Beginning Garbini's History and Ideology in Ancient Israel

I started Italian scholar Giovanni Garbini's History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. In this post, I'll go through each chapter that I read today. I will either summarize the high points of the chapters, or mention details that interested me. I may or may not do this in tomorrow's post.

In the "Introduction," Garbini discusses an article that he wrote on the Golden Calf story (Exodus 32). He noticed that "the tablets of the law were written on two surfaces...and were broken so easily by Moses" (page xiii), and thus that they resembled the "small terra cota tablets on which the Babylonians wrote" (page xiii). Because "cuneiform tablets had disappeared from Egypt and Palestine by the end of the thirteenth century BC (they were only reintroduced by the Assyrian administration)", Garbini concluded that the Golden Calf story by E must be exilic or post-exilic---"composed by an author who was or had been in Babylon" (page xiii). Garbini also refers to other observations scholars made: that there are "Babylonian words in the Yahwistic source" and that a Hebrew writer made use of Babylonian texts about the creation of the world, and, for him, these things indicate that the author was or had been in exile, in Babylon (page xiv). Moreover, on pages xiv-xv, Garbini makes a comment about the ideological function of a couple of biblical stories: "to present the accession of Solomon in a certain way is the expression of historiography of an anti-monarchical ideology; to have a military conquest of Palestine by the Hebrew tribes under the leadership of Joshua is to create a fictitious historical datum to meet the frustrated demands of a frustrated nationalism."

In Chapter 1, "The History of Israel," Garbini critiques scholars who assume the basic historicity of the biblical narrative. A number of scholars have suggested, for example, that a small number of people escaped from Egypt and contributed the Exodus story to ancient Israel when they joined themselves to that confederation of tribes, but Garbini considers that scenario to be "an even greater miracle than the passage through the Red Sea" (page 5). Garbini states his own methodology regarding the Hebrew Bible on page 16: "the value of the Old Testament as a historical source is very relative...and a particular piece of information cannot be considered reliable until it has been confirmed from elsewhere." And, for Garbini, there isn't a whole lot of external evidence about pre-exilic Hebrew history, in contrast to the amount of data on "the Phoenicians and the Arameans" (page 16). For the Hebrews, Assyrian and Babylonian texts, the Mesha Stele of Moab, and "a few Hebrew texts give us some names of kings and some events between the ninth and sixth century BC", but there is nothing on Saul or the empire of David and Solomon. Garbini states on page 19 that "we can note that the Israelites did not make much of an impression on those who knew them; it was not for nothing that others called the land which they inhabited by the name of the Philistines, not by that of the Israelites." At the same time, unlike some minimalists, who act as if pre-exilic Israel was illiterate, Garbini refers to a few Hebrew inscriptions from the eighth-sixth centuries B.C.E., and he asserts that there were probably more, since other rulers of the ancient Near East had inscriptions, and "there were no structural and ideological differences between the Israelites and the neighboring peoples" (pages 18-19).

In Chapter 2, "David's Empire," Garbini acknowledges that David and Solomon existed, but he does not accept the historicity of much that the Hebrew Bible says about them. He states on pages 31-32:

"David never killed Goliath, never knew Hiram of Tyre, never fought against the Idumaeans, Ammonites, Amalekites, and Arameans and did not create an empire. If we are to believe the biblical text he fought only the Philistines and the Moabites and managed to establish himself as a ruler in Jerusalem after fighting against Saul, a king in whose service he previously was (the same thing happened some centuries before with Idrimi of Alalakh). His son Solomon, who succeeded in preserving his father's small state, built a palace for himself with a small temple for the dynastic god as an annexe (the dimensions given by the biblical text, fifty metres by twenty-five, are exaggerated, as is shown by a comparison with the Syro-Palestinian temples of the time); but he did not marry any daughter of Pharaoh, did not enrich himself with international trade and was in all probability forced to suffer the military expedition of Pharaoh Sheshonk."

Like other minimalists, Garbini offers alternative interpretations for the evidence that maximalists cite for the historicity of the Solomonic empire. Maximalists have stated that the six-chambered gates at Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo confirm the historicity of I Kings 9:15, and they date those gates to the tenth century B.C.E., the time of Solomon. Garbini says that the Solomonic date for these gates "is full of problems", but that, even if there are buildings from the time of Solomon, we shouldn't necessarily assume that they were "built by the king of Jerusalem and no one else" (pages 30-31). In Megiddo, for example, "the city of the famous Solomonic 'stables', a stele of Pharaoh Sheshonk has been found" (page 31). Garbini's point here may be that Egypt controlled Palestine in the tenth century, and so it could have built the structures that scholars attribute to Solomon.

But didn't Sheshonk invade Palestine during the reign of Rehoboam, not Solomon? On the basis of chronology, Garbini disputes this claim by I Kings 14:25 and many scholars. But, as far as I could tell, Garbini did not interact with another maximalist argument, which I recall vaguely: that certain structures can be dated to the time of Solomon on the basis of destruction layers that resulted from Sheshonk's invasion, which is assumed to have occurred during the time of Rehoboam. But if the invasion happened under Solomon, then why would Sheshonk mow down his own structures? Granted, there are other ways to interpret the destruction layers that do not result in dating the structures to the time of Solomon, but Garbini does not even address this issue (again, as far as I could tell). Garbini also discusses implausibilities within the biblical narrative, inconsistencies within the biblical narrative itself (like, say, apparent conflicts between the extent of David's victories in II Samuel 8 and other parts of the narrative), and incompatibilities between the biblical narrative and outside sources (on the date of Hiram and whether Egypt was weak enough to give Solomon a daughter of Pharaoh, when the Egyptian kings generally did not give their daughters to Asiatics).

In Chapter 3, "Stories of the Kings," one topic that Garbini discusses is Sennacherib's attempted invasion of Jerusalem during the time of King Hezekiah of Judah. In II Kings 18:26, the Judean official Eliakim asks the Assyrian Rabshakeh to speak in Aramaic rather than Hebrew in order to protect the Judeans from intimidation. Garbini asks why this story makes a big deal about language differences, when so many other stories present Israelites freely interacting with people of other nationalities (e.g., Samson interacts with Delilah, Solomon with the Queen of Sheba, etc.), without mentioning any language barrier. Garbini also wonders how Judeans in the eighth century would know about the difference between Hebrew and Aramaic, when their neighbors were not Aramaic but Phoenician, Moabite, and Edomite. Garbini argues that this story must have come after 586 B.C.E., when the "Hebrews who had remained at home came into contact with the Babylonian administration" (page 46). Garbini sees in this story a sign of linguistic ethnicity, as Hebrews tried to distinguish themselves from foreigners. Garbini's overall point is that biblical writers may have some approximate knowledge of pre-exilic Israelite history, but they shaped it to speak to exilic or post-exilic times. I am not sure if I accept Garbini's argument on languages in II Kings 18, for even he points out that the Assyrians spoke Aramaic because it was a "lingua franca outside Mesopotamia" (page 47). In that case, why would it be unusual for Hebrew officials in the eighth century to know Aramaic, and to realize that it is different from Hebrew? At the same time, II Kings 18 does mention a language difference, and this sort of thing does not appear often in the Hebrew Bible. Garbini does well to ask why. Maybe it does so for the purpose of exilic or post-exilic linguistic nationalism, but perhaps an alternative explanation is that the language barrier serves to present Rabshakeh as an evil villain---one who intentionally intimidates the Hebrews by speaking his threats in their own language.

Regarding Chapter 4, "The Origin and Development of Yahwism," Garbini's point appears to overlap with a point that other minimalists have made: that other nations besides Israel worshiped Yahweh, and that pre-exilic Israel was not monotheistic, and so we can't assume that she had the same sort of Yahwism that the Hebrew Bible advocates. But, unlike some minimalists, Garbini actually regards the reform of Josiah as historical, for Hebrew epigraphy from the seventh century on "presents a very rich Yahwistic nomenclature" (page 63). Garbini does not believe that Josiah's reform included centralization, however, for "The mention of a 'temple of Yahweh' in one of the Hebrew ostraca discovered at Arad, in the Negev, a temple clearly related to the locality (perhaps Tell Ira) from which the ostracon had been sent, shows that the centralization of the cult had not been achieved by the end of the kingdom of Judah" (page 63). He also does not think that Josiah's reform was bloody, for the biblical narrative is contradictory on this point: II Kings 23:4 says that Josiah brought the clergy from other cultic centers to Jerusalem and supported them, while forbidding them to sacrifice (vv 8-9), whereas v 5 states that Josiah killed all the priests of Judah, except for the priests in Jerusalem.

I really did not understand Garbini's argument in Chapter 5, "From the Anointer to the Anointed: the 'Messiah.'" He does not think that kings in the ancient Near East, including those in ancient Israel, were anointed, for they had sanctity in themselves, plus they themselves anointed others for service. Regarding the narrative in the Hebrew Bible, Garbini notes that anointing is not significant there: some kings are not anointed, and others are called anointed before oil is even poured on their heads. I don't know where Garbini is going with this.

In Chapter 6, "Abraham among the Chaldeans," Garbini dates the Abraham narrative to the exile. On page 78, Garbini states that the Jews placed Abraham's place of origin to Ur to declare themselves "fellow-countrymen" of Nabonidus, as (according to Herodotus in 7.89) the Phoenicians during the Persian Period claimed that they came from the original land of the Persians. Also, according to Garbini, there are scenes in Genesis in which Abraham is in Southern Israel because that was where Jews lived prior to their deportation to Babylon. Moreover, whereas Herodotus often (but not always) focused on rulers of nations, Israel in exile exalted a patriarch who was not a king, believing that Abraham and his descendants "dealt directly with God" themselves, and, in a sense, were kings---meaning that the monarchy was being democratized in exile.

In Chapter 7, "A Prophet and the King of Kings," Garbini argues that much of Second Isaiah was written during the time of Darius rather than the reign the earlier Persian king, Cyrus. Darius destroyed Babylon in 521 B.C.E. and abandoned the Babylonian god Marduk for the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda (whereas Cyrus glorified Marduk and didn't even mention Ahura Mazda). For Garbini, that explains why Second Isaiah celebrates the fall of Babylon, Marduk, and Nabu, and it also accounts for elements of his theology, for Garbini believes that Second Isaiah applied characteristics of Ahura Mazda to Yahweh (i.e., universalism, "the typically Iranian motive of the 'first and the last', the deity who is outside time and knows all", page 97). But Garbini holds that Israel disliked the Persians after the ascension of Xerxes, who ended religious tolerance for certain people and destroyed cities. For Garbini, Isaiah 14 is actually about the fall of Xerxes, even though it claims to be about the fall of Babylon. Garbini may believe that the Jews could not explicitly attack Xerxes because that would get them in trouble, and so they used allegory.

Another interesting point that Garbini makes in this chapter: he characterizes the Yahwist source as post-exilic and "anti-universalistic." Garbini points out exclusions with the Yahwist story---Adam and Eve leaving the Garden, the curse of Cain, the destruction of all humanity except for Noah and his family, the curse of Ham, the expulsion of Ishmael, the subordination of Esau to Jacob, Jacob's curse of Simeon and Levi. For Garbini, this coincides with the post-exilic Jews' exclusivist stance against mixed marriage. What is interesting is that John Van Seters regards the Yahwist as universalist and inclusivist---and he refers to examples to support his position. Is there an objective way to characterize the biblical authors?

In Chapter 8, "Moses Anger," Garbini discusses the Golden Calf story. He repeats his point about the tablets, which he made in his Introduction. But he makes other interesting points. He says that the Israelites drank the remains of the Golden Calf because they were like the woman accused of unfaithfulness in Numbers 6, who drank bitter water, and Yahweh was performing the role of the jealous husband. He argues that the "ancient stage" of the Golden Calf story criticizes Aaron as part of a "polemic against excessively permissive behaviour on the part of the clergy of Jerusalem before the exile" (page 105), the sort of polemic that we see in the prophets. Garbini also asserts that the story prefers Zadok over Aaron, which was intriguing because I Chronicles 6 says that Zadok is part of the Aaronic line, through Phinehas. Also, for Garbini, the part of the story about the Levites saving the day was a later element that was clumsily inserted when the Levites gained prominence, in the third century B.C.E.

I'll stop here.