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From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel
English (translation)Original Hebrew
Hardcover
First published November 1, 1994
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April 25, 2023
A mostly intriguing collection of articles, with the contributions from Na'aman and Israel Finkelstein (who were also the editors) being the highlights. That said, I doubt a lot of it would be written the same way today. The first sentence of Na'aman and Finkelstein's introduction cites the rise of "the territorial state of the United Monarchy" as a plain historical fact. But the piece also shows where things were headed: It asks how Israel's origins are supposed to be studied when OT specialists make "little use, no use or misuse of the archaeological data," and (in a taste of polemics to come) spends pages 2 and 3 picking apart the views of William Dever, an archaeologist who has denounced the "nihilism" of biblical minimalism, on the origins of the Iron I settlers of Palestine's hill country.
Still, several of the authors appear to have been digging with a Bible in one hand, as they say. Itamar Singer offers a good look at what archaeologists had found out by the mid-'90s about the arrival, spread and fate of the Philistines, but spends a fair amount of time trying to collate those findings with episodes in the career of David, whose story (at least in the details) is now widely considered to be historical fiction from a later age.
Finkelstein's article, "The Emergence of Israel," may be the best-remembered: It's where he sets out the idea that the Iron I settlement of the proto-Israelites (to use Dever's term) was not a unique event, but the third in a series of nomadic-to-sedentary transformations in the hill country since the Early Bronze Age, responding to economic and political events in the wider region. In places, you can see the old views of Iron Age Judah struggling with new ones, as when he says: "as for Jerusalem, even as the capital of the United Monarchy it was no more than a typical hill country stronghold." Na'aman, in "The 'Conquest of Canaan' in the Book of Joshua and in History" (note the scare quotes), says bluntly: "[T]he comprehensive history of the nation from Moses to the reform of Josiah or the Babylonian exile was composed either in the late seventh century B.C.E., or immediately after the destruction and exile of 587/86," with "hypothetical sources" from no earlier than the 700s. He also adds to Finkelstein's account of the settlers by arguing that not only Canaanite pastoral nomads, but uprooted people from around the Middle East, arrived in the hill country amid the chaos and destruction that ushered out the Bronze Age.
A footnote was the high point of the whole thing for me: Shlomo Bunimovitz's comment, drawing on work by others, including Singer, that the much-debated Merneptah Stele of about 1205 B.C.E.- the first known reference to "Israel" - wasn't the result of an Egyptian campaign in the hill country, but of encounters with the early Israelites in the coastal plain or elsewhere in their capacity as 'Apiru mercenaries. I'm not a serious student of this stuff, but I hadn't run into this ingenious explanation before.
As always, if you're in this field, apologies for whatever I've mangled.
Still, several of the authors appear to have been digging with a Bible in one hand, as they say. Itamar Singer offers a good look at what archaeologists had found out by the mid-'90s about the arrival, spread and fate of the Philistines, but spends a fair amount of time trying to collate those findings with episodes in the career of David, whose story (at least in the details) is now widely considered to be historical fiction from a later age.
Finkelstein's article, "The Emergence of Israel," may be the best-remembered: It's where he sets out the idea that the Iron I settlement of the proto-Israelites (to use Dever's term) was not a unique event, but the third in a series of nomadic-to-sedentary transformations in the hill country since the Early Bronze Age, responding to economic and political events in the wider region. In places, you can see the old views of Iron Age Judah struggling with new ones, as when he says: "as for Jerusalem, even as the capital of the United Monarchy it was no more than a typical hill country stronghold." Na'aman, in "The 'Conquest of Canaan' in the Book of Joshua and in History" (note the scare quotes), says bluntly: "[T]he comprehensive history of the nation from Moses to the reform of Josiah or the Babylonian exile was composed either in the late seventh century B.C.E., or immediately after the destruction and exile of 587/86," with "hypothetical sources" from no earlier than the 700s. He also adds to Finkelstein's account of the settlers by arguing that not only Canaanite pastoral nomads, but uprooted people from around the Middle East, arrived in the hill country amid the chaos and destruction that ushered out the Bronze Age.
A footnote was the high point of the whole thing for me: Shlomo Bunimovitz's comment, drawing on work by others, including Singer, that the much-debated Merneptah Stele of about 1205 B.C.E.- the first known reference to "Israel" - wasn't the result of an Egyptian campaign in the hill country, but of encounters with the early Israelites in the coastal plain or elsewhere in their capacity as 'Apiru mercenaries. I'm not a serious student of this stuff, but I hadn't run into this ingenious explanation before.
As always, if you're in this field, apologies for whatever I've mangled.
Displaying 1 of 1 review