Posts
I'm continuing my way through Niels Peter Lemche's Ancient Israel. In today's post, I have five items.
1. Lemche presents arguments against the historicity of the biblical Conquest narrative: that Jericho was destroyed in the sixteenth century B.C.E., not in the Late Bronze Age; that Ai was destroyed in 2300 B.C.E.; that Gibeon did not even exist yet when Joshua supposedly came to the land; that Judges 1 contradicts the picture in much of Joshua of a large-scale conquest. But Lemche wonders about the origin of the biblical Conquest narrative. Obviously, the story was designed to justify ancient Israel's right to Palestine, but why did its author select a conquest model to do that? Lemche's view is that the Israelites were Canaanites, so why does he believe that they presented themselves as immigrants to Canaan?
Lemche notes that other nations presented their inhabitants as immigrants, even when they weren't. For example, Virgil's Aeneid in the first century B.C.E. said that the Romans were originally from Troy, which the Greeks had destroyed. This, even though "there is nothing in the history of Rome, not to speak of the earlier tradition, which suggests that the Romans regarded themselves as having other than Latin origins" (page 113). So why did Virgil present the Romans as immigrants? The answer, for Lemche, is that the Romans were under "serious cultural pressure from the Greeks they had subdued, but towards whom they still felt themselves to be culturally inferior" (page 113), and so Virgil wrote the Aeneid to demonstrate that the Roman conflict with the Greeks was quite ancient, and that "Roman culture's roots were every bit as ancient, and respectable as that of the Greeks" (page 114).
As for the Israelites, Lemche states that authors spoke of a settlement or a conquest in order to separate the Israelite people from other peoples---especially after the Northern Kingdom fell in 722 B.C.E., and the Assyrians settled foreigners into Palestine. Lemche appears to hold that there was a "historical development" that bound Israel together as a society, and this resulted in a "polarization" between Israel and outsiders (page 114). Lemche also proposes that the "settlement" concept may have originated in exile, outside of Palestine.
Something else to note is a comment that Lemche makes about historiography on page 112. I have wondered if the biblical authors believed that they were writing what really happened. Well, Lemche states:
"...it was never the intention of the authors in question to depict Israelite prehistory as it actually was. To the contrary, these authors were concerned to give to their own time an account which might serve as an ideological basis for their society, or else one which corresponded to the ideological basis which their society already possessed."
But did the authors intend for their audience to believe that the history actually happened? If they did not, then what was the basis for the ideology? The authors' whole point was to root the ideology in history, right? In the case of Virgil, for instance, he was trying to say that Rome had an ancient and respectable culture. But if his story about it having an ancient and respectable culture is not historically accurate, then that nullifies his argument.
2. Another question that Lemche addresses concerns the origins of the reform movement (e.g., Amos and Hosea) and the Deuteronomist. Lemche at first entertains the possibility that "mono-Yahwism" originated in the sanctuary of Gilgal, for the site "plays such an important role in the Deuteronomistic account of the Settlement" (page 162), but Lemche then dismisses that option because Amos and Hosea lambaste Gilgal (Amos 4:4; Hosea 4:15; 9:15; 12:12). Lemche then settles on Shechem as the place of origin for the reform movement, for the Deuteronomistic History speaks positively about it most of the time, and one of the negative passages, Judges 9, refers to it as Baal Berith, in reference to the covenant. Lemche states, "Thus it is impossible to deny that there may be some connection between this divine designation and the Old Testament covenantal theology, which is otherwise associated with Shechem" (page 162).
Shechem became marginalized by Jeroboam I in Northern Israel, as archaeology and the Hebrew Bible indicate. According to Lemche, the enmity between Shechem and Jeroboam's recognized sanctuary in Bethel may have contributed to the Deuteronomists' strong support for one central sanctuary when they were in the Judahite establishment during the time of Josiah. The Shechemite reformers brought northern Israelite tradition with them to Judah after the Assyrian destruction of Northern Israel in 722 B.C.E., a tradition that includes "the Sinai tradition, Exodus tradition, the Jacob narratives, and so forth" (page 164). For Lemche, that explains why these traditions do not appear in "Old Testament sources of Judaean origin in the period prior to the fall of Samaria", such as Isaiah and Micah (page 164). (I do not agree with Lemche on this---see my post here.)
Moreover, according to Lemche, it took some time for the Deuteronomistic ideology to impact Judah. Hezekiah destroyed the Nehushtan, which was traditionally fashioned by Moses, and Lemche concludes from this that, "at this time, the figure of Moses had not yet achieved the exalted status which it subsequently received in the traditions about Israel's past", which means that "the Deuteronomistic understanding of Moses had not yet decisively influenced the religious attitude in Judah; nor had it as yet found its final form" (page 166). The Deuteronomists gained influence under Josiah, but that was short-lived, for their "origins were foreign", they were a minority, and their influence was confined to the elites, since their program did not "try to include the broad mass of the population out in the countryside" (page 171). But they did continue to exist, even during the exile, and they came to play a significant role in the composition of the Hebrew Bible.
Lemche also argues that the Deuteronomists absorbed some ideas from the Assyrians, not because the Assyrians were trying to shove their religion down the Judahites throats (Lemche states that the Assyrians actually felt that their captives weren't good enough for the cult of Asshur), but rather because the Assyrians had an influence as the rulers of much of the ancient Near East. One idea was that of the covenant, which could have been modeled on the relationship between Assyria and its vassal nations. Another idea was that of the king being subordinate to the LORD and his laws, for the Assyrians held that their king was subject to the god Asshur, which was why the king had to "report his righteous administration to the deity" (page 168).
3. Lemche considers the Josianic reform in light of a development in the ancient Near East in the seventh century B.C.E. According to Lemche, the seventh century was a time of insecurity, as people felt that their identities were being threatened. Consequently, they sought "their roots in the past" (page 169). Asshurbanipal of Assyria "collected within his royal residence a massive library", which was "a conscious attempt to conserve the ancient tradition by incorporating the religious traditions of the whole of Mesopotamia in the library" (page 169). Egypt had suffered indignity at the hands of the Assyrians, and so she remembered the time when she was a great nation. She also despised all that was foreign, and sought to "recreate the ancient Egyptian Asian empire when the Assyrian empire collapsed in the years between 630 and 612 BCE" (page 169). Similarly, Josiah claimed to be returning Judah to her historical roots, challenged Judahite religious syncretism with foreign customs, and (according to Lemche) sought to recreate the Davidic empire.
4. Lemche provided an understandable account of how the poor in Israel got to be so vulnerable, which led to the prophetic critique of social injustice in the eighth century B.C.E. When droughts occurred in Palestine, farmers needed to borrow seed from the wealthy or from the government, people who could afford to stock up on seed for the lean years. The farmers had to pay their creditors back, plus interest, from their crop. But what if they had another bad year? In that case, they would have to sell their land to their creditors, and maybe they could remain on the land as copyholders. Taxes also didn't help the farmers, that much.
I like the statements in Jeremiah 39:10 and II Kings 25:12's that the Babylonians gave land to the poor after they took Judah. The prophets often talked about God's displeasure with the corrupt rich and his sympathy for the poor. Perhaps God's justice occurred when the poor got the land of those who had gained it without compassion.
5. On page 197, Lemche says that he hopes to reconstruct the development of Israelite religion "in a way which is just as independent of the biblical picture as was the case with the political and social history." But I did not find Lemche's description of ancient Israel's history to be "independent of the biblical picture". Sure, he dismissed the historicity of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the Conquest, but he accepted the historicity of Saul, David, and Solomon---probably because, in those cases, the biblical narratives made sense to him as a reasonable account of what happened (with exceptions). The Israelites were threatened by the Philistines, and so they wanted a king. Solomon was imposing heavy burdens on the North, and so the North seceded. There are times when the Bible just makes sense.
Lemche is not as minimalist in this book as he is in his later works. Actually, as I was reading this book, I thought that it might be a good text for me to assign to undergraduates for an "Introduction to Hebrew Bible" class, if I ever get an academic position.
