The Rise of Ancient Israel

155 Pages·2013·3.31 MB·English

by  William G. Dever

The Rise of Ancient Israel

Lectures presented at a symposium sponsored by the Resident
Associate Program, Smithsonian Institution

October 26, 1991

By Hershel Shanks, William G. Dever, Baruch Halpern and P. Kyle
McCarter, Jr.
The Rise of Ancient Israel
Copyright © 2012 Biblical Archaeology Society
4710 41st St. NW
Washington, DC 20016
All rights reserved.
First published by the Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992.
ISBN: 978-1-935335-81-8
First edition: 1992
ON THE COVER: Bronze bull figurine. Looming large despite its diminutive (4-inch-
high by 7-inch-long) size, this bronze bull may come from the only Israelite cultic site
yet discovered dating to the 12th century B.C.E. Found at the summit of a high ridge
near biblical Dothan, in the Samaria hills north of Mt. Ebal, the bull may have been an
offering or it may have been worshiped as a deity. El, the chief Canaanite god, was
often depicted as a bull. If the ridge near Dothan is indeed Israelite, it is noteworthy
that the only Israelite shrine from the 12th century B.C.E. contains a figurine almost
identical to earlier depictions of the Canaanite deity El.
Zev Radovan
Contents

Defining the Problems: Where We Are in the Debate
How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite
The Exodus from Egypt: Myth or Reality?
The Origins of Israelite Religion
Panel Discussion
Acknowledgments
Defining the Problems: Where We Are in the
Debate
By Hershel Shanks
We’re going to hear today from three world-class scholars on what may be the
hottest topic in biblical studies—the rise of ancient Israel—or, as the scholars
like to call it, the emergence of ancient Israel—a little fancier term.
Where did the people who became the nation of Israel come from? And
when? By what process did they become a nation? What were their religious
roots? How did they find their God Yahweh?
Scores of scholars are struggling with these issues. Some of the
disagreements are intense. Our speakers today are among the leaders in the
debate. We may hear from them whether any kind of consensus is emerging.
My job is simply to provide the mise-en-scène, to set the stage, so that the
scholars who follow me will be able to leap into their subject with an assuredly
knowledgeable audience. For many of you, what I say will be elementary; for
some of you, it won’t, and I want to bring everybody up to speed.
By the time I finish, you will be able to distinguish very easily between the
Late Bronze Age and Iron Age (laughter), you will know what the Merneptah
Stele is, you will be able to talk about a four-room house and a collared-rim jar
and the three models of the Israelite emergence in Canaan.
I’m also going to try to provide a little context for you, so that you’ll have in
mind the larger picture, the basic framework within which the more focused
discussion of the next three speakers will take place.
In doing that, I will weave back and forth between the biblical text and the
archaeological materials. Because, as some of you know, I shun controversy
(laughter), I will present to you only what is unequivocally true and acceptable
to everyone. So, what I say, therefore, you can accept. When the next speakers
get up, you will hear the more controversial and iffy research. (Laughter.)
Let’s begin with the Bible.
The Bible begins with the creation of the world and proceeds in the first ten
chapters of Genesis to give us a world history—until everyone but Noah and his
family are destroyed in a flood. God’s first experiment in creating a world of
worthy people fails.
So he destroys it and starts all over again. These early chapters of Genesis
culminating in the Flood have nothing to do with Israel. In fact, this story
provides a contrast with the second attempt to create worthy people. This time
God chooses a single family.1 He concentrates on this family—the family of
Abraham, the first Hebrew. The rest of the Book of Genesis is the story of this
family—first Abraham and his wife Sarah, their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca,
their son Jacob and his wives Rachel and Leah and, finally, Jacob’s 12 sons, who
become the 12 tribes of Israel. They go down to Egypt and settle in the Delta
when a famine grips Canaan. Fortunately for the family, one of the sons, who
had preceded the others under difficult circumstances, has risen to a position of
authority second only to the pharaoh himself.
It is in Egypt that Israel becomes a people—or at least numerous enough to
be a people. There they multiply and in the end are enslaved by a pharaoh who
“knew not Joseph.” Finally, they escape under the leadership of a man named
Moses. They then begin their 40-year trek to the Promised Land. On the way,
they experience a theophany at a place called Sinai—or sometimes Horeb. There
God gives them a set of laws by which to live. The people enter into a covenant
with God in which they agree to obey his laws and in return they become his
people, the recipient of his benefices. After their 40-year sojourn in the desert,
they arrive, finally, at the Promised Land.
Now at this point the Bible gives us two somewhat different accounts of how
they took possession of the Promised Land. The first is in the last part of the
Book of Numbers and the Book of Joshua. The second and somewhat different
account is in the Book of Judges.2
The account in Joshua portrays a lightning military campaign—lasting less
than five years. In this campaign, the various peoples of Canaan are defeated;
“Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland
and the slopes and all their kings” (Joshua 10:40). After these victories, the land
west of the Jordan is allotted among the Israelite tribes.
The account in Judges is quite different. First of all, the order is reversed. In
Judges, the allotment comes first, and after the allotment they attempt to take
possession of the land by conquest. In Judges there is no unified effort by “all
Israel” to conquer the land, as seems to be the case in Joshua. In Judges the
effort to possess the land seems to be the work of individual tribes or groups of
related tribes.
And most important, Judges makes it clear that by no means was the entire
land subdued. In Judges 1 as a matter of fact is a list of 20 cities whose people
were not driven out by the newcomers. These cities included Jerusalem, Gezer,
Megiddo, Taanach, Beth-Shean and Beth Shemesh (Judges 1:21, 27–33). These
are some of the most important cities in the country. So we have quite a
difference here between the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges.
Now the events in Judges do purport to occur after the death of Joshua, so
the two accounts can be harmonized somewhat by assuming that the picture in
Joshua is exaggerated and that the military victories recorded there were not
quite so extensive or complete as they are described.
In any event, it’s clear that the account in Judges does preserve a tradition
that the land of Canaan was possessed over a long period of time. And, if we
look carefully, there are hints of this even in the Book of Joshua.
During this period, the Israelites are threatened by various Canaanite
peoples, but charismatic military leaders called Judges always arise and save
them. Eventually, however, this loose Israelite tribal confederacy proves
inadequate to defend itself against the Philistine threat. Some more organized
structure is needed, so the people ask for a king. And they get a king. Saul is
appointed, but his reign is ultimately a failure. He is replaced by Israel’s most
glorious king, David, and with his reign, Israel truly becomes a nation.
This, in brief, is the biblical account.
Until the 20th century, the emergence of Israel in Canaan was almost always
referred to as the “conquest of Canaan,” for the Bible clearly portrays it this way.
And indeed until after the Second World War, it was generally thought that
archaeology supported this view. For a time, archaeology was the darling of the
nursery among those who regarded the Bible as literally true.
To explain this, I’ve got to give a little of the history of biblical scholarship.
In the 19th century, we have a burgeoning of historical, critical biblical
scholarship. The impetus is often associated with a strange genius by the name
of Julius Wellhausen. He shattered the calm of biblical literalists by breaking
down the Pentateuch into four different authorial strands. These different strands
of authorship are often designated by the familiar letters J, E, P and D. J stands
for the Yahwist (Jahwist in German), E for the Elohist, P for the priestly code
and D for the Deuteronomist. These were all put together by a fellow designated
R, for the redactor—a fancy name for editor.
Julius Wellhausen. A strange genius, this 19th-century (1844–1918) German scholar
inaugurated modern biblical scholarship by asserting that the Pentateuch, or five
books of Moses, is comprised principally of four strands. These four he designated J
(for Yahwist; Jahwist in German), E (for Elohist), P (for the priestly code) and D (for
the Deuteronomist). These components, in Wellhausen’s view, were joined together
and edited by R, the redactor.
In a reaction to Wellhausen’s theories, archaeology became—for a time—the darling
of biblical literalists. In the first half of the 20th century, just as the view that the Bible
was written by humans during discernible historical periods was gaining ground
among scholars, the newly emerging field of archaeology appeared to be validating a
key tenet of the Bible: At site after site archaeologists were uncovering destruction
levels that seemed to prove that the Israelites conquered Canaan in a swift military
campaign as described in the Book of Joshua.
Courtesy the Union Theological Seminary Archives, The Burke Library, NYC

All this was very disturbing to biblical literalists. And at this point—in the
first half of the 20th century—archaeology seemed to come to the rescue. The
short of it is that in tell after tell, archaeologists found a destruction level that
they thought they could identify with the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Well, archaeology is no longer a crutch in this classic sense of the conquest
model. We simply can no longer posit a series of destructions in Canaan that can
rationally be identified as the result of the Israelite conquest. Recently, our
archaeological methodology has improved, we can date levels much more
securely and more sites have now been excavated. As a result, we can no longer
say that archaeology supports what we may call the conquest model of Israel’s
emergence in Canaan.
Some sites like Jericho and Ai appear to have been uninhabited at the time