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I'm continuing my way through Thomas Thompson's Mythic Past. In this post, I want to talk about Thompson's discussion of two issues: the origins of ancient Israel and the worship of Yahweh in non-Israelite areas.
1. According to Thompson, there was a drought that ended in 1050 B.C.E. While the drought was still going on, shepherds moved away "from the steppe and into the better-watered highlands" (page 161), which is what many scholars have identified as "Israel." When the drought ended around 1050 B.C.E., there was a "shift to agriculture" in the central hills. Thompson states that "When the drought ended and international trade came once again into its own, Palestine's olive industry boomed", and the prominent city of Lachish "expanded its production into the Judean highlands" (page 163). The olive industry led to the establishment of the state of Israel in Samaria in the ninth century, in order that the olive producers could "control the production and harvest of olives, maintain price levels through developing of a single market that they could influence, and protect the interests of the producers"---in short, so that the producers of olives in the central hills could "establish greater control over their own markets through what might be best described as a cartel" (page 167).
On page 190, Thompson states that "No political, ethnic or historical bond existed between the state that was called Israel or 'the house of Omri' and the town of Jerusalem and the state of Judah". Thompson does not believe that there was a United Monarchy, but he appears to hold that both the North and the South were involved in olive production. Thompson says that Jerusalem only became prominent after the destruction of the dominant Judean city of Lachish in 701 B.C.E. (pages 186-187). Regarding Jerusalem in the tenth century, the alleged time of David and Solomon, Thompson says that, archaeologically, "we find a massive retaining wall, but precious little else" (page 166). Thompson concludes that "Jerusalem is not known to have been occupied in the tenth century" (page 164).
In the Anchor Bible Dictionary article on "David, City of", David Tarler and Jane Cahill overlap with Thompson in their view that Jerusalem underwent a dramatic increase in area and population in the eighth century B.C.E. But they say that there were still people in Jerusalem during the Solomonic period: 4,000-6,400. How big and populous does an area have to be to function as a capital?
2. Thompson says that other areas besides Israel worshiped Yahweh. On page 171, he says that, in the Persian Period, "In Edom, the patron deity is called both Qaus and Yahweh." On pages 175-176, Thompson gives other examples:
---In the Syrian city of Ebla in the Early Bronze Age, there are texts in which "yaw" is "included in some personal names". In the Late Bronze city of Ugarit, there are names that have "ya." But Thompson is not dogmatic about these examples, for the "element in the Ugaritic names could be read as merely a normal grammatical ending of a shortened name, without any reference at all to a deity", and there is "little reason to expect the appearance of this deity so early or so far north." And yet, he says on page 176: "That the god Yahweh may have been known over such a large geographical area during the third and second millennium---from Ebla and Ugarit of Syria to the southern desert of Edom---and that it might appear as both a tribal deity of pastoralists as well as part of a rich multi-religious environment of cities such as Ebla and Ugarit, is not as unlikely as had been at first imagined."
---New Kingdom Egyptian texts refer to "Shasu of Yahweh" in southern Edom, and "texts of the first millennium about Yahweh have been found in the Sinai." Thompson mentions the argument that "the name Yahweh in these inscriptions is used as a place name and not as a divine name", be he concludes that "It is nevertheless possible that Egyptian texts do in fact refer to a Late Bronze deity Yahweh."
---There are first millennium "Assyrian and Persian period texts that demonstrate...a geographical spread of the worship of Yahweh."
---Thompson says, "Texts from Sinai and southern Palestine refer to Yahweh as the god of Samaria", and "They mention his wife Asherah."
---Thompson states: "The second-century CE tradition of Philo of Byblos, which gives witness to the worship of the deity Yaw in Phoenicia, clearly shows that this deity continued to be worshipped in the eastern Mediterranean region until at least the end of the Graeco-Roman period."
And, although Thompson does not think that the Hebrew Bible is historically-accurate a lot of the time, he says that "The Bible frequently recognizes that Yahweh was worshipped by others than Israel", for "It understands him as having come from Midian, Teman and Seir."
