter-day Saint Church has no ofcial position on Book of Mormon geography” nor other identications (Hamblin 1993); nevertheless, they are equally swift to argue that the BoM increasingly nds “support from the studies of archaeology, anthropology and history” (Ash 1998). Although FARMS does not have a single view on all the details, there is a fairly consistent core of opinions that will be summarized here.7 Here is what a “Book of Mormon history of Mesoamerica” would look like in part: First of all, we would not talk of the Olmec and the Mixe-Zoquean periods but of the Jaredite period (about 2500 to 300 B.C.E.), named from the ancient inhabitants of the continent who were called Jaredites, the descendents of Jared who sailed with his people in barges after the Tower of Babel to the “Promised Land” (Ether 1–6). This nation eventually perished in battle (Ether 14–15). The Jaredites are widely believed by Mormon scholars to have lived during what is currently called the Preclassic or Formative Period of Mesoamerican history. One recent attempt at correlating Mesoamerican history with data from the BoM looks like this (Norman 1983): Date 2400– 2500 B.C.E. 1450 B.C.E.

Standard Mesoamerican History Earliest possible antecedents of Olmec ceramics in highlands of Mexico. San Lorenzo built on Isthmus of Tehuántepec on large navigable river. San Lorenzo is principal governing Olmec centre. San Lorenzo is political centre for extended trade.

Olmec of lowland tropics of southern Verzcruz for unknown reasons do not spread southeastward into lowland tropic of Petén.

Book of Mormon Narrative Jaredites arrive in Mexico.

City of Lib built on narrow neck of land where sea divides the land. “Great city” of Jaredite King Lib. City of Lib is southern political centre of land northward, which is covered with people: extensive trade. Poisonous serpents prevented southward expansion of the Jaredites for ve generations to Lib, who continues to preserve land southward for wild game.

7. Most of the material cited in this section was taken from the Internet. In many cases, it appears to be items already published in print, but the original time and place of publication is not always indicated. I give as much information as is available and apologize for any ambiguities remaining. 1

226 900 B.C.E.

750 B.C.E. 600– 400 B.C.E.

400 B.C.E.

Enquire of the Former Age Massive destruction: religious monuments put away following the take-over by Nascastephase invaders. Hiatus at San Lorenzo.

Take-over by brother of Shiblon; prophets killed; great destruction and famine. Ongoing conict and longterm captivity of kings Possible Jaredite interaction with Mulekites in land southward.

Culture ties southeastward, evidenced by ceramics with Chiapa III (Escaleera) phase in Central Depression of Chiapas and Mamóm phase in Mayan lowlands. Widespread hiatus, including at Disintegration of Jaredite nation through war. San Lorenzo.

The nal years of the Jaredites overlapped somewhat with the Nephite Period (600 B.C.E. to 400 C.E.), or what is now called the Late Preclassic Period. About the time of the Jaredite demise the family of Lehi immigrated from Jerusalem to the “Promised Land” around 600 B.C.E. (1 Nephi). These were the Nephites, named after Lehi’s son who led them after Lehi’s death. The descendents of Nephi were opposed by the Lamanites, who ourished from about 600 B.C.E. to the coming of the Spanish. The Lamanites were descended from two other sons of Lehi, Laman and Lemuel, though they also included some dissenter Nephites, plus some others (Alma 43.13; 47.35). The battles between the Nephites and Lamanites would take up a good portion of the history of Late Preclassic Mesoamerica, including attempts to capture the Nephite capital at Zarahemla (Sorenson 2000). The Nephites were eventually overcome by the Lamanites (Mormon 6). This nal battle took place during the Protoclassic Period, about 385 C.E. The Lamanites lived on until conquered by the Spanish, for the Native Americans are descendents of the Lamanites, whose skin became dark because of their sin (Alma 3.6–10). The “Book of Mormon history of Mesoamerica” would incorporate not only political events from the BoM but also details about society. These would include the astonishing data that the Middle and Late Preclassic society made use of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats (1 Nephi 18.25), and grew wheat and barley (Mosiah 9.9). They also forged steel, including swords of steel used as weapons, and produced silk and glass. Even elephants roamed the land during this period. On the other hand, traditional plants and animals of Central America are not referred to in the BoM. One might assume that such a picture would discredit the BoM as a historical source, but the Mormon apologists are unfazed. To them the 1

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BoM “is a nigh perfect genre of ancient American Literature in our hands” (Shirts 1994), just as the Bible is a nigh perfect genre of ancient Israelite historiography to maximalists. One of the rst points they make is that the BoM must be properly read: “If one is going to say there is no basis from archaeological investigations…, the question must rst be investigated in the Book of Mormon!” (Norman 1983). “While a supercial reading of the Book of Mormon may seem to point vaguely to…, a careful reading substantiates…” (Hamblin 1993). “Nor is there a hint of any of the staff having examined the Book of Mormon in a sophisticated manner that would ensure helpful comparison with scholarly results” (Sorenson 1995). An example of proper reading is to recognize that the BoM “is not a continental history of the Americas or a complete history of any part of it” (Norman 1983), just as the biblical presentation is defended as not aiming to give a complete history but is only “selective and theologically oriented” (p. 192) or only “narrowly focused” (p. 272; cf. also pp. 112, 161–62, 164, 177, 272). When it comes to specic comparison of the BoM picture with the results of Mesoamerican archaeology, any positive data are of course emphasized. But when the archaeological data are not supportive, this is explained away: The “inherent improbability” of undiscovered items mentioned in the Book of Mormon is the weakest point upon which to judge it true or false… We are reminded that lack of evidence is not negative evidence. The story of ancient American cultural history is now being written, but until the story of high civilization in Mesoamerica in particular is constructed, any negative judgments are obviously premature. (Norman 1983)

Thus, Hamblin (1993) explains at length why none of the geographical names from native American sources match those in the BoM, referring to such things as “the severe discontinuity of Mesoamerican toponyms between the Pre-Classic…, the Post-Classic…, and the Colonial Age” and “the fact that Mesoamerican toponyms were often translated between languages rather than transliterated phonetically.” With regard to the lack of evidence for the use of steel and glass, Sorenson (1995) advises, “Caution may be recommended…because of changing knowledge.” Strangely, such caution was not advised with regard to the evidence supposedly supporting the BoM. What about the presence of horses and other Old World animals and plants said to be in the New World by the BoM? The Mormon apologists cannot quite make up their mind how they want to play that. On the one 1

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hand, it is argued that the peoples might have used names familiar to them, such as “horse,” for new creatures (Sorenson 1984). This is rather strange since the BoM is supposed to have been put into English by divine inspiration. In any case, what animals were the people riding and were being used in pulling chariots (Alma 20.6; 3 Nephi 3.22) if not horses? On the other hand, it is argued that there is evidence of horses even in recent but pre-Spanish times, though why no mainstream Mesoamerican specialists know anything about this is unclear. One apologist (Shirts 1994) states that Mormon scholars noted how recent geological and archaeological nds by scientists denitely established that the horse was on this continent before the Spanish came along… He [Rasmus Michelsen] wrote how the La Brea tar pits were yielding up skeletons of mammoths, horses, sheep, goats, etc. While the ancient dating of the horse caused a problem, the other animals were clearly attested he felt.

So evidence of horses has been found, and the minor problem that it is thousands of years earlier than the “Nephite Period” can be brushed off—much as PLL (pp. 174–75) point out that the nds at Jericho “correlate in many remarkable ways with the biblical account” in Josh 6, only they just happen to be centuries too early. The mode of reasoning used by the Mormon apologists can be illustrated by two further examples. One is the reference to elephants used by the Jaredites (Ether 9.19). Sorenson (n.d.) is quoted as follows: Elephants (mastodons or mammoths) have long been known in North America (including Mexico)… Now the carbon–14 method of dating provides data on the early Cochise food-gathering culture of southern Arizona, showing that the state of their development contemporaneous with elephants extends down to at least 4000 B.C. and possibly later. In the moist lands of Central America elephants and other large Pleistocene animals certainly lived later than in the drying Southwest… Since the larger part of this probably Book of Mormon area is virtually unknown to paleontologists we may feel condent that future work (by Latter-day Saint scientists?) will denitely conrm the presence of the animals credited to that area in the time of the Jaredites and Nephites.

In other words, there is no evidence for elephants in America in this period. There is only the hope that such will eventually be found. The issue is clouded by the rather indenite (and irrelevant) statement that “camel, sloth, extinct buffalo and perhaps others lived much later in Mexico and Central America than had been supposed.” The other example to be considered here is the references to “steel swords” (1 Nephi 4.9; Ether 7.9; cf. 1 Nephi 16.18; 2 Nephi 5.14–15; 1

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24.19; Jarom 1.8; Alma 17.37; 57.33). There are two problems: steel was not known to pre-Conquest America and swords were not among the native weapons. Again, the Mormon apologists are unapologetic: The translation problem haunts “steel” too. We can hardly be sure of its referent substance in the Book of Mormon… Moreover, meteroric nickeliron has been termed “a type of steel,” and this substance was wellknown in Mesoamerica. Iron was used in Mesoamerica… Archaeologist Sigvald Linne found a piece of smelted iron in a tomb at Mitla, Oaxaca, while at Teotihuacan, he excavated a pottery vessel which had been used for melting a “metallic-looking” mass which contained iron and copper. Iron artifacts and minerals have appeared in numerous excavations and museum collections in Mesoamerica and are mentioned in traditions. It is not out of the question that this metal was used with some consistency before the arrival of the Spaniards. Caution may be recommended… (Sorenson 1995)

Once again a rather contradictory argument is used. First, the translation is doubted, then the translation is defended! But when one reads through all the dust thrown up, no evidence for steel has in fact been presented. Instead, “caution may be recommended” for those who would doubt the BoM; no caution is recommended for those defending the BoM, though. More recently, a Mormon-authored article referred to evidence for a steel “short sword” found in eleventh-century B.C.E. Ekron (Thomasson 2005). Unfortunately, a fellow Mormon with archaeological experience of the Ekron dig had to point out that this was a complete misinterpretation: the knife in question (not a sword) was not steel, while steel production came into Israel only about the seventh century B.C.E. (Chadwick 2006, though Chadwick himself afrmed his belief in the BoM statements about steel). Strangely, in the very next issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, another article afrming “steel in early metallurgy” in the ancient Near East and also in Mesoamerica appeared without any indication that the lesson from Chadwick’s article had been learned (Sorenson 2006). As evidence for swords it is argued that the Mayan macuahuitl ts the bill (Roper 1996). This weapon was apparently a club with razor-sharp obsidian blades rmly attached. It was no doubt a formidable weapon, but could one call it a “sword”? Roper quotes a number of early Spanish writers to the effect that the natives were said to ght with “swords.” Since these sources are quoted in English, it would take a good deal of work to nd whether the Spanish text was as clearcut, but this does not seem to be a central issue. The point is that the BoM description simply does not t. These weapons were not of steel nor any metal, and they did not kill or wound by thrusting in the way that a pointed metal sword 1

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might (1 Nephi 4.9; Ether 7.9; cf. 1 Nephi 16.18; 2 Nephi 5.14–15; 24.19; Jarom 1.8; Alma 17.37; 57.33). But of course the BoM needs to be read in a “sophisticated” manner—which critics are unable to do. When one sees these arguments about the limitations of archaeology, the problems with translation and interpretation, and the lengthy explanations for lack of evidence, it seems strange that, nevertheless, it becomes increasingly clear that the casually mundane lifestyle features mentioned in the Book of Mormon—those things which Joseph most certainly would not have known about, and those things which the critics latched upon rst as evidence of fraud—now nd support from the studies of archaeology, anthropology and history. (Ash 1998)

Compare this with statements from PLL (p. 192): We recognize that some knotty problems remain… Finally, we recognize that how we read the evidence is in some measure related to larger issues of how we see the world. All in all, we believe that such archaeological evidence as is known to us in no way invalidates the biblical testimony (provided that both text and artifact are properly read) and that at least some promising “convergencies” exist…we have found nothing in the evidence considered that would invalidate the basic biblical contours.

Make a few small changes—such as “Bible” for “BoM” and vice versa— and these statements could be interchangeable. PLL will of course disavow any attempt to connect the BoM with history, but that is precisely my point: they privilege the Bible because of their theological stance, just as Mormon apologists privilege the BoM. Thus, I cannot take seriously the statement of PLL: We do indeed offer a biblical history of Israel in the following pages. That is, we depend heavily upon the Bible in our presentation of the history of Israel, but not because we have “theological motivations”… (pp. 98–99)

It seems to me that their “theological motivations” are as blatant as those of the Mormon apologists. Each section of “biblical history” has its own history of debate and its own problems, and PLL’s treatment necessarily varies from section to section as it deals with these. Yet a comparison of the various sections reveals an underlying pattern that is instructive, because it is the same pattern that we nd with Mormon apologists’ defence of history in the BoM. After a discussion of what the text says, some available archaeology or inscriptional sources may be brought in. Sometimes the extrabiblical sources appear to support the biblical text (BoM); on the other hand, the extra-biblical information often causes problems. The approach 1

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in each case could not be more different. What happens next is that any extra-biblical data seeming to support the text are given full weight as conrming the accuracy of the Bible (BoM). There are no doubts, no equivocations. But when there are potential problems, several possible reactions take place, sometimes one or two but sometimes all of them: x Readers of the text (scholars, pious lay people, non-Mormons) are chided for thinking it has the obvious meaning and told they should not read in such a “literalistic” way, that the text needs to be “taken on its own terms.” x The extra-biblical/extra-BoM data are said to have been misinterpreted. x It is conceded that “some” interpret the situation so as to see a conict, but “many others” (usually other conservative evangelicals/Mormon scholars) believe that the conict can be reconciled. x The extra-biblical data/Mesoamerican archaeology may indeed appear to be a problem, but we should “withhold judgment” because of what might be discovered in the future. Some might think I am giving a caricature; unfortunately, there are many examples to illustrate my point, as already discussed above. When PLL/Mormon apologists point out—somewhat impatiently— about how scholars have not approached the Bible/BoM correctly, they forget that there is another side of this coin. They look entirely at one side and ignore the other. There is a logical, scholarly counter proposal to each of those advanced by PLL/Mormon apologists: x If the Bible/BoM can be proved right, it can be proved wrong. x If the biblical/BoM text has not been properly understood when it shows problems and contradictions, how do we know the Bible/BoM has been correctly interpreted when it seems to be conrmed? x If new discoveries might conrm the Bible/BoM, they might just as well disconrm it. x If we should withhold judgment when the extra-biblical data seem to disprove the Bible/BoM, we should also withhold judgment when it seems to support it. A good example of how new discoveries might reverse an earlier interpretation that archaeology conrmed the Bible is found with regard to the supposed conquest of Joshua. As is well known, this was defended by the Albright school on the basis of the archaeology at the end of the Late Bronze. Excavations of a variety of sites seemed to suggest that 1

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many different cities were conquered and destroyed at this time; ergo, this was due to the Israelites under Joshua entering the land and taking it over. This was common opinion in North America up to about thirty years ago.8 Now it is difcult to nd a (non-conservative evangelical) scholar who would attempt to defend such a view. There is indeed one way in which my comparison of PLL with the Mormon apologists is lacking. I believe the biblical narrative has some ancient traditions and data in it, unlike the BoM which I believe to be entirely the product of early nineteenth-century America.9 PLL see their project as one “to take the biblical text seriously,” but I too take the biblical text seriously, unlike the BoM (whose value for Mesoamerican history is, I believe, nil). Yet you can take the biblical text seriously without necessarily following it in your history or assuming it is always correct. I take some Bible texts seriously in the sense of considering them as a potential source for reconstructing the history of Israel, but critical investigation might lead me to think that the biblical account has reliable information—perhaps a little, perhaps a lot—but it might lead me to think that it has none or is too problematic to use (see my recent extensive attempt: Grabbe 2007). In the end, A Biblical History of Israel seems to me an exercise in futility—indeed, it could even be considered a con. If you want to know what the biblical text says, why should you go to a paraphrase by PLL? Why not just read it for yourself? Every week, in hundreds of pulpits across the land, a “biblical” history is presented. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are real, historical gures; so is Adam. The plagues of Egypt are presented as having happened at a particular place and time (though, as with PLL, a context in the real history of Egypt is absent); so did the Tower of Babel. The reason for the long introductory chapter now seems obvious: the authors are trying to make their way of writing history look logical and respectable. But they are trying to do the impossible. Despite some statements in the introductory chapter, ultimately they are not trying to develop a new theory of historiography; on the contrary, all they want is that the biblical text be treated differently from any other potential historical source. Their appeal to “testimony” is simply a way to privilege the biblical account, regardless of whatever other sources are available. 8. For a survey of the recent development of scholarship, see Grabbe 2000. 9. This does not rule out a small amount of “book learning,” though the Bible is one of the main sources. Unlike some (e.g. Brodie 1971) I doubt that the BoM was a deliberate deception, but that does not rule out the book as the subconscious product of Joseph Smith’s fertile mind. See further Grabbe 2006. 1

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In spite of some of their discussion, PLL themselves do not ultimately believe that writing history is purely arbitrary. When you nally do manage to get to the actual history, it is clear that they think some events “actually happened”—certainly, in the case of the Bible, what it says happened did happen in an objective way. They are as much “positivists” as anyone they criticize. The poverty of A Biblical History of Israel becomes very clear: there are no new ideas, no new approaches, no new interpretations, nothing that we did not already know. Probably for some readers this lack of imagination and innovation will be comforting. For those of us who try to be historians, it is dire. Bibliography [Anonymous]. 2001. Out of the Dust. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 10, no. 1. Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=10&num=1&id= 246. Ash, Michael R. 1998. Archaeology “Proves” Bible Not Book of Mormon. Online: http://www.mormonfortress.com/bibarch.html. Boyd, Kelly, ed. 1999. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writings. 2 vols. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Breisach, Ernst. 1994. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brodie, Fawn M. 1971. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet. 2d rev. and enl. ed. New York: Random House. Chadwick, Jeffrey R. 2006. All that Glitters Is Not…Steel. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15, no. 1:66–67. Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/ ?vol=15&num=1&id=408. Evans, Richard J. 1997. In Defence of History. London: Granta. Grabbe, Lester L. 2000. Writing Israel’s History at the End of the Twentieth Century. Pages 203–18 in Congress Volume: Oslo 1998. Edited by André Lemaire and Magne Saebø. VTSup 80. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2004. Review of I. Provan, V. P. Long, and T. Longman, A Biblical History of Israel. Review of Biblical Literature. Online: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/ 3961_3828.pdf. ———. 2006. Prophecy—Joseph Smith and the Gestalt of the Israelite Prophet. Pages 111–27 in Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in Its Social Context. Edited by Philip F. Esler. Minneapolis: Fortress. ———. 2007. Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? London: T&T Clark International. Hallo, William W. 1980. Biblical History in Its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach. Pages 1–26 in Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method. Edited by Carl D. Evans, William W. Hallo, and John B. White. Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series 34. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Pickwick. ———. 2005. The Kitchen Debate: A Context for the Biblical Account. BAR 31, no. 4 (July–August):50–51. 1

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Hamblin, William J. 1993. Basic Methodological Problems with the Anti-Mormon Approach to the Geography and Archaeology of the Book of Mormon. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2, no. 1:161–97. Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/ publications/jbms/?vol=2&num=1&id=25. Iggers, Georg G. 1975. New Directions in European Historiography. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. ———. 1997. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientic Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England. Knauf, Ernst Axel. 1991. King Solomon`s Copper Supply. Pages 167–86 in Phoenicia and the Bible. Edited by E. Lipiski. Studia Phoenicia 11. OLA 44. Leuven: Peeters. Megill, Allan. 1999. Historiology/Philosophy of Historical Writing. Pages 1:539–43 in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writings. Edited by Kelly Boyd. 2 vols. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Norman, V. Garth. 1983. San Lorenzo as the Jaredite City of Lib. Newsletter and Proceedings of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology 153 (June). Online: http://ancientamerica.org. Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, eds. 1998. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge. Provan, Iain W. 2000. In the Stable with the Dwarves: Testimony, Interpretation, Faith and the History of Israel. Pages 281–319 in Congress Volume: Oslo 1998. Edited by André Lemaire and Magne Saebø. VTSup 80. Leiden: Brill. Repr. in pages 161–97 of Windows Into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument, and the Crisis of “Biblical Israel”. Edited by V. Philips Long, David W. Baker, and Gordon J. Wenham. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. 2003. A Biblical History of Israel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Roper, Matthew. 1996. Eyewitness Descriptions of Mesoamerican Swords. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 5, no. 1:150–58. Online: http://maxwellinstitute. byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=98&chapid=1072. Shirts, Kerry A. 1994. A Neglected Source (a letter to the editor of The Ancient American, June 1). Online: http://www2.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/neglecte.htm. Sorenson, John L. 1984. Once More: The Horse. Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/ publications/books/?bookid=71&chapid=792. Repr. in pages 98–100 of Reexploring the Book of Mormon. Edited by John W. Welch. Salt Lake City: Desertet Book and FARMS, 1992. ———. 1995. A New Evaluation of the Smithsonian Institution “Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon.” Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/ ?id=40. ———. 2000. Last-Ditch Warfare in Ancient Mesoamerica Recalls the Book of Mormon. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2:1–16. Online: http://maxwellinstitute. byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=9&num=2&id=227. ———. 2006. Out of the Dust: Steel in Early Metallurgy. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15, no. 2:108–9. Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/? vol=8&num=2&id=573. ———. n.d. Quoted in paragraph 4.6 on elephants. Online: http://www.ancientamerica. org. Thomasson, Gordon C. 2005. Out of the Dust: Ancient Steel Sword Unearthed. Journal of Book. Mormon Studies 14, no. 2:64. Online: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/ publications/jbms/?vol=14&num=2&id=379. 1

“WHO IS THE PROPHET TALKING ABOUT, HIMSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE?” (ACTS 8:34): A RESPONSE TO LESTER GRABBE’S REVIEW OF A BIBLICAL HISTORY OF ISRAEL Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman, III

In 2003, we published a book entitled A Biblical History of Israel (hereafter BHI). Part I of the book (pp. 3–104) constructs a detailed and extended argument in favour of viewing the biblical texts—albeit that they are texts in which art, history, and theology are interwoven in complex ways—as primary sources for the history of ancient Israel. We discuss the very nature of historical knowledge in general, and of knowledge of Israel’s past in particular, arguing that testimony or storytelling is central to our access to the past (pp. 36–50). We consider at length the reasons why modern scholars have adopted a principled distrust of major sections (or even the totality) of the Old Testament testimony about Israel’s past, arguing in each case that the reasons are poor ones (pp. 51–74). We give particular attention to what counts as competent reading of biblical narratives in pursuit of historical knowledge (pp. 75–97). Finally, we outline our own convictions about the proper way in which to approach the task of writing a history of Israel, integrating competent readings of biblical texts with insights gained from non-biblical texts, from archaeology, and from the social sciences (pp. 98–104). Part II of the book then offers (pp. 107–303) a telling of the history of Israel that gives expression to these convictions, while differing within its various sections (written by three different authors) as to style and emphasis. We do not after all claim that there is only one way in which to write a “biblical history of Israel” (i.e. a history in which the biblical sources are taken seriously as primary sources). We seek only to illustrate the ways in which it might, with integrity, be done. 1

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In 2007 Professor Lester Grabbe (hereafter simply Grabbe) published a book entitled Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (hereafter AI).1 The rst part of that book lays out his own view of how we should approach the history of Israel and indeed how we should discuss it with others (pp. 3–36). He is welcoming of the social sciences but cautious as to the manner in which social scientic studies should be appropriated—as we are. He considers archaeology to be important, but draws attention to its nature as a highly interpretative discipline—as we do (although Grabbe puts distance between himself and us on this point, on specious grounds that we shall not here discuss for reasons of space).2 More generally, he recognizes (as we do) the various ways in which subjective components inuence scholarly thinking and argument. We all “gravitate towards those theories or views that we nd most congenial”;3 and one of the factors here is the ideologies to which we adhere. At this point Grabbe himself confesses to a negative sensitivity in respect of what he calls “neo-fundamentalism,” by which term he means to refer to conservative evangelical Christians who “often adopt a position that can be defended from a critical point of view but is the one that is closest to the biblical picture.”4 Grabbe apparently has a special distaste for this particular combination of ideology and critical scholarship, even while recognizing that all critical scholarship is combined in just such a manner with ideology. Yet he proposes that it is unscholarly to focus on the ideological motivations that allegedly inform another person’s scholarship. We should, rather, evaluate the position of another “on the basis of stated arguments.”5 Even in the case of arguments and positions “that seem to arise from a fundamentalist stance with regard to the Bible” we should (as John Emerton once suggested) “reply to the specic arguments rather than what we think might lie behind them.”6 Respect for the other, it seems, is very important to Grabbe—as illustrated by his objection in AI to the term “pseudo-scholarship” as applied to the work of two of his British colleagues: “such ad hominem comments do not belong in scholarly writing or debate.”7

1. L. L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (London: T&T Clark International, 2007). 2. Ibid., 9–10. 3. Ibid., 22. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 23. 6. Ibid., 24. 7. Ibid. 1

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What manner of review essay might the authors of BHI reasonably expect, then, from the author of AI? We might reasonably expect a review essay that engages seriously with our “stated arguments”—that replies to “the specic arguments” of our book rather than what Grabbe thinks “might lie behind them.” We might reasonably expect, in fact, a marked hesitation even to speculate about what lies behind them, since “trying to second guess motives has become too much of a pastime in the academy.”8 After all, “we can always nd reasons to say that someone takes a scholarly position because of personal or ideological motives,” and “such statements have no place in scholarly argument.”9 Above all, we might reasonably expect a measured, objective response: accurate in its description, precise in its analysis and argument, and devoid of ad hominem attacks (especially since in inviting us to respond to his review, Grabbe actually beseeched us by letter to refrain from making “ad hominem comments”). The review essay that Grabbe has in fact penned sadly fails to live up to these reasonable expectations. This is true, rst of all, precisely in terms of ad hominem comments. In the course of his essay, Grabbe characterizes the authors of BHI as the writers of “prolix, turgid, and meandering” prose;10 as those who do not respect the biblical text and are possessed of an “articial compulsion to deny any conict or contradictions in the text”;11 as people lacking in integrity (and thus inclined, e.g., to construct arguments merely in the way that “suits their purpose”);12 as con-artists;13 and as apologists for the biblical text akin to those who seek to defend the Book of Mormon as an historical source.14 These characterizations are themselves embedded in prose which is quite often mocking in tone (as in the parenthesis “would you believe it?” on p. 219). It does not appear from this sampling of the data that Grabbe has succeeded in abiding by his own exhortations. We shall nevertheless heed the same, for we hold them to have merit; and indeed, it has been our normal practice to try to abide by such an ethic as we have entered the often volatile

8. Ibid., 23. 9. Ibid., 24. 10. Lester Grabbe’s review of our work, which appears immediately before the present response, will be referred to here as “Big Max.” For a contrary opinion, see the review of BHI by C. E. Hauer, Jr., in CBQ 66 (2004): 458–60. Hauer (p. 458) states: “This rational, sober book is written in good, straightforward English.” 11. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 222. 12. Ibid., 223. 13. Ibid., 231. 14. Ibid., 224–31. 1

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recent discussion about the history of ancient Israel—to try to engage the arguments of others seriously and courteously, avoiding both personal attacks and the return (where temptation intrudes) of like for like in this area. If others feel that we have at times infringed this rule, albeit without the intention of doing so, we gladly apologize. We do not believe that progress in knowledge of any kind is advanced by such means. Nor is it advanced, we believe, by a lack of carefulness in describing the arguments of those that one has taken for one’s opponents. Unfortunately, Grabbe’s review falls prey to exactly such a lack of carefulness— and to such an extent that we ourselves often do not recognize our book in his description of it. We therefore feel obliged, lest anyone confuse the argument of the book as we have written it with Grabbe’s description of this argument, to begin our response to his review with a number of denials and corrections: (1) We do not regard ourselves as “maximalists” in respect of the contemporary discussion about the history of ancient Israel, that is, as those who hold “that everything in the sources that could not be proved wrong has to be accepted as historical” (Knauf, quoted by Grabbe).15 Our own stance is that we should accept as historical exactly that amount of material in the sources that appears to be historical, when a number of factors bearing on the question have been weighed and reected upon, including questions of literary convention and epistemology (how do we know about the past, and what do we mean when we say that we know it?). It is a mistake, therefore, for Grabbe to begin his analysis of our book by arbitrarily applying the simplistic “maximalist/minimalist” paradigm to it.16 BHI does not t that paradigm, and Grabbe’s insistence that it does leads him astray right from the start in his reading of it. He remains thereafter convinced that what we are really interested in is defending the historicity of the biblical text (in particular) at all costs, to the extent that he portrays all counter-examples as instances of our insincerity, not as data that should lead him to change his judgment about our project (e.g. in the case of our stated belief that Josh 10:40 is of hyperbolic character, and therefore not to be read as straightforwardly historical). He knows, somehow, what we are “really about”—and this leads him to exceedingly curious readings of things that we actually say. Yet this is the scholar who afrms that we should evaluate the position of others on the basis of stated arguments, not on the basis of what they are allegedly “really about.”

15. Ibid., 215 n. 1. 16. He makes the same mistaken move in AI, 24. 1

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(2) Contrary to the impression created by Grabbe,17 the rst chapter of BHI is not in the least confused or confusing in respect of either its argument or its vocabulary when discussing the history of historiography. Specically, positivistic historiography is clearly dened on p. 22 of the book (see also p. 306 n. 36) in the context of a nuanced discussion of the modern scientic approach to historiography that clearly distinguishes the likes of Ranke from the likes of Comte. Chapter 2 continues the discussion, specically referencing Dilthey and others who are to be distinguished from both Ranke and Comte on stated grounds before moving on to some general statements about the present state of affairs. It is in this last section of the argument that the lines quoted by Grabbe from p. 42 are to be found, referring to the evolution of thought as the twentieth century progressed, as a result of which historiographical work is now more often than previously understood as involving both science and art, as Grabbe himself suggests.18 The two questions that he asks immediately following his citation of these lines (in connection with some lines cited earlier) are therefore bafing, and can only be accounted for in terms of an exceedingly casual reading of the text; for it is surely obvious that there is nothing contradictory in claiming (as we do) that a certain general state of affairs existed at the end of the nineteenth century but a somewhat different state of affairs by the end of the twentieth (at least in terms of overall trend). (3) It is not true that we argue “that historians cannot be objective.”19 Again, there is a very full and nuanced discussion in the book on the history of historiography, in which the question of the appropriate balance of objectivity and subjectivity in human appropriation of the past is seriously pursued. In that context we do discuss qualications that have been offered in more recent times to the idea that “a purely objective reconstruction of the past” is possible, “whether in the Rankean or the positivist manner” (we are quoting here from BHI, 44); but we say nothing remotely similar to what Grabbe claims we say. We specically do not believe that “history [is] just another form of ction,”20 nor do we misquote Hayden White in that direction. We do not, indeed, misquote Hayden White at all. (4) It is not true that we fail in our book to explain what we mean by “testimony.” We spend pp. 43–49 of BHI introducing the idea in some detail, and we expatiate upon it throughout pp. 51–74, making entirely 17. 18. 19. 20. 1

Grabbe, “Big Max,” 216–17. Ibid., 217. Ibid. Ibid.

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clear (contra Grabbe) where archaeology ts into the argument. “If I am anywhere close to understanding what they are getting at,” Grabbe tells us, “then any account of an event—no matter how late or how ignorant the author—has historical value.”21 But unfortunately he is not close to understanding what we are getting at. He is not even in the same neighbourhood. We do not argue that “any account of an event—no matter how late or how ignorant the author—has historical value.” We argue, rather, that we cannot decide in advance whether an account has historical value simply by noting its closeness to or distance from an event. This seems to us to be an entirely reasonable line to take. (5) We possess no “enthusiasm to debunk eye-witness sources,” contrary to what Grabbe suggests.22 We simply wish to give eye-witness sources their appropriate weight in historical endeavour, and to challenge some particularly simplistic views of what they can tell us, in comparison to what later sources can tell us. Contrary (again) to the impression that Grabbe creates, this involves a thoughtful argument, rather than simply pulling ideas out of the air. (6) We do not offer in the second part of BHI “essentially a paraphrase of the biblical account.”23 We do offer an account of the history of Israel that takes the biblical text seriously as a major source; but we spend considerable amounts of space bringing that text into conjunction with all kinds of other historical evidence, which we discuss fully in the context of recent and older scholarship on all matters. Almost two hundred pages are devoted to the exercise; and nine hundred and ten footnotes are associated with this main body of text. To describe this enterprise as a “paraphrase of the biblical account” is to caricature, not to describe honestly. All but the last of these denials and corrections relate to Grabbe’s review of Part I of our book. Aside from its carelessness, the most disturbing aspect of this section of the review is Grabbe’s almost complete lack of interest in engaging with our arguments. In the midst of his generally misleading comments about our views on subjectivity in historiography, for example, he does accurately capture something of our argument about the usefulness and limitations of archaeology. These arguments are not engaged, however, but dismissed in the context of a discussion of what “most historians” allegedly think about postmodernity. Then again, our discussion in BHI of “testimony” is a very important aspect of our overall argument. Grabbe does not engage this 21. Ibid., 218 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 1

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discussion at all, once again simply taking refuge in what he alleges that “real historians” think. Astonishingly, he thinks it odd that we take a lot of time “defending the concept rather than suggesting that other historians would agree.”24 The question as to whether it is in fact true (or not) that we gain access to the past mainly through testimony is simply not addressed. It seems more important to Grabbe to know whether the idea is accepted by the majority, than to know whether it is in fact true. We, on the other hand, are interested much more in what is true than in what the majority of people may or may not think about that.25 We are therefore interested in arguments against the views we have expressed with respect to the doing of historiography. We are not very interested in unreasoned objections to them of the sort that Grabbe offers—and this from a scholar who holds it to be a scholarly duty to “reply to the specic arguments rather than what we think might lie behind them.”26 This most unsatisfactory set of reections from Grabbe on Part I of BHI, occupying just under 12% of his text, then quickly gives way to a discussion of one section of Part II of our book (occupying just under 41% of the review) and, bizarrely, a discussion of the Book of Mormon and historiography (occupying just under 48%). The statistics themselves provide further illustration of his lack of enthusiasm for engaging with the arguments of Part I, and his apparent preference for other modes of interaction with the book. The example chosen for discussion from Part II is the case of the settlement of Israel in the land of Canaan.27 Here Grabbe begins with what appear to be a series of objections to reading ancient texts seriously 24. Ibid. 25. We are also interested in the best ways of ensuring that truth is arrived at— which is why we are interested in historical theory and method, irrespective of whether the majority of historians (or indeed biblical scholars) share our interest. Implicit in Grabbe’s comments about the rst two chapters of BHI, on the other hand, appears to be the view that, because “most contemporary historians are not overly concerned with historical theory” (ibid.), biblical scholars should not be concerned either. We should, it seems, just get on with the business of “doing history” much as other (real) historians are allegedly doing it—without thinking too much about our approach. Our response to such a position is a straightforward one: the real choice lies not between possession of a theory/method of historiography or not (since all historians possess such), but only between carefully reasoned, justied and personally selected theory/method, and other kinds. 26. AI, 24. Precisely the same lack of engagement with Part I of BHI is in fact evidenced throughout Part I of AI, even though BHI directly challenges a number of the positions simply assumed by Grabbe (not argued) in the course of his presentation on historical method. 27. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 218–26. 1

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as literature—to paying proper attention to such realities as ancient literary convention, as we construe what the texts are saying. BHI’s attempts to engage in exactly this manner of serious reading in the case of the biblical texts in Joshua and Judges—to evaluate them in terms of their historiographical intent and indeed content, in line with what is known from extra-biblical sources that might help us28—are in fact portrayed by Grabbe as an attempt to “get away from the scholarly consensus that Judg 1 paints a rather different picture of the occupation of the land from that ending Joshua.”29 Once again, we encounter the “scholarly consensus.” Does Grabbe change his custom on this occasion and actually argue for the scholarly consensus? Unfortunately not. He simply cites a very few texts from the book of Joshua and then asserts that Try as one might, one cannot get away from the overall picture of Joshua: the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership came from across the Jordan and conquered the land and the indigenous peoples in what was basically a ve-year campaign and then divided the country up. Those Canaanites who had not been destroyed or driven out were put into servitude. By the time of Joshua’s death the work was accomplished and the promises fullled.30

This is not an argument over against our argument—this is merely the reassertion of a traditional view; and Grabbe apparently thinks that such will sufce. The “overall picture of Joshua” is, according to Grabbe, simply thus and so. Why? Because he already knows it to be thus and so. It is the tradition—the scholarly consensus. Are there not problems with such a construal of the “overall picture of Joshua”? Ah, yes: “some passages do not agree with the picture.”31 Fear not, however: for “[a]ccording to the standard scholarly understanding of the biblical books, these discrepancies present no surprises.” There is the “usual explanation” to fall back upon. The “overall picture of Joshua” remains the overall picture, even although it is, at the same time, not in fact the overall picture. Not to understand this is apparently to be driven by “an articial compulsion to deny any conict or contradictions in the text.”32 It is difcult to know whether to be more offended than amused by these 28. We are interested, for example, in what is known about the nature of ancient conquest accounts in general, as articulated by scholars like K. L. Younger, Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (JSOTSup 98; Shefeld: JSOT, 1990). 29. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 221. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 222. 32. Ibid. 1

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intellectual gymnastics, especially when we are urged in closing “to read the text for what it says…not in some convoluted…way.”33 By all means let us all do that. Let us all indeed read these ancient texts in terms of what they are saying, measured in terms of their ancient context; and let us be prepared to produce arguments in defence of our reading, rather than simply falling back on the tribalism of consensus among allegedly “real scholars” (which is in fact nothing else than an appeal to “those who already agree with me”). Let us do all this, in fact, in the context of the voluminous scholarship of the last three decades that has helped us to understand more fully the nature of Hebrew narrative and has helped those who are interested in learning this skill to avoid anachronism in our reading. Chapter 4 in Part I of BHI would be as good a place as any to begin if help with this literature is required—a chapter whose signicance in terms of how biblical texts are approached in Part II of the book Grabbe (assuming that he has read the chapter thoroughly) has certainly not understood. Finally, let us each understand that even what each of us means by “respect for the text” will be affected by our reections on all such matters—as will our construal of the past to which the text witnesses. Discussion of what the biblical text is “really saying” in Joshua and Judges then gives way in Grabbe’s review to discussion of matters of archaeology and text.34 We may move quickly past his curious insistence that we (the authors of BHI) should not be permitted to read some texts in a fairly straightforward manner, in terms of what they are saying, because in the case of other texts we claim to nd such realities as hyperbole. All reading of literature inevitably involves us in such decisions about levels and types of meaning, and this includes extrabiblical ancient Near Eastern literature of the millennium in which Joshua and Judges were themselves written. This is an elementary matter, and most will require no introduction to it. Grabbe’s discussion of our treatment of Jericho and Ai follows. Once again the importance to him of established “party lines” is immediately apparent. He offers no argument against Bryant Wood’s challenge to Kathleen Kenyon’s interpretation of the Jericho ndings, but wishes us simply to assume that Wood’s work cannot be worthy of our attention because “professional archaeologists and others [have] not debated [it].”35 Wood is outside the tribe—a tribe carefully dened, of course, to exclude precisely those “others” who have found Wood’s case worthy of 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 222–24. 35. Ibid., 223. 1

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some attention, but who sadly turn out to be merely “other conservative evangelicals.” How unfortunate; for it is obvious (is it not?) that those scholars’ opinions cannot be given any more weight than Wood’s. We know this in advance, without even having to read about them and consider them—even though (remember?) we should not indulge our suspicion about the ideological motivations of others but “evaluate the position on the basis of stated arguments.”36 It is a most convenient approach to the matter of knowledge—a great time-saving device, in fact. Whether it counts as serious scholarship is entirely another matter.37 Grabbe’s level of seriousness in attending to data that do not appear to t with certain traditional scholarly opinions is even more in question in his discussion of BHI’s treatment of Ai; for here his articulation of “the current scholarly position” must of necessity marginalize a still greater number of dissenters or doubters than are found in the case of Jericho, since as BHI (correctly) states, “condence in the site identications of both Bethel and Ai has never been strong.”38 The assurance with which these alleged scholarly consensuses are pressed by Grabbe, and the vehemence with which alternative views are attacked, is especially troubling given his own response to our cautionary words about Ai, which read as follows: “the site may not be correctly identied; …the archaeological nds may not be representative of the unexcavated portions of the site; the biblical accounts may not yet have been correctly read; or the biblical accounts may simply be wrong.”39 “So?” asks Grabbe. “These possibilities apply to nearly every archaeological site.”40 Indeed so; and therefore, is not due caution justied in stating what we “know” in respect of archaeology? Is not careful consideration of different possibilities required, as we read texts and artifacts together and look for convergence or divergence among them all? Yet Grabbe is insistent that “real scholars” already know the truth in the case of Jericho and Ai. There is no room for doubt. To doubt is to stand outside the community of the faithful. It is not enough for Grabbe, then, that in the section of BHI that is under discussion here its authors at least appear to be behaving as scholars in the way that we handle evidence: “difculties 36. AI, 23. 37. It is worth noting in passing that, even apart from Wood’s studies, our cautionary statements about drawing sweeping conclusions from the archaeology of Jericho nd support from the likes of noted archaeologist Amihai Mazar, who writes that “the archaeological data cannot serve as decisive evidence to deny a historical nucleus in the book of Joshua concerning the conquest of this city” (BHI, 176). 38. BHI, 177. 39. Ibid. 40. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 224. 1

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with the biblical picture are acknowledged,” Grabbe admits, “caution in interpretation and drawing conclusions is encouraged, both biblical and extra-biblical material are discussed, and conclusions are presented as a personal view rather than a dogmatic assertion.”41 But this is not enough. In order to be real scholars, we must apparently also come to the “correct” conclusions. That is to say: we must come to Grabbe’s conclusions, and those of the people of whom he approves. It is agreement on outcomes, it seems, that denes for Grabbe the fellowship of truly critical scholars—not critical thinking as such. It is end-results, not method. On this basis one is either “in” or “out”; and if it is the latter, one can (it seems) expect no serious engagement with one’s work. One can expect no argument—only reminders that one is “outside.” And yet this condent separating of the scholarly sheep and goats in the case of Jericho and Ai is conducted by someone who is well aware of the uncertainties surrounding the correlation of pottery assemblages, radiocarbon analysis, and absolute dates42—matters of direct relevance to an understanding of the case of Jericho in particular. The transition from this confused and troubling treatment of the settlement in the land to the section of the review that touches on the Book of Mormon is by way of a brief paragraph that summarizes Grabbe’s view of our entire approach.43 Given its importance in setting up what comes next, we must at this point revert to our opening strategy of denial and correction; for the paragraph in question is, quite frankly, disgracefully misleading. In the rst place, our intended readership is not evangelical, as Grabbe asserts. Our intended readership is anyone who is interested in thinking seriously about matters of history and historiography in general, and about the history of Israel in particular. We make that explicitly clear in Chapter 5 of BHI. We also explain, in that chapter, exactly what we mean by the phrase “biblical history of Israel”: “We do indeed offer a biblical history of Israel… That is, we depend heavily upon the Bible in our presentation of the history of Israel…because we consider it irrational not to do so.”44 We then go on to explain why we consider it irrational, and what we shall and shall not be found doing in Part II of the book as a result. It is beyond understanding, therefore, that Grabbe can say that he is “somewhat puzzled about what constitutes a ‘biblical history,’ except as a slogan.” He ought to be able to grasp the idea at least as easily as the evangelical readers of the book whom he in fact insults with his 41. 42. 43. 44. 1

Ibid., 219. AI, 12–16. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 224–26. BHI, 98.

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aspersions upon their lack of thoughtfulness. He ought certainly to understand just how indefensibly misleading his articulation of the “slogan” is: “as a slogan, I gather that it means to imply that the Bible is given a privileged place—sometimes even an exclusive position—as a source for Israel’s history.”45 Consider, for example, what we actually say on BHI, 99–100: “we offer a biblical history of Israel that takes seriously the testimony of nonbiblical texts about Israel and about the ancient world in which ancient Israel lived. We do not take these texts more seriously than the biblical texts… Neither do we take them less seriously than the biblical texts.” There is, evidently, a at contradiction between what Grabbe says we say, and what we actually say (and indeed do, in the remainder of BHI). The nal section of Grabbe’s review, and its longest, compares our BHI to a hypothetical “Book of Mormon history of pre-Columbian America.” There is very little that we wish to say about this very strange piece of writing, or about the unconvincing analogy at its heart; but something must be said, lest in the dark recesses of the groves of Academe there might be some who nd such an analogy plausible. This section of the review is, rst of all, injudicious in its criticism of at least some of the Mormon writing that it attacks. For example, it criticizes some who wish to use the Book of Mormon for historical purposes, for their insistence that the Book must be read properly by those interested in that project.46 It is simply an obvious aspect of proper historical method, however, that one should strive to read properly the texts that one is dealing with. Whatever one thinks about the connection between the Book of Mormon and the American past, at least on this point one surely cannot fault those intent on the quest. Likewise, it is in fact true that “lack of evidence is not negative evidence” (Norman, quoted by Grabbe on p. 227); and the fact that a Mormon said this does not make it less true. Secondly, this section of the review (like its predecessors) misrepresents our scholarship—precisely in its attempt to make connections between the Mormons described and ourselves, other than those that have to do with correct historical method. Consider the following: “PLL [Provan, Long, and Longman] will of course disavow any attempt to connect the BoM with history, but that is precisely my point: they privilege the Bible because of their theological stance, just as Mormon apologists privilege the BoM.”47 As noted above, we do not in fact 45. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 224. 46. Ibid., 225–28. 47. Ibid., 230. 1

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privilege the Bible at all; we simply take it seriously as a major source for the history of Israel. In addition, we explicitly state, as Grabbe himself acknowledges, that we do this not because we have theological motivations but for other, voluminously stated reasons (throughout the entirety of Part I of BHI).48 So Grabbe misstates both the facts about our attitude towards the Bible and also our motivations. “Some might think I am giving a caricature,” he concedes;49 indeed, some might. Caricature is in fact too gentle a word for the persistent misrepresentation of BHI that occurs throughout his review. Thirdly, the analogy that Grabbe draws between the Book of Mormon and the Bible is a ridiculous one. On the one hand, we have the Book of Mormon, which so far as we know (although we are no more experts on this topic than Grabbe) is indeed “entirely the product of early nineteenth century America” and “whose value for Mesoamerican history is…nil.”50 On the other hand, we have the Bible, which even Grabbe acknowledges “has some ancient traditions and data in it,” which is why he himself professes to “take the biblical text seriously.”51 In other words, it makes sense to read the Bible in pursuit of the history of Israel; it does not make sense to read the Book of Mormon in pursuit of the history of Mesoamerica. So what, exactly, is Grabbe’s difculty with the authors of BHI? It is, apparently, that we take the Bible too seriously for his liking, “following it” in our history and “assuming it is always correct.” He, on the other hand, takes “some Bible texts seriously in the sense of considering it as a potential source for reconstructing the history of Israel,” allowing “critical investigation” to suggest which texts these should be— which texts possess “reliable information” and which possess none or are “too problematic to use.”52 Once again, however, his very description of the matter is entirely misleading. We ourselves are thoroughly committed to “critical investigation” in the matter of the history of Israel— more so, we believe, than Grabbe, for we have an interest in critically discussing (a) crucial questions (such as what counts as a rational epistemology) that Grabbe seems intent upon ignoring, and (b) received opinions on some topics that Grabbe appears to regard as simply self-evidently 48. For a careful and candid articulation of the common convictions—theological and otherwise—of the three authors of BHI and of the relationship of these convictions to the book we have written, see BHI, 101–4. It is our sense that scholarly understanding would be furthered if more in the guild were willing to be as biographically forthcoming. 49. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 231. 50. Ibid., 232. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 1

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true (cf. our discussion above about the settlement of Israel in Palestine). Arising out of our commitment to “critical investigation,” we are certainly interested in how far our biblical texts possess “reliable information,” and we spend a considerable amount of time in BHI discussing that issue both in general and in specic terms and developing arguments in respect of it. We are patently very far, therefore, from simply “assuming [the Bible] is always correct” or, for that matter, that our readings of it are always correct. As for “following it” in our history: we certainly do take the story it tells very seriously in our work, once again for stated reasons that we consider compelling. Would it not have been much better—and indeed a better indication of his “critical scholarship”—if Grabbe had spent his review engaging these reasons and arguments rather than avoiding doing so, not least by using up almost half of the review on the red herring of Mormonism? Would such engagement with the reasons and arguments not have reected his “critical scholarship” better than the approach to our book and to ourselves that he takes instead—misrepresentation of both fact and motive, and mere dismissal of reasons and arguments where they lead to conclusions of which Grabbe disapproves? The conclusion of Grabbe’s review53 reveals as clearly as one could wish, however, why it is that he is not in fact interested in engaging with our arguments. It is because he does not consider them to be made sincerely. We are, it seems, con-artists. The reason that we wrote the rst part of BHI is not, it appears, that we were intent on making a serious argument about proper method in historiography, but only that we were trying to make our “way of writing history look logical and respectable.” “Despite some statements in the introductory chapter” it seems that ultimately we “are not trying to develop a new theory of historiography” but that all we want “is that the biblical text be treated differently from any other potential historical source.” Our appeal to testimony “is simply a way to privilege the biblical account, regardless of whatever other sources are available.” And so it goes on. Grabbe the critical scholar is revealed as Grabbe the mind-reader, in the course of a veritable litany of appalling misrepresentations of our stated views. In a sense, resistance to this kind of “scholarship” is futile; for if Grabbe already “knows” somehow “what we are really up to,” nothing that we have to say by way of objection will change his mind. Working on the assumption, however, that at least those who read this current volume of collected essays are interested in what is true, and that this interest in truth extends to what we have said in BHI and what we 53. Ibid., 232–33. 1

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mean by it, let us attempt a response. We intended Part I of BHI to be a serious contribution to public scholarly discourse about the discipline of the history of Israel, on its own terms and quite independently of Part II. The discussion concerning epistemology which it contains is a particularly important aspect of that contribution. No aspect of BHI is intended to advance the opinion that “the biblical text should be treated differently from any other potential historical source,” or the opinion that it should be privileged “regardless of whatever other sources are available”—and indeed, no part of BHI in fact adopts that view, as will be obvious to anyone who reads the book. We certainly did not write Part I of the book as a way of making our way of writing history “look logical and respectable”; rather, we wrote Part II of the book out of prior convictions about what correct method looks like, as described and argued for in Part I, and in many ways as illustrative of this method rather than exhaustive in its treatment of the history of Israel as such.54 We hoped, in writing the book in this way, to spark a wide-ranging discussion about historical method in general, and the place of the Bible in ongoing work on the history of Israel in particular; for surely, we thought, even those who do not happen to agree with the particular treatments of Israelite history in Part II will recognize the importance of fully discussing the weighty matters discussed in Part I. Surely they will understand that what is said in any “Part II” of a book on the history of Israel will be intrinsically connected to what is said in any “Part I”—or what is at least in the head of the person writing “Part II,” whether it is written down in a “Part I” or not. Eight years on from BHI’s publication date, there is some evidence that this “hope” has not been entirely ill-founded—that thoughtful reection in respect of the matters we discuss is indeed taking place.55 Grabbe’s review unfortunately stands as evidence of a tendency in some quarters 54. It is this fact, taken along with the different authorship of the various chapters in Part II, that results in the variation in style and content in those chapters that has sometimes been noted by reviewers. Our aim was not to write “the denitive history of Israel” (as if such a thing were possible)—not even “the denitive biblical history of Israel” (which is why the indenite article was chosen for the title of the book). We can conceive of different kinds of histories of Israel being written, each taking the biblical text duly seriously in its endeavours and yet focusing on different areas and arriving at different conclusions to ours. Our aim was to show that a history of Israel could be written on the basis outlined in Part I of the book—not that it was the only history of Israel that could be written on that basis. We three authors chose to demonstrate that in slightly different ways in the individual chapters. 55. It is gratifying, for example, that BHI appears on the student reading lists of various major universities throughout the world, suggesting that it is regarded as serious scholarly literature by many colleagues in the Academy, if not by all. 1

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in quite a different direction. He evades, rather than engages with, our arguments; he misrepresents, rather than listens to, our words; he ridicules, rather than converses. In many ways, his essay is not a dialogue with us at all; for a dialogue has as its necessary prerequisite an appreciation of what it is that the dialogue partner is saying, and what he means by it. As we have demonstrated in this response, however, Grabbe does not come close to appreciating what we are saying and what we mean by it. In fact, he seems intent on having a dialogue with quite other partners than ourselves. Who are these? They are, we suggest, those indicated in the following revealing words: Every week, in hundreds of pulpits across the land, a “biblical” history is presented. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are real, historical gures; so is Adam. The plagues of Egypt are presented as having happened at a particular place and time…so did the Tower of Babel.56

Which land is this, with its hundreds of pulpits in which such terrible things are said? We doubt if it is the England of Grabbe’s current abode; it is certainly not the Canada that two of us BHI authors currently inhabit. Those with real, recent experience of churches in these lands will know how infrequently the Old Testament is ever preached in them at all, much less the books of Genesis or Exodus in particular. Which land does Grabbe have in mind, then? The most obvious candidate is the southern U.S.A. from which he originates—the home, certainly, of the kind of sometimes-narrow fundamentalists whom Grabbe appears to have in his sights throughout his review, and with whom he constantly confuses us BHI authors. It is these folks, and not we ourselves, who genuinely “privilege the Bible because of their theological stance,”57 in matters not only of history, but also of other areas of human knowledge such as science. Grabbe knows their mindset well, because as he tells us candidly elsewhere, he was once one of their number; he is “an exfundamentalist.”58 The designation evidently intends to suggest that he 56. Grabbe, “Big Max,” 232. 57. Ibid., 230. 58. See L. L. Grabbe, “Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel,” in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (ed. H. G. M. Williamson; Proceedings of the British Academy 143; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57–67 (60): “As an ex-fundamentalist I am rather sensitive to arguments by conservative evangelicals which use the trappings of scholarship but which in my opinion cloak fundamentalist motives.” Ironically, in view of the treatment he metes out to us BHI authors in “Big Max” and elsewhere in his writing, he continues on this same page by outlining the proper scholarly course of action even in such cases: “But I think John Emerton was quite right when I once heard him say that even in such cases we 1

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has left behind him this unfortunate way of looking at the world. From our perspective, however, it appears not only that Grabbe is evidently confusing us with those he has “left behind” (literary pun intended), but also that he himself stands much closer still to the fundamentalist mindset than we do, for all that he is overtly opposed to it. This is so in at least two respects. First, he insists (in his discussion of Joshua and Judges) on the literal sense of the biblical text while appearing deeply uncomfortable with the idea of reading these ancient texts seriously as literature, especially if this means that we cannot simply say that they are “right” or “wrong.”59 Secondly, he looks at the world (throughout his review) in very simple terms, differentiating between “real” scholars or “real” historians and the remainder both in terms of the conclusions that they have come to about a whole array of matters and in terms of should answer the actual argument and not just dismiss it because of the presumed motive. We can always nd reasons to say that someone takes a scholarly position because of personal or ideological motives. ‘He’s just conservative. She’s simply a radical. He’s a Zionist. She is anti-Semitic.’” Quite so; but if this is indeed an excellent principle of scholarship, why has Grabbe chosen not follow it in practice? 59. This obsession with “right” and “wrong” is also in evidence in AI, especially in Chapters 4 and 5, whose concluding sections boldly proclaim (among other things) those occasions upon which biblical data have been conrmed by research and those upon which the biblical picture has been shown to be incorrect. The apparent need to describe reality in terms of this simplistic paradigm leads to some exceedingly curious judgments. The biblical picture of the Iron IIB era is said to be “incorrect,” for example, in claiming that the Aramaeans are Israel’s main enemy (p. 165), when no such claim is in fact made in the biblical text—it is imputed to the biblical authors by Grabbe simply because they tell stories about the Aramaeans and not the Assyrians, and Grabbe nds this unacceptable. This strong prejudice with respect to what counts as “proper” historiography is also in evidence in Grabbe’s, “How Reliable Are Biblical Reports? A Response to V. Philips Long,” in Historie og konstruktion (ed. M. Müller and T. L. Thompson; FBE 14; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005), 153–60 (154): “No historical account of Ahab could be credible if it did not include Assyria.” See further Grabbe’s “Are Historians of Ancient Palestine Fellow Creatures—Or Different Animals?,” in Can a “History of Israel” Be Written? (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 245; ESHM 1; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic, 1997), 19–36. For a more sensible approach to the matter, see the original V. P. Long essay to which Grabbe’s 2005 response represents a less than satisfactory answer in all kinds of ways: “How Reliable are Biblical Reports? Repeating Lester Grabbe’s Comparative Experiment,” VT 52 (2002): 367–84. A sound evaluation of the whole discussion is found in M. B. Moore, Philosophy and Practice in Writing a History of Ancient Israel (LHBOTS 435; London: T&T Clark International, 2006), 141: “Long’s examination is more detailed than Grabbe’s and gives more comparative examples for the reader to consider, and thus appears both more objective and more accurate.” 1

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whether these beliefs are “true” or “false” from Grabbe’s point of view. Grabbe’s beliefs about such matters indeed apparently hold the status of self-evident truth, such that to disagree with them is by denition not to be a real scholar or a real historian.60 The fundamentalist world of “real Christianity” and its basis in the literal (but somehow non-literary) truth of Scripture is thus surprisingly evoked by Grabbe, albeit in avowedly and aggressively secular form, in his review. In sum: with whomever it is that Lester Grabbe is dialoguing in his review of A Biblical History of Israel, it is certainly not with us who wrote it and intended our words thus penned to be a serious guide to what we thought and meant. He must be dialoguing instead, to quote our title, with “himself or someone else.” This is a pity; because we certainly welcome dialogue. We would like serious discussion of our claims about correct historical method. We would like serious discussion of our various specic ideas about how to read biblical and other texts together with non-textual artifacts in pursuit of a history of Israel. We welcome all such conversation. Perhaps this will only be possible, however, with those who have entirely eschewed fundamentalisms of all kinds, whether on the right or on the left, and are genuinely able and willing to engage with other people’s arguments on their own terms, without the ghosts of convictions past haunting and subverting the enterprise. Perhaps it will only be possible with those who are prepared, while certainly belonging to “churches” and confessing their “creeds” (whether these “churches” and “creeds” are religious or secular), to adopt a charitable and openminded attitude to the views of others and to consider, not only where they themselves may be right, but also where they may be wrong. This used to be what we thought a liberal educational and scholarly environment offered, before “critical thinking” became a theoretical tribal marker rather than a substantive reality within our corporate discourse.

60. It is, rather, to display only “the trappings of scholarship” which “cloak fundamentalist motives” (Grabbe, “Some Recent Issues,” 60). 1

ALBERTO SOGGIN’S STORIA D’ISRAELE: EXEMPLIFYING TWENTY YEARS OF DEBATE AND CHANGING TRENDS IN THINKING Lester L. Grabbe

The contemporary debate with regard to the “history of Israel” began some three decades or so ago (see the survey in Grabbe 2000). Yet one individual has provided an intriguing record of how the debate has developed during much of that time. My aim is to give a brief survey of the various editions of Soggin’s “history of Israel” to show how his approach changed as the debate evolved in the wider scholarly world. More than many scholars Soggin has been sensitive to the controversies in the wider scholarly community about how to write such a history. A good portion of this debate has appeared in English-language publications and conferences, which Soggin—with his excellent English—was well placed to follow. But he also had the intellectual interest and honesty to try to translate his shifting position(s) into an accessible and widely available publication that followed closely behind the discussion and gathered up the main conclusions into its treatment. Because his work might seem to be aimed mainly at students, its input is often overlooked, but no history of recent historiography can ignore the valuable contribution made by Soggin’s continual revisions of his widely known study.1 Alberto Soggin, as a result of an invitation to be Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for 1982– 83, undertook the major task of writing a history of Israel and Judah. This resulted in the rst edition of Storia d’Israele, which was completed in 1983 and appeared in English and Italian almost simultaneously in 1. Available to me were the second Italian edition (Soggin 2002) and the three English editions (1984, 1993, 1999). Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain the rst Italian edition, but the rst English edition appeared almost simultaneously with it and seems to have been a close translation. I have taken it that the rst English edition is a good representative of the rst Italian edition. 1

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1984. The discussion was pitched very much at a level that would appeal to students, but at no point does he suggest that it was a student text. The presupposition seems to be that it would serve simply as a contribution to the eld of the “history of Israel.” In his rst edition Soggin begins with a chapter on the “context”: the longue durée of the geography, landscape, climate, crops; the various peoples inhabiting the land; some of the reference works dealing with these basic issues. But the heart of his work for our purposes is in Chapter 2 which deals with “methodology, bibliography, and sources.” It would seem par for the course that a book of the history of Israel would explicitly discuss the question of historical methodology, but this is far from being the case. Indeed, this is one of the features that makes Soggin’s work so interesting: he tells us unambiguously when “Israel” began—when the “history of Israel,” as opposed to the “legend of Israel,” starts (1984, 19–28). He initiates his discussion with the observation that most of the histories of Israel for the past century have looked very similar; even Martin Noth’s begins in the second millennium B.C.E. though only in the nal centuries of that period. Yet the “most recent work,” including monographs by Thompson (1974) and Van Seters (1975) and the edited volume of Hayes and Miller (1977), calls into question that consensus. Peoples usually start to ask about their origins only when they already have a well-dened community or national structures. Rome in the Augustan age is a good example because that is when a great interest develops in the beginnings of the Roman people. Writers of the period often give an emphasis to heroes and heroines, just as we nd in the biblical text. This does not mean that data about the pre-state period are absent from the traditions, but the traditions reect the horizon of the redactors which tends to be the exilic and post-exilic periods. The “theocratic/hierocratic” outlook of many of the passages (e.g., the tribal league) look like providing a predecessor for the post-exilic situation. With these considerations in mind, Soggin then asks the essential question (1984, 26): Where, then does a history of Israel begin?… Such questions are not new; they have been asked for more than a century… Now over the course of the last decade I have come to the conclusion that the answer should be to point to the united kingdom of Judah and Israel under David and Solomon, a kingdom which included most of the neighbouring countries as well… It was in fact from that time on that Israel began to exist not only as an ethnic group…, but also as a political group, in that it was constituted as a state. 1

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He recognizes, however, that “there are many problems even over the empire of David and Solomon” (Soggin 1984, 27), and goes on to acknowledge that some see little or no history in the David and Solomon traditions. Also, “it is a well known fact…that there is no trace of the empire of David and Solomon in any of the ancient Near Eastern texts of the period, which is all the more strange when we think of the importance attributed to it” (1984, 27). Despite the problems, he feels this is the appropriate place to begin. Soggin was not especially out of line with some other works that appeared about the same time. Herbert Donner (1984) divided the early part of his work into “pre-history” (Vorgeschichte) which includes the traditions about the patriarchs and the exodus, “early history” (Frühgeschichte) taking in the settlement (though biblical traditions are used only critically to reconstruct a picture rather different from Joshua), and nally “the period of state formation” (Zeitalter der Staatenbildungen) which begins with Saul. The widely used “history” by J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes (1986) ignored the framework of the biblical narrative for nearly the rst one hundred pages but then declared, “It is our opinion…that the component narratives of the Book of Judges can serve as a tentative starting point for a treatment of Israelite and Judean history” (1986, 91). They raised queries about the United Monarchy, however; on Solomon they concluded (1986, 199), “Yet viewed in the broader context of the ancient Middle East, he is to be regarded more as a local ruler over an expanded city-state than as a world class emperor… Whether he was such a wise ruler would have been a matter of opinion even in his own day.” This rather mild scepticism—certainly in today’s climate—was attacked at the time (Miller 1997, 12). Soggin thus begins his history with chapters on David and Solomon, leaving the “proto-history” of the patriarchal, exodus, and settlement traditions until Part Two of his book. He then takes his narrative down to the Bar Kochba war. He readily admits that the account becomes rather skimpy after the Maccabean Revolt, and it is clear that his knowledge of scholarship on the later Second Temple Period is not of the same standard as of pre-exilic Israel, but anyone’s knowledge of such a span of history will not always be uniform over the whole period. Much more could be said about this later period but it is beyond our basic concern.2 It was clear that the largest interest in Soggin’s work was in the English-speaking world, even though German and French versions also eventually appeared. The second English edition came out in 1993, less 2. As I pointed out (Grabbe 1987), though my criticisms were directed at a number of “standard” works and did not single out Soggin in particular. 1

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than a decade after the rst. The text was considerably expanded as well as updated, so that “on almost every page this is a completely revised edition” (1993, xv). A change of perspective is already shown in the title, which has become “an introduction to the history of Israel and Judah.” This is the result of deep reection on the subject which is summarized in three points (1993, 3–4): (1) Israel and Judah were always independent and autonomous ethnic and political entities (though they were briey united under David and Solomon); (2) the sources, contained mainly in the Hebrew Bible and the writings of Josephus [sic], are essentially religious and apologetic and thus give a partial and idealized picture; (3) the biblical account of the religion of Israel—depicted as revealed in a pure form originally from God to Moses but later corrupted by the people because of sin and Canaanite inuence—is an ideology that cannot be maintained in the light of critical-historical study. At rst glance, the general outline of the contexts looks much the same as the rst edition, though there are a number of subtle rewords: for example, the chapter titled “conquest” in the rst edition has been changed to “the settlement in Canaan.” Once again, though, the real place to look for differences is in the chapter on “problems [a new addition], methodology, bibliography, and sources.” A good deal of the old text appears here, but there are some telling additions. A section has now been added on historiography in the ancient Near East, for purposes of comparison with that in the Bible. Soggin maintains his view that the place to begin the history of Israel is with the empire of David and Solomon (1993, 31–33), but this position is much more qualied. He notes, “For the moment I feel it necessary to maintain this position, despite the objections which have been made to it” (1993, 31), but he takes a well-aimed swipe at a more conservative position (1993, 31): To go back to the time of the exodus from Egypt, as is proposed by W. W. Hallo, …as the moment when “Israel” acquired its own “group identity,” “the awareness of a collective destiny,” is to use these somewhat rhetorical formulations to cloak a degree of naivety, if we look at the proposal in the light of what is being said here.

After examining the question against the objections of some, such as Garbini, he concludes, “These are the reasons why I prefer to begin with the empire of David and Solomon, even if there are quite a number of factors in favour of beginning at the end of the ninth century BCE” (1993, 33). Another feature of the chapter is the updated survey of the “histories of Israel and Judah today,” though “today” must begin with 1869 since the rst one he cites was published then. This updating turns out to be 1

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more signicant than might appear at rst, especially in light of the short paragraph—often only a sentence or two—given to each work. For as brief as each description is, Soggin sums up the main characteristic(s) of the study and any innovative features. More than the survey in the rst edition, the new additions to this survey show a clear tendency to doubt how much can be gleaned from the biblical tradition about Israel in the pre-state period. A third English edition appeared in 1999, followed not long afterward in 2002 by a second Italian edition. The two are quite similar in content overall, though a comparison shows some important differences (as well as many minor ones). This is already indicated in the “preface”: although the prefaces of the Italian and English editions are somewhat different, in both Soggin notes two recent works that provide criticisms of the standard way of writing the history of Israel. These are Grabbe ([ed.] 1997), with a number of essays, and Whitelam (1996). Unfortunately, in the English edition something seems to have gone amiss, because Soggin promises to discuss Grabbe ([ed.] 1997) “in detail” in section 3.5.3.5, but there is no such section and the discussion seems to have been overlooked (or omitted by accident in the process of translation or printing?). The promise in the Italian preface to discuss it “at the appropriate occasion” (opportunamente) is fullled in a brief paragraph in 2.5 (2002, 61) which notes that different views are taken by contributors on whether and how a history of Israel can be written. Brief comments are made on Whitelam in both editions (1999, xiii–xiv, 39; 2002, 13–14, 61). It is in the chapter on methodology, however, that comparison shows the slightly more recent second Italian edition to exhibit an essential difference from the third English edition. In this chapter the English text has been little altered from the second English edition: despite reservations Soggin once again asserts his preference to begin his history with the empire of David and Solomon. Therefore, in spite an updating and slight expansion of the text to create a revised edition, the third English edition retains the same basic orientation as the second. Part of this reason is undoubtedly because Soggin suffered an illness as he was engaged in this new edition and had to curtail any desire to rethink his subject. The additional two years between the third English and the second Italian edition seem to have provided a gestation period for some fundamental new reections. The contents of the chapter on methodology can be found, by and large, in the rst Italian edition and the third English one. In other words, Soggin says much the same thing as he has been saying for the past two decades. The difference is in the conclusion: the 1

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problems with the empire of David and Solomon are rehearsed as before, but instead of using this period as the starting point “despite the objections” as he has done before, Soggin allows the unresolved problems to have full force: “In any case we no longer feel like initiating history with the empire of David and Solomon: the unresolved and unresolvable problems are too great.”3 The practical consequences of this change of perspective can be seen in the organization of the book’s contents: “Part Two: The Foundation of the State” found in the rst Italian edition and all three English editions has disappeared. Instead, the section on “the traditions on the prehistory of the people” has expanded to include the two chapters on David and Solomon. The empire of David and Solomon is no longer where Israel’s history begins—this is now a part of its “prehistory,” along with the patriarchs, the exodus, the settlement, and the judges. Yet the transfer of these chapters does not seem to have changed their content—they appear to say much the same as when they were part of the “foundation of the state.” Indeed, the concluding paragraph of Chapter 5 on Solomon in the third English edition (1999, 93) does not appear in the Italian edition: The conclusion from all this is that what the biblical sources attribute to David and Solomon is no more than a collection of legendary elements made many centuries after the events and therefore of problematical historical value.

Further editing apparently needs to be done to bring the text into line with the new orientation. Yet Soggin’s change of perspective is genuine. In a paper read in March 2003, though only recently published, he talked about David and again expressed his severe reservations about building on a postulated empire of David and Solomon (Soggin 2005). In commenting on the articles in this volume, G. Garbini states that Soggin “is now quite close to ‘minimalist’ positions” (2005, 199). I suppose it depends on one’s denition, but I personally would not classify Soggin as a “minimalist.” My denition depends on Axel Knauf and denes a minimalist as arguing that “everything which is not corroborated by evidence contemporary with the events to be reconstructed is dismissed” (2000, 59). But it still illustrates the signicance of Soggin’s position on the empire of David and Solomon. Soggin, who has not (to the best of my knowledge) ever been seen as a radical gure, has thus felt compelled by the evidence to move to a more 3. “In ogni caso non ci sentiamo più di iniziare la storia dall’impero davidico e salomonico: troppi sono i problemi irrisolti e non risolvibili” (2002, 57). 1

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sceptical view of the Davidic and Solomonic empire. He presents a bit of a dilemma, I think, to those who keep referring to the “revisionists” as an isolated group that can be either safely ignored or dismissed with disdain. The fact is that there is not a “revisionist position” but a series of rather different, often well-nuanced, positions that seek to “revise” an older consensus perhaps best represented by John Bright. Not all the “revisionists” automatically reject the biblical text nor are all of them minimalists (at least, according to the denition given above). But John Bright’s consensus was already under attack 30 years ago and the eld has moved a considerable way since then—even if a few rather vociferous voices seem unable to recognize this fact. To judge by Soggin’s work the “revisionist” position that sees the Davidic and Solomonic traditions as still part of Israel’s prehistory may well be on its way to becoming a consensus. Bibliography Donner, Herbert. 1984. Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzügen, Teil 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Staatenbildungszeit; Teil 2: Von der Königszeit bis zu Alexander dem Großen, mit einem Ausblick auf die Geschichte des Judentums bis Bar Kochba. Grundrisse zum Alten Testament, Das Alte Testament Deutsch Ergänzungreihe 4/1–2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Garbini, Giovanni. 2005. Final Considerations. Pages 197–200 in Recenti tendenze nella ricostruzione della storia antica d’Israele. Edited by Mario Liverani. Contributi del Centro Linceo Interdisciplinare “Beniamino Segre” 110. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Grabbe, Lester L. 1987. The Jewish Theocracy from Cyrus to Titus: A Programmatic Essay. JSOT 37:117–24. ———, ed. 1997. Can a “History of Israel” Be Written? JSOTSup 245. ESHM 1. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. ———. 2000. Writing Israel’s History at the End of the Twentieth Century. Pages 203– 18 in Congress Volume: Oslo 1998. Edited by André Lemaire and Magne Saebø. VTSup 80. Leiden: Brill. Hayes, John, and J. Maxwell Miller, eds. 1977. Israelite and Judaean History. OTL. Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM. Knauf, E. Axel. 2000. The “Low Chronology” and How Not to Deal with It. BN 101: 56–63. Miller, J. Maxwell. 1997. Separating the Solomon of History from the Solomon of Legend. Pages 1–24 in The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium. Edited by Lowell K. Handy. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 11. Leiden: Brill. Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. 1986. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Minneapolis: Fortress; London: SCM. Soggin, J. Alberto. 1984. Storia d’Israele, dalle origini alla rivolta di Bar-Kochba, 135 d.C. Brescia: Editrice Paideia. 1

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———. 1984. A History of Israel, from the Beginnings to the Bar Kochba Revolt, AD 135. London: SCM. ———. 1993. An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah. 2d ed. London: SCM; Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International. ———. 1999. An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah. 3d ed. London: SCM. ———. 2002. Storia d’Israele: Introduzione alla storia d’Israele e Giuda dalle origini alla rivolta di Bar-Kochbà. 2d rev. and exp. ed. Bibliotteca di cultura religiosa 44. Brescia: Paideia Editrice. ———. 2005. King David. Pages 65–72 in Recenti tendenze nella ricostruzione della storia antica d’Israele. Edited by Mario Liverani. Contributi del Centro Linceo Interdisciplinare “Beniamino Segre” 110. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Thompson, Thomas L. 1974. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. BZAW 133. Berlin: de Gruyter. Van Seters, John. 1975. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Whitelam, Keith W. 1996. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. London: Routledge.

1

REFLECTIONS ON THE DISCUSSION Lester L. Grabbe

Contributions published in the present volume are indicated by citing the name of the contributor(s) in italics. Historiography A number of the contributions in the essay section of this volume address general questions of historiography and how to write history. Some of the relevant topics are treated individually below, but here are some other points made in these essays. Mario Liverani calls our attention to an essential point: the history of Israel is a part of the history of the ancient Near East. It is something that most of us try to remind ourselves of, but it is also easily forgotten. It is not just that some of our best sources are from elsewhere in the ancient Near East; it is rather that Israel cannot be properly understood without its full historical and geographical context. This is why I balk at a “biblical history of Israel”—what we need is an “ancient Near Eastern history of Israel.” A perennial problem is whether any part of the biblical text can be called “history,” which raises the broader question of how to dene “history.” Philip Davies, for instance, is very clear in his own mind that history is the narrative created by the historian to make sense of events. This suggests that those biblical narratives that interpret Israel’s past would be history—perhaps not good history, but nevertheless worthy of the designation “history.” Ehud Ben Zvi considers the denitions of history of four individuals: J. Van Seters, M. Z. Brettler, B. Halpern, and D. Edelman. In the end, he seems to allow the application of the term “history” to some Hebrew Bible narratives, though this does not necessarily imply historical reliability from a modern point of view. Yet Christine Mitchell (looking at it from a classicist’s viewpoint) proposes that historiography was new to Xenophon, suggesting that the concept 1

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began with the Greeks. My own view is that we can dene “history-” in such as way as to include the biblical narratives, but that this is not very helpful in evaluating the Hebrew Bible accounts. More important in my view is whether we nd critical history there, and I have argued that the concept of a critical account of the past seems to have begun with the Greeks (Grabbe 2001, though I admit that the Babylonian Chronicles might be an exception). Axel Knauf also makes the point that the historiographical works of ancient Israel are not generally of high quality from a historical point of view. Another issue that has been raised by Davies concerns the question of the form in which history is written. He feels strongly that history by denition is a narrative. Although most history is presented in narrative form, I am not sure that this has to be so. Certainly, I am led to believe that social and economic historians do not always represent their historical reconstruction in narrative form. Similarly, Knauf seems to believe that narrative is not a necessary medium for writing history. Perhaps the question is not an important one: at least, I cannot see major consequences arising from this debate with regard to ancient Israel. But we almost certainly agree that most history is best expressed in narrative form. ukasz Niesioowski-Spanò draws attention to a simple but important principle: whether a Jewish writing is canonical or not is irrelevant for using it for historical purposes. The question of whether Eupolemus can be distinguished from a Samaritan writer called “Pseudo-Eupolemus” is a fraught one and one beyond our present purposes (though see the discussion and literature in Grabbe 2008, 86–89). No group has ever regarded Eupolemus as canonical as far as we know, but it does represent a contribution to the topic of Jewish historiography. Sources The question of sources is central to any work in history. Several aspects of the general historiographical concerns about sources came up in the various reviews and responses. The argument was made at several points that historians should normally prefer primary sources, that is, sources close in time to the events which they describe. A number of criticisms were made of this preference for primary sources, though it should be noted that it was only the conservative contributors who seemed to nd this a problem (Kofoed, Provan–Long–Longman; cf. Provan, Long, and Longman 2003, 64– 65). Granted, the division into primary and secondary sources is only a 1

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rst-level, rough division of sources; a more detailed and complex categorization can and should be made. Some secondary sources depend directly on good primary sources (see below on Arrian), whereas some primary sources are evidently quite untrustworthy because of prejudice or even because of lack of real knowledge of what they are reporting on (compare some of the reports of Nazi leaders or those who interacted with the leaders, such as Himmler’s doctor Felix Kersten [on Kersten’s reliability, see Heiden 1947]). Nevertheless, the value of primary sources is that they are close to eye-witnesses, both in time and (in the case of written sources) in the stages in literary development. Again, Kofoed and Provan–Long–Longman make the point that eye-witness accounts have failings and can be deceptive. This is of course an elementary observation, long recognized. But consider the alternatives: Should we prefer hearsay reports, reports handed down over decades and centuries, without means of control or critical checks on their contents? Ultimately, most historical sources are founded on eye-witness testimony. Only certain sorts of documents (e.g. some legal or administrative documents) describe—or, often, prescribe— what is to be done. But most accounts we have of historical events go back to eye-witness reports, even including many administrative documents or court records. Most of the time, the question is not whether we are dependent on eye-witnesses but how much distance separates us from those eye-witnesses, how observant they were in the rst place, and how good their memory was. Primary sources are by denition closely related to the original eye-witness reports. There may be a certain amount of time and even more than one literary stage, but the relationship is generally fairly direct and the distance a short one. Secondary sources are separated from the original eye-witnesses not only by time but also often by stages of literary production, including multiple editors and interpretation by successive stages of editorial activity. The historian always has to make judgments. In some cases, our extant primary sources—if they exist—might be inferior to some extant secondary sources. In the case of Alexander the Great, we have no extant primary sources of any length. We have a few documents, such as the Wadi Daliyeh remains that seem to relate to an episode in Alexander’s invasion. There are a few references to Alexander in cuneiform sources. Alexander reportedly had his exploits written up by eye-witnesses such as Ptolemy and Aristobulus of Cassandria (for further details, see the summary and references in Grabbe 2008, 111–13, 267–71, 274–78). The accounts of Ptolemy and Aristobulus have been lost, but Arrian claims to have used them, and scholars generally agree that this was the case. 1

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Thus, although Arrian is a secondary source, he is close to being a primary source. This is important: there seems to be only one stage between us and the primary documents. We are limited by Arrian’s use of the primary witnesses (as well as by the deciencies of the primary sources themselves), but this limitation is evidently much less than for many other secondary sources. A comparison of Arrian and the account referred to as “Pseudo-Callisthenes” shows a wide gap in quality of information (on Pseudo-Callisthenes, see Grabbe 2008, 111–13). The primary sources always have their own problems and weaknesses and have to be evaluated critically, but Ptolemy’s and Aristobulus’s eyewitness reports (in many cases, though obviously not every episode) as conveyed by Arrian are agreed to be more trustworthy than other sources which made use of a vulgate tradition. Plutarch’s Life of Alexander was written earlier than Arrian’s, yet it is considered less reliable because of his use (in part) of the vulgate account. This does not mean that the vulgate account is worthless, but it has to be used carefully and critically. Therefore, primary sources are not always to be preferred to second sources, but the general rule is that primary sources take precedence unless there are good critical reasons for not doing so. A simplistic approach that merely lumps all sources together and makes no critical distinction is seriously awed. This is why some modern histories (such as that of Provan, Long, and Longman 2003) are so problematic. They ultimately take the biblical text as their source without critical analysis or consideration of the text’s own sources. This also explains why some throw up a smoke screen about preferring primary sources, because the biblical text is clearly only a secondary source in almost all cases. It is true that I have argued that the biblical text is sometimes based on a primary source, such as an ofcial or court chronicle of Judah in 1 and 2 Kings (Grabbe 2006), but very little of the biblical text comes from such a more reliable source. Much of the text of 1 and 2 Kings, for example, is based on hearsay, novelistic, or even legendary accounts. To put these forward as “history” without critical examination or careful scrutiny is unjustied. This means that any contemporary history of Israel which is little more than a paraphrase of the biblical text can no longer be acceptable in modern scholarly circles. Archaeology Artifactual evidence can be referred to as a source (though some like to limit the term to written sources). Once again, the conservative contingent seems to want to castigate the use of archaeology; at least, the main 1

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part of their discussion is to negate it or qualify its use. The main criticism is that it has to be interpreted. Sometimes the rhetoric used by archaeologists in the past suggested that the “artifacts spoke for themselves,” but few contemporary archaeologists would make such naïve statements. Where the naïvety seems to come in now is that some act as if the literary accounts speak for themselves. This is not said in so many words, but a supposed history that only paraphrases the text can only be judged to make such an assumption. Kofoed states that the problem with archaeology is that it is mute, and he objects to “dening the mute, non-inscriptional archaeological sources as rst-hand sources on equal terms with rst-hand speaking sources, that is, written sources …” The problem is, he says, that “archaeological evidence has major deciencies in that the evidence gathered cannot speak for itself, but needs interpretation.” True, archaeology has to be interpreted, but I nd particularly astonishing Kofoed’s implication— which is that written evidence does not have to be interpreted. This may come as a surprise to thousands of students who have spent millions of hours learning ancient languages (still often imperfectly understood), palaeography, epigraphy, not to mention the principles of exegesis, just so they can interpret texts. Perhaps I have misunderstood Kofoed here, since he is appealing to an old but traditional Danish textbook on historiography, one which was not easily available to me (because of age, library, and language). But citing a textbook hardly settles disputes: many of us have expended considerable effort in some of our scholarly writings in taking issue with the pronouncements of textbooks. Perhaps they only give a partial picture of the textbook, but I found the quotes and statements given by Kofoed very problematic. Artifacts can tell us a great deal; they can, indeed, speak to us. As William Dever puts it, For archaeology to speak to you, you must learn the distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of artifacts. That we usually cannot attach a personal name to a particular object does not mean that it tells us nothing. Give me a typical Iron II pot, and I can ascertain in all likelihood when it was made, where, how, and for what purpose, and even some general characteristics of the class of the person who made it.

Artifacts found in situ can tell us even more. They are no more mute than many inscriptions. And of course there are the natural products from antiquity, such as bones, seeds, other vegetation, pollen, shorelines, sediments, and so on. These are hardly mute—or at least they speak in a different way from texts. And they tell us things no ancient text does. 1

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The problem with archaeology is not that it has to be interpreted but that it gives only certain sorts of evidence. Yet this is precisely also why it is so valuable: it frequently gives a different sort of data from that derived from texts. Texts seldom tell us about populations, settlement patterns, diet, diseases, longevity, landscape, climate, sea and inland waterway levels, and wildlife. There is also the fact that the archaeology seldom sets out to deceive the excavator, whereas writers of text often have the goal of providing “spin” of one sort or another (even if it might supposedly be from the best of motives). Artifacts are always primary data (unless fakes, of course, of which there is a steady increase). Once the artifact has been removed from its context, much has been lost, unless its context has been carefully recorded (as in an archaeological excavation). An artifact on the antiquities market still represents primary data. Yet that man-made object found in the context of a dig could tell much more, because many more data are available. All of this is interpretation, but it is no more subjective and no more problematic than many interpretations of texts. It is true that despite the deciencies in our knowledge of ancient Hebrew, there are many texts whose meaning is not disputed. (I argue this myself in discussing some of the texts in Joshua [Grabbe].) Yet we could say the same about many archaeological data: in spite of disagreements among archaeologists (of which there are many) there is also a great deal that almost all professionals take for granted. The problem is that textual people are often not aware of where there is agreement and where the disagreement lies. We could write a history of Israel on archaeology alone (though the framework would always have a certain dependence on texts, not just the biblical text but Egyptian texts, cuneiform texts, classical texts—because this forms a part of collective knowledge [cf. Miller 1991]), but it would be limited. We could write a history based on texts alone and in the past this was often done, but there would be much doubt and debate over the reliability of the texts. Our best history is one that makes judicious use of archaeology, inscriptions, and the biblical text, but only if preference is given to primary sources, meaning mainly archaeology and inscriptions. Archaeology is, of course, not our only primary evidence. We have inscriptions contemporary with some of the events of antiquity. They have the limitations of all written texts but also have the advantage of being close to the actual events. The stages of editing between them and the eye-witness report are much less than those of secondary sources. Thus, we begin with the primary evidence; however, I would argue that we do not stop there. 1

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Using the Bible to Write History I would hesitate to characterize minimalists. Perhaps there is only a handful of minimalists in the world, or at least of people who so label themselves. But let me say that some minimalists claim—or at least seem to claim—to reject the Bible as a source for ancient Palestine. As J. M. Miller (1991) has pointed out, correctly in my opinion, this formal position is a false one, because information from the Bible (directly or indirectly) permeates the background information that goes into the discussion of Palestine in antiquity. But the argument offered is that any information of value in the Bible is found elsewhere, or to put it another way, biblical data can be used only when conrmed by other sources. I reject this position because, as noted above, I believe some primary sources are embedded in the biblical text and because in other passages there is some historical memory (see below). Davies has argued that there is no middle way between “maximalism” and “minimalism” but only the question of critical research. This is an important point. I have sometimes jokingly referred to myself as a “medialist,” but it seems to me that all dogmatic positions are to be eschewed. It is as misguided to be always “middle of the road” as it is to be consistently “maximalist” or “minimalist.” A properly critical approach will most likely lead to evaluating different parts of the biblical narrative differently, from a historical point of view. That has certainly happened with me. On some topics, I am denitely a minimalist, while in other cases I believe the biblical text has a signicant historical memory. But ultimately my history is not determined by the biblical text but by a consideration of all sources. Yet I also recognize the value of the minimalist scepticism toward using the Bible as a source. The inuence of minimalism has been much greater than some of the minimalists seem to realize—though minimalism is wider than just the “Copenhagen School”; see, for example, the progress in the various editions of Soggin’s handbook (Grabbe), which moves in a denite minimalist direction for the early history of Israel. Most scholars are minimalists for certain biblical texts or certain periods in the history of ancient Palestine. Most of us are unwilling to treat the exodus story as serious history, even if we think there is some historical event or situation behind it. The same applies to Joshua and its account of how Israel settled Cis- and Transjordan. It is here, though, that the Biblical History of Israel by Provan, Long, and Longman (2003) differs from the views of the vast majority of critical scholars (I understand Kofoed [2005] to take a similar stance, 1

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though perhaps differently nuanced). It is not clear on what principles of historiography they treat the Bible differently from other ancient historiographical works. Some of the defences offered for the Bible are presented as if they were general historiographical principles, but I do not see Provan/Long/Longman in fact showing concern to apply these to other writers of antiquity. The one defence offered is that of “tradition.” I have tried to understand their argument here but remain mystied by it. It seems to say that “tradition” is a valid source of information for historical purposes, but what is included in the term is not clear. Does archaeology represent “tradition,” for example? How should “tradition” be evaluated; should we just accept anything labelled “tradition,” or do we apply critical criteria? If the answer is yes, how does their use of “tradition” differ from that in standard historical study? Most historians of antiquity would agree that some traditions are useful sources of information, but I am not aware of any who would make blanket statements about “tradition” without a great deal of qualication. In their response to my review, Provan–Long–Longman object to my criticism of the thesis of B. G. Wood with regard to Jericho. I nd this a strange criticism. I am happy to engage with Wood—if I could nd him, but he is a very elusive character. The normal scholarly procedure is to publish your ideas in a scholarly publication, with full details and full references. You should not have to guess what the person’s argument is or the basis for it. This is standard procedure for anyone who wants to be taken seriously. Yet Wood’s earth-shaking thesis—which Provan–Long– Longman have red at me like a blunderbuss—has never been presented in the basic scholarly format that most of us take for granted. It was apparently set out in an unpublished Ph.D. thesis that is now 30 years old. The available version of the article appeared 20 years ago in the popular archaeological magazine Biblical Archaeology Review.1 The question is: Why has Wood never attempted to publish his thesis in a proper scholarly format? If Wood’s arguments are so cogent, the least we could expect would be for them to appear in a recognized, peer-reviewed

1. See Wood 1990a. There was a reply a few issues later by P. Bienkowski (1990), which was then responded to by Wood (1990b). It should be noted that Bienkowski, though he naturally responded to Wood in the same popular magazine where Wood had published in the rst place, had previously published a denitive study on Jericho in a proper archaeological context (Bienkowski 1986). Woods has singularly avoided this standard minimal scholarly procedure. 1

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archaeological journal or monograph series. So why has he never published them properly? That is for him to answer, but in the meantime, let’s hear no more about withholding judgment until we see his full presentation. If scholars are not taking account of Wood’s position, he has only himself to blame. Provan–Long–Longman object to my comparison of their defence of the biblical text to that of the apologists for the Book of Mormon, characterizing it as a “very strange piece of writing” with an “unconvincing analogy at its heart.” But is it an unconvincing analogy? If there is anything strange here, it is their inability to understand my point. One only has to look at the examples I provide, which could be multiplied many times. In both The Biblical History of Israel and the studies produced by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies I see a similar set of apologetic techniques: if the text is clearly wrong, great ingenuity is exercised in trying to suggest that it meant something different from its obvious sense long accepted; if the archaeology contradicts the text, the archaeology is doubted or reinterpreted; if the archaeology of a site does not t the biblical account, the identity of the site is denied and another sought that is more compatible; if external sources seem to support the textual account, this is accepted and emphasized, but if they seem to disprove it, we are urged not to jump to conclusions but wait for further study which is always expected eventually to conrm the text, and so on. Philip Davies investigated the origin of use of the term “Israel” by Judahites after the Northern Kingdom. This has been a major problem, because the Deuteronomistic History makes a clear distinction between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. This has often been explained on the basis of the “United Monarchy,” but with the historical objections to a united monarchy made by a number of researchers, this does not seem an acceptable explanation to many. Yet the key to the situation may be found in the biblical text itself. In the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods, Judah was under Benjaminite domination. At that time, “Israel” was a social and religious term rather than a political one. Since Bethel was the symbolic home of Israel or “Jacob,” the many Judahites living and worshipping in its sphere at this time were “sons of Jacob.” The rare juxtaposition of Jacob and Judah is found in such signicant passages from this period as Isa 48:1 and 65:9. Many passages in Jeremiah (e.g. 5:20; 30:10; 31:7, 11; 33:26; 46:27–28) seem to equate “Jacob” with “Judah.” Judah has now become Israel.

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Ad Hominem Arguments I have long argued that part of the problem with discussing the subject of history of ancient Israel is the amount of emotion behind many of the debates and the too-frequent descent into ad hominem comments (see, e.g., Grabbe 2007, 23–25). Provan–Long–Longman commended this sort of comment but then accused me of violating my own principles. According to all the denitions I am aware of, ad hominem refers to personal comment about the person, not vigorous attack on a position, view, or thesis. To the best of my knowledge, while I did not hold back in my attack on the book of Provan, Long, and Longman (2003), I did not direct any comments against the persons themselves. But perhaps I am blinded by my own prejudices—readers will make their own judgment on this. I was intrigued, however, by the following statement made by Provan–Long–Longman: The review essay that Grabbe has in fact penned sadly fails to live up to these reasonable expectations. This is true, rst of all, precisely in terms of ad hominem comments. In the course of his essay, Grabbe characterizes the authors of BHI as the writers of “prolix, turgid, and meandering” prose; as those who do not respect the biblical text and are possessed of an “articial compulsion to deny any conict or contradictions in the text”; as people lacking in integrity (and thus inclined, e.g., to construct arguments merely in the way that “suits their purpose”); as con-artists; and as apologists for the biblical text akin to those who seek to defend the Book of Mormon as an historical source.

It is clear that they have taken my arguments against their position personally, but that does not mean that my arguments were meant personally nor that they were not “fair comment.” But, as I say, readers can decide for themselves whether I overstepped the bounds. Thus, Provan–Long–Longman have (in their own minds, at least) chosen to occupy the moral high ground: “it has been our normal practice to try to abide by such an ethic [such as Grabbe outlines but, in their opinion, does not abide by] as we have entered the often volatile recent discussion about the history of ancient Israel—to try to engage the arguments of others seriously and courteously, avoiding both personal attacks and the return…of like for like in this area,” etc., etc. So in their moral crusade, how do they choose to end their article? With the following statement: Which land does Grabbe have in mind, then? The most obvious candidate is the southern U.S.A. from which he originates—the home, certainly, of the kind of sometimes-narrow fundamentalists whom Grabbe appears to 1

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have in his sights throughout his review, and with whom he constantly confuses us BHI authors. It is these folks, and not we ourselves, who genuinely “privilege the Bible because of their theological stance,” in matters not only of history, but also of other areas of human knowledge such as science. Grabbe knows their mindset well, because as he tells us candidly elsewhere, he was once one of their number; he is “an ex-fundamentalist.” The designation evidently intends to suggest that he has left behind him this unfortunate way of looking at the world.

If that is not an ad hominem comment, I do not know what is! So much for the moral high ground. Conclusions The present volume has been dedicated to questions of historiography. The rst part was allocated to some essays on the subject, but the bulk of the space was devoted to reviews of a number of books on the history and historiography of ancient Israel and to responses from the authors of the reviewed books. It would be difcult to summarize all the points made, but I wish to conclude with three interrelated points which epitomize some of the results that I have drawn from the contents of the present volume: First, it is gratifying to see that histories of ancient Israel are becoming less like a paraphrase of the biblical text (with some exceptions). When we look at so recent an inuential history as John Bright’s (1980), it is clear that the biblical text structures his history, not only in the major chapter headings but in the detailed contents. Miller and Hayes (1986) are better, but some argue that even they are too dependent on the biblical text. Perhaps from our point of view, this is true, but it was done almost a quarter of a century ago. In more recent years histories of Israel have tended to move further from a biblical framework (see especially the works of Soggin, as discussed by Grabbe). It was common for historians in the Graeco-Roman world to follow a single source when one was available. This did not prevent their rewriting the source, to exercise their rhetorical skill, but the use of multiple sources for a single episode was less common (and usually exercised by the better historians, such as Thucydides). Unfortunately, modern historians of antiquity have not infrequently imitated this practice, especially when a main source was available. Thus, we have Israelite history in a biblical paraphrase, Persian history in a paraphrase of Herodotus, early Jewish history in a paraphrase of Josephus, and so on. It is tempting, when one has few sources, to follow an extent source if there is one 1

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which seems to be sufciently detailed. But this is not usually the proper way for a historian to work. Secondly, this important change from writing history by paraphrasing a major source is due to critical historiography, by which I mean the rigorous application of the historical method. At a time when historical work depended on classical literary sources, it was understandable that historians worked with what they had. But that largely changed in the nineteenth century with the discovery of many original written sources and the development of the science of archaeology. The written sources so far found are sporadic as far as the insight they give us into the history of ancient history is concerned. Some periods are reasonably well catered for, but major gaps exist for others. Archaeology is more evenly spread, and our information from it is increasing at a regular rate, even if there are some disconcerting gaps here as well. Any history of ancient Israel must now be a critical synthesis, making use of all sources. The biblical text may well be one of these, but it should not normally structure the shape of the history being written. Archaeology should now play a much greater role in historical reconstruction than it once did, in spite of generous lip service paid to it. Thirdly, historical study should avoid ideology. Granted, the line between the stringent application of critical judgment and the exercise of personal conviction is not always a clear one. But it is too easy to cross the line between inevitable subjective judgment into the territory of ideology. When a major concern of the historian is to support the biblical text or, conversely, to dismiss the biblical text, that seems to me to slide into ideology. Our objection is to write a history—the best history we can from the sources available, by the rigorous application of all our critical methods. If our aim is to write something else, which simply bears the outward garb of history, we have already gone astray. This has too often been the bane of biblical study: theologies and ideologies—and even metaphors for the contemporary scene—in the guise of history. History should be written by historians, for whom historical reality and historical verity—historical truth—is paramount. As difcult as this task is, it should be our goal. Bibliography Bienkowski, Piotr. 1986. Jericho in the Late Bronze Age. Warminster: Aris & Philips. ———. 1990. Jericho Was Destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, Not the Late Bronze Age. BAR 16, no. 5 (September/October): 45–46, 69. Bright, John. 1980. A History of Israel. 3d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster. 1

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Grabbe, Lester L. 2001. Who Were the First Real Historians? On the Origins of Critical Historiography. Pages 156–81 in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period. Edited by L. L. Grabbe. JSOTSup 317; ESHM 3. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. ———. 2006. Mighty Oaks from (Genetically Manipulated?) Acorns Grow: The Chronicle of the Kings of Judah as a Source of the Deuteronomistic History. Pages 154–73 in Reection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld. Edited by R. Rezetko, T. H. Lim, and W. B. Aucker. VTSup 113. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2007. Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel. Pages 57–67 in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel. Edited by H. G. M. Williamson. Proceedings of the British Academy 143. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period 2: The Coming of the Greeks: The Early Hellenistic Period (335–175 BCE). LSTS 68. London: T&T Clark International. Heiden, Konrad. 1947. Introduction. Pages xiii–xlvii in The Memoirs of Doctor Felix Kersten. Edited by Herma Briffault. Trans. Ernst Morwitz. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Kofoed, Jens Bruun. 2005. Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Miller, J. Maxwell. 1991. Is it Possible to Write a History of Israel Without Relying on the Hebrew Bible? Pages 93–102 in The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact and Israel’s Past. Edited by Diana V. Edelman. JSOTSup 127. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. 1986. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Minneapolis: Fortress; London: SCM. Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman, III. 2003. A Biblical History of Israel. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Wood, Bryant G. 1990a. Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence. BAR 16, no. 2 (March/April): 44–58. ———. 1990b. Dating Jericho’s Destruction: Bienkowski is Wrong on All Counts. BAR 16, no. 5 (September/October): 45, 47–49, 68–69.

1

INDEXES INDEX OF REFERENCES HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 1 161 1:26–30 55 2:5 55 2:15 55 12:6–7 83, 93 14:17–24 183 14:17–20 88 17:6 183 17:16 183 21 7, 86 22:1–18 88 33 84 33:16 84 33:18–20 83, 93 33:19 7 34 7, 84, 90, 93 34:30 183 35:11 183 36 92 48:22 84 50:5 84, 86 Exodus 1:11 5:5–21 14:2

106 106 106

Numbers 13 14 20

106 106 106

Deuteronomy 1–4 6:10–12 11:29 27:2–13

74 222 83, 93 83, 93

Joshua 6 8:30–33 10:40 11:13 11:16–20 11:23 13–19 13:1–7 14:15 15:45 15:47 15:63 17:14–17 18:28 19:43 21:41–43 23 24 24:32

228 83, 93 220, 238 223 220 221 220 221 221 222 222 222 222 222 222 221 221 83, 93 84

Judges 1 8–9 9 9:6 9:36

221, 222 84, 93 83 83 83

Ruth 1:1

72

1 Samuel 25

206

1 Kings 4 4:19 6:1 9:15–19

103 89 106 53

2 Kings 3:1–2 8:16 17 25

44 44 84, 92, 93 161

1 Chronicles 3:18 10 29:29

182 74 73

2 Chronicles 11:20 13 13:2 35:26–27

36 41 36 73

Ezra 1 1:2–4 4–7 4:9–16 4:17–22 5:7–17 6:2–5 6:6–12

125 125 124, 130, 131 125 125 124 125 125

Index of References 7–10 7 7:12–26 7:16 7:17 7:18 7:21 7:24

123 123, 125, 182 124 125 125 125 125 125

Nehemiah 1:1–4 1:11 2:1–20 3:1–32 3:33–4:17 5:1–19 6:1–19 7:1–5 8–10 8 11:1 12:31–32 12:37–40 13:4–17 13:19–25 13:37–31

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 93 123 123 123 123 123

Esther 1:1 10:2

29, 72 29

Proverbs 1 31:10–31

71 130

Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 1:12–18

71 71

Isaiah 2:3 6:1 40–55 48:1 48:2 65:9

46 72 5, 46 5, 47, 271 93 5, 47, 271

Jeremiah 1:1 1:2 2:4 3:16 5:20 10:16 10:25 30:10 31:7 31:11 33:26 39:14 40:4 46:27–28

72 157 47 78 5, 47, 271 47 47 5, 47, 271 5, 47, 271 5, 47, 271 5, 47, 271 78 78 5, 47, 271

Lamentations 2:2–3 47 17 47 Daniel 1:1 5

72 101

Hosea 10:11 12:2 12:11–12

48 48 90

Jonah 1:1

74

Micah 1:5

48

Zechariah 1–8

124

277 Wisdom of Solomon 9:8 93 Ben Sira 50:25–26 50:26

84, 91, 93 91

1 Maccabees 2:7 8:17

80, 93 78

2 Maccabees 1:12 3:1 6:2 15:14

93 93 93, 94 93

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA 1 Enoch 85–90 25 Jubilees 30 30:1 37–38

90 88, 92, 94 92

JOSEPHUS Antiquities 11:297–301 12:168 13:168 13:257–58

122 91 87 85

CLASSICAL Aristotle Poetics 59a20–26

65

NEW TESTAMENT Acts 7 7 7:15–16 84, 85 7:16 7, 84

Clement of Alexandria Stromata 1.130.3 79 1.141.4 79 1.153.4 79

APOCRYPHA Judith 4:12

Ctesias FGrH 688 F 9.1

93

66

Index of References

278 Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica 9.17 79 9.17.2–9 79 9.17.5–6 79, 88 9.17.5 92, 93 9.17.6 80 9.18.2 79 9.25.4 79 9.30 79 9.30.3 90 9.33 89 9.34.20 79 9.39.2–5 78 9.39.5 89 Herodotus Histories 1.1 1.107 1.108 1.140.1 2.1 2.22

64, 66, 160 66 66 68 66 159

Homer Iliad 1.10

66

Livy Ab urbe condita 5.21 159 Plato Laws 634e–644a 693e–696b 694c Thucydides Histories 1.1

71 71 71

64

Xenophon Anabasis 1.1.1 1.2.13 1.2.14 1.2.8 1.2.9 1.8 1.8.24 1.8.28 1.8.6 2.6.29 3.4.11 3.5.15 5.7.7 6.2.1 6.2.2

64 67 67 67 67 68 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67

Cyropaedia 1 1.1.1–6 1.2.1 1.3.15 1.3.4 1.4.25 1.4.26 1.4.27 1.5.1 1.8 1.8.24 1.8.26 1.8.27 1.8.28–29 2.1.11 4.2.13 4.2.15 4.5.9 5.2.20 7.3.15 8 8.2.9 8.2.13 8.2.15 8.2.18

66, 67 65 66, 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 68 68 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 66, 67 67 67 67 67

8.2.19 8.3.26 8.6.19–20 8.6.19 8.6.20–22 8.6.20

67 67 66 67 67 67

Hellenica 1.1.1–2

65

Memorabilia 1.1.1

65

Oeconomicus 1.1 65 INSCRIPTIONS Delos Inscription 1 87 2 88 Meša Inscription line 31 203 Tel Dan Inscription A:8–9 203 A: 9 202 B:8 203 QURAN Surah 27

156

BOOK OF MORMON 1 Nephi 4.9 228, 230 16.18 228, 230 18.25 226 2 Nephi 5.14–15 24.19

228, 230 229, 230

Jarom 1.8

229, 230

Index of References Mosiah 9.9

226

Alma 3.6–10 17.37 20.6 43.13 47.35 57.33

226 229, 230 228 226 226 229, 230

3 Nephi 3.22

228

Mormon 6

226

Ether 1–6 7.9 9.19 14–15

225 228, 230 228 225

279

INDEX OF AUTHORS Abraham, W. J. 200 Ahlström, G. W. 40 Albertz, R. 117 Amit, Y. 33, 42 Anderson, J. K. 62 Ankersmit, F. R. 200 Anonymous 83, 94, 233 Appadurai, A. 37 Ash, M. 225, 230, 233 Athas, G. 153, 202, 203 Attridge, H. W. 78, 79, 94 Auld, A. G. 73 Bakhtin, M. M. 59–61 Barr, J. 144, 156 Barstad, H. M. 51 Barton, J. 205 Becking, B. 51 Ben Zvi, E. 27–30, 36, 37, 61 Bienkowski, P. 270, 274 Binder, D. D. 88, 94 Biran, A. 202, 203 Blenkinsopp, J. 40, 42 Bloch-Smith, E. 84, 94 Bombelli, L. 79, 94 Boyd, K. 216, 233 Brandfon, F. 167, 177 Breisach, E. 216, 233 Brettler, M. Z. 21, 31, 32, 43 Bricmont, J. 52 Bright, J. 40, 273, 274 Brodie, F. M. 232, 233 Bruneau, P. 88, 94 Buchanan, M. 49 Campbell, E. F. 82, 83, 94 Carroll, R. P. 57, 157 Carter, C. E. 42 Chadwick, J. R. 229, 233 Charman, S. D. 166, 178 Coady, C. A. J. 166, 170, 177 Cobley, E. 60 Collins, J. J. 80, 91, 94

Connor, W. R. 22 Cowley, A. 91, 94 Crown, A. D. 80, 87, 88, 93, 94 Daise, M. 80, 94 Danto, A. C. 170, 177 Davies, P. R. 40–42, 46, 48, 51, 199, 202 Denis, A.-M. 79, 80, 94 Dever, W. G. 114–18, 142 Diamond, J. 49 Dietrich, W. 198, 199, 203 Dillery, J. 62 Donner, H. 255, 259 Doran, R. 78, 79, 95 Dozeman, T. B. 25 Due, B. 66 Eccles, J. 172, 178 Edelman, D. V. 32, 33, 41–43 Eissfeldt, O. 143 Erslev, K. 167, 177 Eskenazi, T. C. 26 Evans, R. 233 Evans, R. J. 200, 216 Evett, D. 197 Farber, J. J. 63 Farwell, B. 56 Faust, A. 177 Fehling, D. 69 Finkelstein, I. 45, 53 Foley, J. 58 Fowler, R. L. 65, 68, 69 Fox, M. V. 71 Freudenthal, J. 78, 95 Garbini, G. 79, 86, 87, 89, 95, 116, 118, 258, 259 Gera, D. L. 62, 68, 70, 71 Gibbon, E. 213 Grabbe, L. L. 51, 53, 75, 115, 118, 123, 136, 138, 216, 232, 236, 238, 241, 244, 245, 250–53, 255, 257, 259, 264–66, 272, 275

Index of Authors Grant, M. 22 Gray, V. 62, 65, 66, 68, 69 Grayson, C. H. 22, 117 Guillaume, P. 42, 43 Gütterbock, H. G. 23 Haak, R. D. 123 Hagelia, H. 153 Hallo, W. W. 215, 233 Halpern, B. 21, 31, 53, 150, 201, 204, 205, 207, 208 Hamblin, W. J. 225, 227, 234 Hawking, S. E. 200 Hayes, J. H. 41, 85, 95, 254, 255, 259, 273, 275 Heiden, K. 265, 275 Hengel, M. 79, 95 Herzog, Z. 81, 95 Heym, S. 197 Hirsch, S. W. 66, 67, 70 Hjelm, I. 88, 95 Hoglund, K. G. 22, 25 Holladay, C. F. 80, 89, 90, 95 Holquist, M. 57 Horowitz, A. 210 Hume, D. 170, 177 Huss, B. 69, 71 Iggers, G. G. 216, 234 Jacobson, D. M. 85, 95 Jacoby, F. 66, 79, 80, 89 James, W. 200 Jensen, H. J. L. 150 Jones, G. H. 44 Kalimi, I. 22, 88, 95 Kitchen, K. 140, 174, 177, 204 Kjeldstadli, K. 167 Knauf, E. A. 49–51, 53, 116, 118, 215, 234, 258, 259 Knoppers, G. N. 24, 25, 74 Kofoed, J. B. 139, 162, 165, 166, 170, 171, 176, 177, 269, 275 Kroeker, R. J. 27 Kuhrt, A. 22 Kvanvig, H. S. 151 Lategan, B. C. 76 LeBlanc, R. D. 60

Lee, T. R. 75 Lemaire, A. 202, 203 Lemche, N. P. 51, 139, 142–45, 149, 155, 165, 168, 177, 199, 202 Lipschits, O. 40 Liverani, M. 57, 156, 179, 180, 185, 192, 193 Loftus, E. 166, 177 Long, V. P. 139, 234, 251, 264, 266, 272, 275 Longman, T. III 139, 234, 264, 266, 272, 275 Lorenz, C. 199 Lotman, Y. M. 62

281

153,

190,

269, 269,

Magen, I. 85, 95 Matassa, L. 88, 95 McCarter, P. K. 201, 205 McKane, W. 47 McKenzie, S. L. 201, 203–205, 207 Medvedev, P. N. 59 Megill, A. 217, 234 Mendels, D. 79, 95 Meyer, B. 197 Miller, J. M. 41, 85, 95, 254, 255, 259, 268, 269, 273, 275 Mitchell, C. 73–75 Mobley, G. 207 Momigliano, A. D. 22, 26, 30 Moore, M. B. 251 Mor, M 91, 95 Morson, G. S. 59, 60 Mykytiuk, L. J. 202 Na’aman, N. 44 Nadon, C. 70 Naumann, T. 198 Naveh, J. 202, 203 Nelson, R. D. 198 Nicholson, E. 21, 166 Niesioowski-Spanò, L. 86, 90, 92, 95 Nodet, E. 84, 95 Norman, V. G. 225, 227, 234 Noth, M. 40, 198 Oded, B. 40, 41 Olson, E. A. 178 Owens, D. 177

282

Index of Authors

Packman, Z. M. 64 Pardo, M. S. 170, 177 Parker, H. T. 53 Pelikan, J. 199, 206 Perks, R. 218, 234 Pomeroy, S. B. 62, 63 Popper, K. R. 52, 163, 172, 177, 178 Porten, B. 91, 95 Porter, J. A. 197 Post, J. D. 55 Pownall, F. S. 26, 72 Prato, G. L. 92, 95 Provan, I. 139, 143, 217, 234, 264, 266, 269, 272, 275 Prudovsky, G. 29 Pummer, R. 80, 88, 90, 96 Pury, A. de 92, 96, 198 Rainey, A. F. 202 Reid, T. 170, 178 Rendsburg, G. 142 Rescher, N. 200 Robinson, P. 22 Römer, T. C. 26, 198 Roper, M. 229, 234 Rost, L. 146, 198 Russell, B. 200 Sandmel, S. 57 Sasson, J. M. 27, 36 Schlatter, A. 79, 96 Schweitzer, S. J. 128 Scobie, C. H. H. 85, 96 Sélincourt, A. de 159 Shanks, H. 202 Shirts, K. A. 227, 228, 234 Silberman, N. A. 45

Smith, M. 91, 96 Soggin, J. A. 253–60 Sokal, A. 52 Sorenson, J. L. 227–29, 234 Stern, E. 82, 83, 96 Sternberg, M. 35, 61 Stone, M. 77, 96 Strange, J. 44 Sweeney, M. A. 61 Tatum, J. 70, 71 Taylor, N. H. 85, 96 Thomasson, G. C. 229, 234 Thompson, T. L. 28, 85, 96, 143, 199, 254, 260 Thomson, A. 218, 234 Thomson, C. 59, 60 Toher, M. 66 Van Seters, J. 21, 30, 31, 34, 161, 254, 260 Wacholder, B. Z. 79, 89, 90, 96 Wells, G. L. 166, 178 Wesselius, J. W. 199 Wheeldon, M. J. 63, 64 White, H. V. 208, 212 Whitelam, K. W. 257, 260 Williamson, H. G. M. 73 Wood, B. G. 270, 275 Wright, G. E. 81–83, 96 Yardeni, A. 91, 95 Yoder, C. R. 130 Young, I. 132 Younger, K. L., Jr. 242 Zertal, A. 41