Posts
I started Niels Peter Lemche's Early Israel. What I read so far is a critique of the "peasant revolt" model of G.E. Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald, which posits that Israel was a result of peasant revolts in Canaanite city-states. That means that the Israelites were originally Canaanites, although Mendenhall (and I believe Gottwald) acknowledged that a "Moses" group that came from Egypt and encountered Yahweh in Sinai could have attached itself to Israel, contributing Yahwism to it; moreover, Gottwald eventually said that Syrian nomads could have come to Palestine and become part of Israel. For Mendenhall, the revolting Canaanite peasants conquered the Canaanite city-states, making the Conquest an inner-Canaanite phenomenon. Gottwald, however, thought that the peasants failed at their revolt and went to the central hills, away from the Canaanite city-states; after all, Judges does not present a full-scale Conquest, as we see in Joshua, but rather portrays individual tribes fighting battles, and the Canaanites remaining with the Israelites.
Lemche's critique of the "peasant revolt" model is that it is circular---it does not flow from evidence, but is rather an assumption. Plus, Lemche asks why the Bible says that the Israelites came from Egypt, if they came from a revolt in Canaan. I was puzzled by Lemche's critique of the "peasant revolt" model because, in Ancient Israel, he essentially argues that the Israelites were Canaanite peasants who became hapiru, or outlaws, which is what Mendenhall argued as well. Whether or not Lemche changed his position between Early Israel and Ancient Israel, I will have to see as I read Early Israel.
So far, however, my hunch is "no." For one, on page 28, he says that the Hebrew Bible contains a later understanding of Israelite origins and history. If that is the case, then it would not necessarily be problematic for the Hebrew Bible to say that Israel came from Egypt, when in actuality Israel consisted largely of people who were Canaanites, for the Hebrew Bible was presenting a much later view on Israel's origins, not what really happened. (Still, I should note that, on pages 255-256 of Ancient Israel, Lemche entertains the possibility that Yahwism was the contribution of Levites who came from Sinai, which could explain why in Palestine they were "treated like foreigners, in that they [were] forbidden to own land." Like many scholars, Lemche is open to the idea that groups outside of Canaan joined themselves to Israel and contributed what became prominent elements of Israelite religion.)
Second, on page 30 of Early Israel, Lemche disagrees with part of A.J. Hauser's critique of Mendenhall, the part that said that peasants left their city-states to serve another king, not to become hapiru. According to Lemche, there were peasants who became hapiru in a "no man's land". Similarly, in Ancient Israel, Lemche argued that refugees could not go to another Canaanite city-states, for the city-states agreed not to accept refugees; otherwise, their own people could leave!
Third, on page 32 of Early Israel, Lemche acknowledges that he has proposed his own model for the emergence of the hapiru, but that even his model is a guess because the "lack of written sources" "during the period between Amarna and the formation of the Israelite state". So I suppose he's in the same boat as Mendenhall and Gottwald, right? We'll see!
