Posts
1. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read William Dever’s “The Contribution of Archaeology to the Study of Canaanite and Early Israelite Religion.” The following statement stood out to me (page 236):
It must be stressed that in light of archaeology today, it is the LB-Iron I continuity—not the discontinuity—that is striking, and the more so as research progresses. In other words, of the two biblical accounts, Joshua and Judges, the latter is by far the more realistic and thus more historically reliable.
Dever believes that there is archaeological continuity between Late Bronze Age Canaan and ancient Israel, which emerged in the Iron I Period. Both appear to have a similar culture. For Dever, a huge part of ancient Israel came from the Canaanites, meaning that most of the Israelites weren’t foreigners who left Egypt and killed off the natives of Canaan. On the contrary, Dever contends, most of the Israelites were Canaanites, and their settlement of Palestine “was a gradual, exceedingly complex process,” not a swift takeover, or Conquest.
I’ve often read his sentiment about Joshua and Judges in other scholarly writings. On some level, I don’t understand it, if he’s saying that Judges presents the Israelites as Canaanites. My impression is that the Book of Judges presumes some sort of Exodus and Conquest. But Judges doesn’t present the Conquest as total, for there were still Canaanites who lived with the Israelites in Palestine, influencing them to accept their religion. Moreover, as Baruch Halpern states in his article, “Settlement of Canaan,” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Judges 1 “recorded a series of triumphs by individual tribes rather than a united invasion, as in Joshua 10–12.”
On page 232, Dever states: Despite the general breakup of Canaanite cultural hegemony at the close of the Late Bronze Age, with the destruction or disruption of many sites in Palestine, Canaanite influence continued, especially at sites that did not become “Israelite”[.]
Is this consistent with the biblical pictures of Conquest, since Dever is saying that Canaanite sites were destroyed or disrupted at the close of the Late Bronze Age, right before the Israelites set up their sites in the central hills? Many have argued that others (e.g., Philistines, Sea People) could have destroyed the Canaanites sites. And Israel Finkelstein has argued against the historicity of the Conquest, saying that the cities were destroyed over one hundred years, not in one fell swoop.
I should know more about this issue than I do, but at least my post puts questions in my head that I should explore.
2. In Reading Between Texts, I read Peter Miscall’s essay, “Isaiah: New Heavens, New Earth, New Book.” The following quote was quite provocative:
…a commentator on a text—here Speiser on Gen 1:1-2:4a—accepts and supports the [biblical] text’s authority by asserting that it is worthy of commentary and by explicating its meanings and implications. At the same time, the commentator modifies and even undermines the original text’s authority by declaring that it needs commentary (i.e., it is not clear enough on its own), and this commentary is what the original text really means (i.e., the original text does not mean what it says).
I’ll let this quote stand on its own, without my commentary!
3. Here’s a provocative quote of M. Smith in Theodore Mullen’s Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations (page 39):
“…the Hebrew Bible, as we have it, is primarily evidence of the interests of the Pharisees and their successors, who not only selected and interpreted the books but also carefully determined and corrected their texts…”
Mullen dates this process to the second century B.C.E.
Smith’s book, Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament, may be worth reading. What was the extent of the Pharisaic contribution to the development of the Hebrew Bible? I don’t think that the Pharisees were the only ones who accepted the Hebrew Bible, for biblical books are found in Qumran, a priestly sect. The New Testament states that the priestly Sadducees accepted the Law of Moses. But did the Pharisees and their successors interpret and correct biblical texts? Most likely so. I talk about that in my post, Theological Correction, where I link to other posts I wrote on the subject.
