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- Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land
of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary
stories, we did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, we did not conquer
the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon.
Those who take an interest have known these facts for years, but Israel
is a stubborn people and doesn't want to hear about it.
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- This is what archaeologists have learned from their
excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt,
did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign
and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder
to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is
described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal
kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God
of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion
adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at
Mount Sinai.
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- Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in
the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of
the Jewish peopleóand who once went into the field looking for
proof to corroborate the Bible storyónow agree that the historic
events relating to the stages of the Jewish people's emergence are radically
different from what that story tells.
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- What follows is a short account of the brief history
of archaeology, with the emphasis on the crises and the big bang, so to
speak, of the past decade. The critical question of this archaeological
revolution has not yet trickled down into public consciousness, but it
cannot be ignored.
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- Inventing the Bible Stories
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- The archaeology of Palestine developed as a science at
a relatively late date, in the late 19th and early 20th century, in tandem
with the archaeology of the imperial cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece
and Rome. Those resource-intensive powers were the first target of the
researchers, who were looking for impressive evidence from the past, usually
in the service of the big museums in London, Paris and Berlin. That stage
effectively passed over Palestine, with its fragmented geographical diversity.
The conditions in ancient Palestine were inhospitable for the development
of an extensive kingdom, and certainly no showcase projects such as the
Egyptian shrines or the Mesopotamian palaces could have been established
there. In fact, the archaeology of Palestine was not engendered at the
initiative of museums but arose from religious motives.
-
- The main push behind archaeological research in Palestine
was the country's relationship with the Holy Scriptures. The first excavators
in Jericho and Shechem (Nablus) were biblical researchers who were looking
for the remains of the cities cited in the Bible. Archaeology assumed
momentum with the activity of William Foxwell Albright, who mastered the
archaeology, history and languages of the Land of Israel and the ancient
Near East. Albright, an American whose father was a priest of Chilean
descent, began excavating in Palestine in the 1920's. His stated approach
was that archaeology was the principal scientific means to refute the
critical claims against the historical veracity of the Bible stories, particularly
those of the Wellhausen school in Germany.
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- The school of biblical criticism that developed in Germany
beginning in the second half of the 19th century, of which Julius Wellhausen
was a leading figure, challenged the historicity of the Bible stories
and claimed that biblical historiography was formulated, and in large
measure actually 'invented', during the Babylonian exile. Bible scholars,
the Germans in particular, claimed that the history of the Hebrews, as
a consecutive series of events beginning with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and proceeding through the passage to Egypt, the enslavement and the exodus,
and ending with the conquest of the land and the settlement of the tribes
of Israel, was no more than a later reconstruction of events with a theological
purpose.
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- Albright believed that the Bible is a historical document,
which, although it had gone through several editing stages, nevertheless
basically reflected the ancient reality. He was convinced that if the
ancient remains of Palestine were uncovered, they would furnish unequivocal
proof of the historical truth of the events relating to the Jewish people
in its land.
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- The biblical archaeology that developed following Albright
and his pupils brought about a series of extensive digs at the important
biblical tells: Megiddo, Lachish, Gezer, Shechem (Nablus), Jericho, Jerusalem,
Ai, Giveon, Beit She'an, Beit Shemesh, Hazor, Ta'anach and others. The
way was straight and clear: every new finding contributed to the building
of a harmonious picture of the past. The archaeologists, who enthusiastically
adopted the biblical approach, set out on a quest to unearth the 'biblical
period': the period of the patriarchs, the Canaanite cities that were
destroyed by the Israelites as they conquered the land, the boundaries
of the 12 tribes, the sites of the settlement period, characterized by
'settlement pottery', the 'gates of Solomon' at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer,
'Solomon's stables' (or Ahab's), 'King Solomon's mines' at Timnaóand
there are some who are still hard at work and have found Mount Sinai (at
Mount Karkoum in the Negev) or Joshua's altar at Mount Ebal.
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- The Crisis
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- Slowly, cracks began to appear in the picture. Paradoxically,
a situation was created in which the glut of findings began to undermine
the historical credibility of the biblical descriptions instead of reinforcing
them. A crisis stage is reached when the theories within the framework
of the general thesis are unable to solve an increasingly large number
of anomalies.
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- The explanations become ponderous and inelegant, and
the pieces do not fit together smoothly. Here are a few examples of how
the harmonious picture collapsed. Patriarchal Age: The researchers found
it difficult to reach agreement on which archaeological period matched
the Patriarchal Age. When did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live? When was
the Cave of Machpelah (Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron) bought in order
to serve as the burial place for the patriarchs and the matriarchs? According
to the biblical chronology, Solomon built the Temple 480 years after the
exodus from Egypt (1 Kings 6:1). To that we have to add 430 years of the
stay in Egypt (Exodus 12:40) and the vast lifetimes of the patriarchs,
producing a date in the 21st century BCE for Abraham's move to Canaan.
However, no evidence has been unearthed that can sustain this chronology.
Albright argued in the early 1960s in favor of assigning the wanderings
of Abraham to the Middle Bronze Age (22nd -20th centuries BCE). However,
Benjamin Mazar, the father of the Israeli branch of biblical archaeology,
proposed identifying the historic background of the Patriarchal Age a
thousand years later, in the 11th century BCEówhich would place
it in the 'settlement period'. Others rejected the historicity of the
stories and viewed them as ancestral legends that were told in the period
of the Kingdom of Judea. In any event, the consensus began to break down.
The Exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The
many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites'
presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the Exodus.
Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt
during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile
Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred
frequently over thousands of years and were hardly exceptional. Generations
of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the encampments of the
tribes in the desert. Despite these intensive efforts, not even one site
has been found that can match the biblical account.
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- The power of tradition has now led some researchers
to 'discover' Mount Sinai in the northern Hijaz or, as already mentioned,
at Mount Karkoum in the Negev. The central events in the history of the
Israelites are not corroborated in documents external to the Bible or
in archaeological findings. Most historians today agree that at best,
the stay in Egypt and the exodus events occurred among a few families and
that their private story was expanded and 'nationalized' to fit the needs
of theological ideology.
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- The conquest: One of the formative events of the people
of Israel in biblical historiography is the story of how the land was
conquered from the Canaanites. Yet extremely serious difficulties have
cropped up precisely in the attempts to locate the archaeological evidence
for this story. Repeated excavations by various expeditions at Jericho
and Ai, the two cities whose conquest is described in the greatest detail
in the Book of Joshua, have proved very disappointing. Despite the excavators'
efforts, it emerged that in the late part of the 13th century BCE, at
the end of the Late Bronze Age, which is the agreed period for the conquest,
there were no cities in either tell, and of course no walls that could
have been toppled. Naturally, explanations were offered for these anomalies.
Some claimed that the walls around Jericho were washed away by rain, while
others suggested that earlier walls had been used; and, as for Ai, it was
claimed that the original story actually referred to the conquest of nearby
Beit El and was transferred to Ai by later redactors.
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- Biblical scholars suggested a quarter of a century ago
that the conquest stories be viewed as etiological legends and no more.
But as more and more sites were uncovered and it emerged that the places
in question died out or were simply abandoned at different times, the
conclusion that there is no factual basis for the biblical story about
the conquest by Israelite tribes in a military campaign led by Joshua was
bolstered. The Canaanite cities: The Bible magnifies the strength and
the fortifications of the Canaanite cities that were conquered by the
Israelites: 'great cities with walls sky-high' (Deuteronomy 9:1). In practice,
all the sites that have been uncovered turned up remains of unfortified
settlements, which in most cases consisted of a few structures or the
ruler's palace rather than a genuine city. The urban culture of Palestine
in the Late Bronze Age disintegrated in a process that lasted hundreds
of years and did not stem from military conquest.
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- Moreover, the biblical description is unfamiliar with
the geopolitical reality in Palestine. Palestine was under Egyptian rule
until the middle of the 12th century BCE. The Egyptians' administrative
centers were located in Gaza, Yaffo and Beit She'an. Egyptian presence
has also been discovered in many locations on both sides of the Jordan
River. This striking presence is not mentioned in the biblical account,
and it is clear that it was unknown to the author and his editors. The
archaeological findings blatantly contradict the biblical picture: the
Canaanite cities were not 'great,' were not fortified and did not have
'sky-high walls.' The heroism of the conquerors, the few versus the many
and the assistance of the God who fought for his people are a theological
reconstruction lacking any factual basis. Origin of the Israelites: The
conclusions drawn from episodes in the emergence of the people of Israel
in stages, taken together, gave rise to a discussion of the bedrock question:
the identity of the Israelites. If there is no evidence for the exodus
from Egypt and the desert journey, and if the story of the military conquest
of fortified cities has been refuted by archaeology, who, then, were these
Israelites? The archaeological findings did corroborate one important
fact: in the early Iron Age (beginning some time after 1200 BCE), the stage
that is identified with the 'settlement period', hundreds of small settlements
were established in the area of the central hill region of the Land of
Israel, inhabited by farmers who worked the land or raised sheep. If they
did not come from Egypt, what is the origin of these settlers? Israel
Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has proposed
that these settlers were the pastoral shepherds who wandered in this hill
area throughout the Late Bronze Age (graves of these people have been
found, without settlements). According to his reconstruction, in the Late
Bronze Age (which preceded the Iron Age) the shepherds maintained a barter
economy of meat in exchange for grains with the inhabitants of the valleys.
With the disintegration of the urban and agricultural system in the lowlands,
the nomads were forced to produce their own grains, and hence the incentive
for stable settlements.
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- The name 'Israel' is mentioned in a single Egyptian
document from the period of Merneptah, king of Egypt, dating from 1208
BCE: 'Plundered is Canaan with every evil, Ascalon is taken, Gezer is
seized, Yenoam has become as though it never was, Israel is desolated,
its seed is not.' Merneptah refers to the country by its Canaanite name
and mentions several cities of the kingdom, along with a non-urban ethnic
group. According to this evidence, the term 'Israel' was given to one
of the population groups that resided in Canaan toward the end of the
Late Bronze Age, apparently in the central hill region, in the area where
the Kingdom of Israel would later be established.
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- A Kingdom With No Name The united monarchy: Archaeology
was also the source that brought about a shift regarding the reconstruction
of the reality in the period known as the 'united monarchy' of David and
Solomon. The Bible describes this period as the zenith of the political,
military and economic power of the people of Israel in ancient times.
In the wake of David's conquests, the empire of David and Solomon stretched
from the Euphrates River to Gaza ('For he controlled the whole region
west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, all the kings west of the
Euphrates,' 1 Kings 5:4). The archaeological findings at many sites show
that the construction projects attributed to this period were meager in
scope and power.
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- The three cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, which
are mentioned among Solomon's construction enterprises, have been excavated
extensively at the appropriate layers. Only about half of Hazor's upper
city was fortified, covering an area of only 30 dunams (7.5 acres), out
of a total area of 700 dunams which was settled in the Bronze Age. At
Gezer there was apparently only a citadel surrounded by a casemate wall
covering a small area, while Megiddo was not fortified with a wall. The
picture becomes even more complicated in the light of the excavations
conducted in Jerusalem, the capital of the united monarchy. Large sections
of the city have been excavated over the past 150 years. The digs have
turned up impressive remnants of the cities from the Middle Bronze Age
and from Iron Age II ( the period of the Kingdom of Judea). No remains
of buildings have been found from the period of the united monarchy (even
according to the agreed chronology), only a few pottery shards. Given
the preservation of the remains from earlier and later periods, it is
clear that Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon was a small city,
perhaps with a small citadel for the king, but in any event it was not
the capital of an empire as described in the Bible. This small chiefdom
is the source of the title 'Beth David' mentioned in later Aramean and
Moabite inscriptions. The authors of the biblical account knew Jerusalem
in the 8th century BCE, with its wall and the rich culture of which remains
have been found in various parts of the city, and projected this picture
back to the age of the united monarchy. Presumably, Jerusalem acquired
its central status after the destruction of Samaria, its northern rival,
in 722 BCE.
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- The archaeological findings dovetail well with the conclusions
of the critical school of biblical scholarship. David and Solomon were
the rulers of tribal kingdoms that controlled small areas: the former
in Hebron and the latter in Jerusalem. Concurrently, a separate kingdom
began to form in the Samaria hills, which finds expression in the stories
about Saul's kingdom. Israel and Judea were from the outset two separate,
independent kingdoms, and at times were in an adversarial relationship.
Thus, the great united monarchy is an imaginary historiosophic creation,
which was composed during the period of the Kingdom of Judea at the earliest.
Perhaps the most decisive proof of this is that we do not know the name
of this kingdom.
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- YHWH and his Consort
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- How many gods, exactly, did Israel have? Together with
the historical and political aspects, there are also doubts as to the
credibility of the information about belief and worship. The question
about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel
and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that
mention a pair of gods: YHWH and his Asherath. At two sites, Kuntilet
Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and Khirbet el-Kom
in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention
'YHWH and his Asherah', 'YHWH Shomron and his Asherah', 'YHWH Teman and
his Asherah'. The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, YHWH and
his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name. These inscriptions,
from the 8th century BCE, raise the possibility that monotheism, as a
state religion, is actually an innovation of the period of the Kingdom
of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel.
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- The archaeology of the Land of Israel is completing
a process that amounts to a scientific revolution in its field. It is
ready to confront the findings of biblical scholarship and of ancient
history as an equal discipline. But at the same time, we are witnessing
a fascinating phenomenon in that all this is simply ignored by the Israeli
public. Many of the findings mentioned here have been known for decades.
The professional literature in the spheres of archaeology, Bible and the
history of the Jewish people has addressed them in dozens of books and
hundreds of articles. Even if not all the scholars accept the individual
arguments that inform the examples I have cited, the majority have adopted
their main points. Nevertheless, these revolutionary views are not penetrating
the public consciousness. About a year ago, my colleague, the historian
Prof. Nadav Ne'eman, published an article in the Culture and Literature
section of Ha'aretz entitled 'To Remove the Bible from the Jewish Bookshelf',
but there was no public outcry. Any attempt to question the reliability
of the biblical descriptions is perceived as an attempt to undermine 'our
historic right to the land' and as a shattering of the myth of the nation
that is renewing the ancient Kingdom of Israel. These symbolic elements
constitute such a critical component of the construction of the Israeli
identity that any attempt to call their veracity into question encounters
hostility or silence. It is of some interest that such tendencies within
the Israeli secular society go hand-in-hand with the outlook among educated
Christian groups. I have found a similar hostility in reaction to lectures
I have delivered abroad to groups of Christian Bible lovers, though what
upset them was the challenge to the foundations of their fundamentalist
religious belief. It turns out that part of Israeli society is ready to
recognize the injustice that was done to the Arab inhabitants of the country
and is willing to accept the principle of equal rights for women - but
is not up to adopting the archaeological facts that shatter the biblical
myth. The blow to the mythical foundations of the Israeli identity is
apparently too threatening, and it is more convenient to turn a blind
eye. ___
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- Prof. Ze'ev Herzog teaches in the Department of Archaeology
and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He took part
in the excavations of Hazor and Megiddo with Yigael Yadin and in the digs
at Tel Arad and Tel Be'er Sheva with Yohanan Aharoni. He has conducted
digs at Tel Michal and Tel Gerisa and has recently begun digging at Tel
Yaffo. He is the author of books on the city gate in Palestine and its
neighbors and on two excavations, and has written a book summing up the
archaeology of the ancient city.
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- Prof. Herzog is the author of the following books:
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- Z. Herzog Beer-sheba II: The Early Iron Age Settlements.
(Publication of the Institute of Archaeology No. 7) Institute of Archaeology,
Tel Aviv University and Ramot Publishing Co. Tel Aviv 1984.
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- Z. Herzog Das Stadttor in Israel und in den Nachbarlndern.
Verlag Philipp von Zabern. Mainz 1986.
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- Z. Herzog, G. Rapp, O. Negbi (eds). Excavations at Tel
Michal, Israel. (Publication of the Institute of Archaeology No. 8) University
of Minnesota Press and Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology.
Minneapolis 1989.
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- Z. Herzog Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in
Ancient Israel and its Social Implications. (Monograph Series of the Sonia
and Marco Nadler Institute of Arahaeology No. 13) Emery and Claire Yass
Archaeology Press, Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. Tel
Aviv 1997.
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- Arad: R. Amiran, O. Ilan, and M. Sebbane: Ancient Arad-
An Early BronzeAge Community on the Desert Fringe; Z. Herzog: The Arad
Fortresses. Tel Aviv 1997. [in Hebrew].
-
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- Prof. Ze'ev Herzog Department of Archaeology and Ancient
Near Eastern Studies Tel Aviv University P.O.B. 39040, Ramat Aviv, 69978
Tel Aviv, ISRAEL Tel. (Office) 972-3-6409578 Fax: (Office) 972-3-6407237
e-mail: herzog@post.tau.ac.il Visit Tel Yafo Internet Site: http://www.tau.ac.il/~archpubs/pro-exca/jaffa.html
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