Part 3 of 3
CLAIMING PALESTINE 3: THE STRUGGLE WITHIN PALESTINEGeorge Mendenhall, a pupil of Albright's at Johns Hopkins, is credited with formulating an alternative explanation of Israelite origins which challenged, and eventually undermined, many of the underlying assumptions of Alt and Noth, Albright and Bright, who had invented ancient Israel in the image of an Israel of their own day. His original programmatic essay, 'The Hebrew conquest of Palestine' which appeared in the Biblical Archaeologist in 1962, was overlooked for some time before becoming the focus of a fierce debate in the 1970s and 1980s. It is widely perceived to have shaken the very foundations of the biblical discourse on the origins of Israel by helping to undermine the conquest and immigration hypotheses. This common perception, however, is misleading since the foundational assumptions of Mendenhall, linked as they were to many of Albright's fundamental ideas, were locked into the discourse of biblical studies concerned with the search for ancient Israel as the taproot of Western civilization, effectively inventing Israel in its own image and thereby silencing Palestinian history. The paradox of Mendenhall's work is that there are important aspects which appear to give legitimacy and a voice to Palestinian history, only for that voice to be withdrawn or excluded under the truth claims of Christianity.
Ironically, Mendenhall's starting point is in agreement with the central thrust of this volume: previous scholarship had constructed Israel in its own image by basing hypotheses upon outmoded 'models' or 'ideal models'. One of his professed aims, interestingly in the light of the post-modern debate, was 'to avoid the worst mistake of reading purely modern ideas into the ancient world. Nationalism, like racism, is for all practical purposes a nonexistent operational concept in ancient history' (1973: 184). The hypotheses of Alt and Albright were based upon the fundamentally mistaken assumption that ancient Israel was a nomadic society, analogous to bedouin society of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, what he later terms 'the nomadic mirage' (1973: 150). [13] He argued also that there had been a failure to recognize the social and political 'prejudices' of scholars involved in the reconstruction of the Israelite past. Both previous models assumed that changes in the ancient past can only be explained in terms of ethnic migrations or conquests supplanting other ethnic or racial groups. He was concerned to expose these 'tacit or expressed assumptions' (1962: 67) of both the main models of Israelite origins by questioning, on the basis of biblical and extra-biblical evidence, the domain assumption that the early Israelites were nomadic. At first sight, he appeared to reject the strong evolutionary scheme which had informed the discourse of biblical studies by rejecting a pattern of development from nomad to village to city. [14] It led to a seemingly radical proposal which was to occupy biblical scholars for a considerable period of time:
The fact is, and the present writer would regard it as a fact though not every detail can be 'proven', that both the Amarna materials and the biblical events represent politically the same process: namely, the withdrawal, not physically and geographically, but politically and subjectively, of large population groups from any obligation to the existing political regimes, and therefore, the renunciation of any protection from those sources. In other words, there was no statistically important invasion of Palestine at the beginning of the twelve tribe system of Israel. There was no radical displacement of population, only of royal administrators (of necessity!). In summary, there was no real conquest of Palestine at all; what happened instead may be termed, from the point of view of the secular historian interested only in socio-political processes, a peasant's revolt against the network of interlocking Canaanite city states.
-- Mendenhall 1962: 73
This represented a radical departure from the previous two models which had assumed a major external conquest or immigration: Mendenhall assumed that the external element was a small group which acted as a catalyst for the dissatisfied and exploited Palestinian peasant population. For Mendenhall, the key feature of this 'biblical revolution', as he termed it, was not the indigenous peasant revolt, but the religious revolution. In fact, he later complained that the designation of his hypothesis of Israelite origins as 'the peasant revolt' model was unfortunate and misleading since this was 'but an incidental and possibly even accidental aspect of the "biblical revolution'" (1983: 31).
His views, however, embody an important paradox. His questioning of the domain assumption that the origins of Israel in Palestine were the result of a significant external influx of a new population appears to value the importance of indigenous culture and history in a way that had not previously been recognized. However, his emphasis upon the centrality of the new religion, brought from outside, immediately stifled any possibility of a new departure in the study of the history of the region. Furthermore, Mendenhall stressed the inherent corruption of the indigenous culture possibly even more strongly than Albright had done. He presented a stark contrast between the ethical and monotheistic faith brought from outside Palestine by Israel, however statistically insignificant, and the immoral and polytheistic beliefs of a corrupt city-state system indigenous to the region. His analysis of the political setup presupposed the work of Alt:
The Hebrew conquest of Palestine took place because a religious movement and motivation created a solidarity among a large group of pre-existent social units, which was able to challenge and defeat the dysfunctional complex of cities which dominated the whole of Palestine and Syria at the end of the Bronze Age.
-- Mendenhall 1962: 73
Mendenhall's theological assumptions are the driving force behind his historical analysis: [15]
It was this religious affirmation of the value of historical events which is still felt to be the unique feature of Israelite faith, and quite correctly, but any cultic separation of religious values from the brute facts of historical reality must inevitably result in a radical transformation of the nature of religious obligation. It is for this reason that theology and history must be inseparable in the biblical faith; biblical theology divorced from historical reality ends in a kind of ritual docetism, and history apart from religious value is a valueless secularized hobby of antiquarians.
-- Mendenhall 1962: 74
This theological agenda, which draws a direct connection between the 'biblical revolution' and Mendenhall's own day, is set out clearly in the preface to his major study, The Tenth Generation:
What was important about this community was its radically new way of looking at God, nature, and humanity -- and this was truly revolutionary. A revolution occurred that is just as relevant today as it was in the time of Moses, and one that is just as necessary.
-- Mendenhall 1973: xi
His stress upon the uniqueness of Israel on the basis of its faith, the faith which underlies Western civilization, allows him to maintain, and in effect sharpen, the common distinction between Israel and the indigenous culture of Palestine. Furthermore, it reflects the common presentation of the direct continuum between ancient Israel and the modern West as societies founded upon monotheism in contrast to the polytheistic Near East. Thus, far from Mendenhall's theory of internal revolt leading to an appreciation of the indigenous culture and so the history of Palestine, it results in an even more radical distinction between Israel and the 'Canaanite' population: a distinction which is equally effective in silencing Palestinian history. His radical distinction is expressed in the following terms:
Early Israel thus cannot be understood within the framework of traditional academic ideas about a primitive society gradually becoming urbanized, and therefore civilized. Its very beginnings involved a radical rejection of Canaanite religious and political ideology, especially the divine authority underlying the political institutions, and the Canaanite concept of religion as essentially a phenological cultic celebration of the economic concerns of the group -- the fertility cult. Only under the assumption that the groups involved had actually experienced at first hand over a period of time the malfunctioning of Canaanite kingship, can one understand the concept of God in early Israelite religion, for the usual functions, authority, and prestige of the king and his court are the exclusive prerogative of the deity. So, land tenure, military leadership, 'glory', the right to command, power, are all denied to human beings and attributed to God alone.
-- Mendenhall 1962: 76
The land, it is stressed, is the property of the deity and therefore a matter of divine gift. The loss of Palestinian space to Israelite control is justified, therefore, in terms of the divine gift of the land to Israel. The immoral and corrupt indigenous culture simply had no claim to the land under this understanding. Israel's 'conquest of Palestine' is affirmation of that divine gift. Mendenhall then drew a further distinction between Israel and Canaan which has many echoes in contemporary justifications for the legitimization of the modern state of Israel in contrast to the failures of the indigenous Palestinian population: 'Another impressive concern of early Israelite religion which is a striking contrast to Late Bronze Age Canaan is the preservation of the peace over a large territory' (Mendenhall 1962: 77). Only Israel was capable of maintaining peace over a large territory because the indigenous system represented the corrupt exploitation of the peasantry by the urban elite. Canaanite, and thereby Palestinian, society was not capable of developing a civilized system of social organization: 'By making the struggle for power an illicit assumption of the prerogatives of God alone, the early Israelite religion laid the foundation for an internal peace which Canaanite society evidently could not do' (Mendenhall 1962: 78).
The emphasis upon the peasant revolt, for Mendenhall an accidental and unfortunate designation, has all too often obscured the radical distinction he drew between Israel and the indigenous culture. Mendenhall, as a pupil of Albright and a member of the influential Biblical Colloquium, makes explicit many of the underlying assumptions of biblical studies discourse which have contributed to the silencing of Palestinian history through the scholarly invention of ancient Israel. Mendenhall's radical distinction between the Israelite religious community and the corrupt socio-political regimes indigenous to Palestine continues to mirror the common representation of the modern state of Israel as a radically new development in the region, with its roots in European civilization and democracy, which has been able to transform the land so long neglected by a divided and indolent indigenous population.
One of the most striking features of Mendenhall's analysis is his questioning of the ethnic unity of Israel in relation to Canaan. [16] The vast majority of 'Israel' were for him indigenous groups and individuals who had rejected the exploitative socio-political regimes of Late Bronze Age Canaan. As noted above, it would appear, at first sight, that this ought to provide the basis for the articulation, at least, of the value of Palestinian history in its own right. However, although he rejected the strong evolutionary pattern of social and political development of Albrightian and Altian scholarship, he imposed an even stronger evolutionary pattern of religious development which silenced Palestinian history equally effectively:
In the past, the discontinuity from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age has been explained on the basis of a hypothetical change or displacement of population: the Israelites displaced the Canaanites in part, the Phoenicians displaced the Canaanites elsewhere; the Arameans displaced still more, and so on down the line. All of these ideas are now untenable. If the Phoenicians are merely the continuation of Canaanite culture, with considerable changes of course, the Israelites also represent such a continuation with a change of a more radical sort (particularly in the religious and social system). As revealed by excavations, certainly it is true that there are only minimal differences between the two in material culture, and those differences are most readily explained as functions of the differences in the social, economic, and religious structure of the ancient Israelites.
-- Mendenhall 1973: 10
Indigenous religion and culture were condemned in the strongest terms, being rejected as 'Late Bronze Age paganism'. The discourse of biblical studies has refused to recognize indigenous religious systems as having any kind of legitimacy. [17] The truth claims of Judaism and Christianity, the foundations of Western civilization, have been accepted unthinkingly to the extent that Palestinian religious systems have been continually presented as immoral and corrupt. Mendenhall prefers to talk in terms of the foundation of a religious community called Israel, a utopian society based upon ethical relationships. As such, his invention of ancient Israel is comparable with the Zionist pioneers' desire to found a 'new, just society' (Elon 1983: 143). The 'biblical revolution', the foundation stone of Western culture, is a radical replacement of a corrupt pagan system. Significantly, although the indigenous population is seen as being statistically significant in the destruction of the urban centres in Palestine at the end of the Late Bronze Age, the religious movement which makes this possible is external: it is brought by a small group of Israelites escaping from Egypt. The real civilizing influence which transforms Palestinian society is an external religious system:
Any history of the origins of ancient Israel must start with, or at least account for, the sudden appearance of a large community in Palestine and Transjordan only a generation after the small group escaped from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. At the same time, it must account for the fact that from the earliest period there is a radical contrast between the religious ideology of Israel and those of the preceding periods and neighboring groups. In spite of that contrast, virtually all specific formal elements in early Israelite culture and ideology have impressive analogues in pre-Israelite or other foreign sources.
-- Mendenhall 1973: 25
He stresses the 'mere formal continuities' with 'the old pre-Yahwistic "Canaanite" and Anatolian cultures which characterized the Palestinian scene' but this is prior to 'the socio-religious unification' (1973: 25, n. 93). The emphasis here is on the fact that it was only due to this external input that unification was achieved, something of which the indigenous population and systems were incapable without external direction. Thus Mendenhall, rather than shaking the very foundations of biblical discourse and providing a voice for Palestinian history, invents an ancient Israel which continues to deny value to Palestinian society and history.
What is potentially much more important for the development of Palestinian history in its own right is his questioning of the causal connection between the growth of highland settlements and the urban collapse:
The destruction levels revealed by archaeology in Palestine would have been caused not by the Israelites, but rather are part of the common experience of the population that made vivid the desirability and need for a new community. This could bring about the peace and secure a new cooperation for rebuilding a shattered society and economy.
-- Mendenhall 1973: 23
Thus the shift in settlement is understood as a result of the urban collapse rather than its cause (Mendenhall 1973: 63-4). Although his conclusions are tied to his theological scheme, his analysis of the archaeological data provides a very important starting point for the history of ancient Palestine as a study of the processes which brought about social change in the region. If we remove the distraction of the search for Israel and think more in terms of trying to explain the processes involved in the political and social upheavals of the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition and the accompanying settlement shift, then Mendenhall's analysis has much to commend it. The focus of attention is then switched to trying to investigate and understand the processes which contributed to this settlement shift and the accompanying economic decline throughout the region at the end of the Late Bronze Age. It is this type of approach which holds out the promise of the realization of the study of Palestinian history as a subject in its own right rather than as the backdrop for the theologically and politically motivated search for ancient Israel. The paradox embedded in Mendenhall's analysis offers an instructive analogy with a great deal of subsequent research, to be discussed in chapter 5, whereby the accumulating data from archaeological excavations and surveys which offer a voice to Palestinian history have been side-tracked by the discourse of biblical studies in its continued and forlorn search for ancient Israel.
Norman Gottwald developed many of Mendenhall's basic ideas in an expressly political formulation of early Israelite origins in his massive The Tribes of Yahweh. A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. The title reveals the explicitly political nature of Gottwald's work, something which he has continued to develop in a series of studies. This is signalled by the dedication of his study 'to the memory and to the honor of the first Israelites' followed by an anonymous tribute to the people of Vietnam in which love and power are deemed necessary to destroy power without love. His preface opens with three quotations, including one from Marx and Engels and one from Mendenhall (1973: 12), which stress the importance of revolutionary movements for social change. He then explicitly states one of the major influences on his work:
Two decades of involvement in civil rights struggles, in opposition to the war in Vietnam, in anti-imperialist efforts, in analysis of North American capitalism, and in the rough-and-tumble of ecclesial and educational politics have continued an ever-informative 'living laboratory' for discerning related social struggles in ancient Israel.
-- Gottwald 1979: xxv
It is quite clear that Gottwald was well aware of the subjective influences of current politics in shaping a construction of the Israelite past. [18] The preface concludes with the oft-quoted line that 'only as the full materiality of ancient Israel is more securely grasped will we be able to make proper sense of its spirituality' (1979: xxv). His professed aim was to view Israelite religion as a part of a total social system by assembling 'the most reliable information about the rise of Israel as determined by the recognized methods of biblical science' (1979: xxii).
It is striking that given the expressly political nature of Gottwald's work, his Marxist-materialist analysis of history and explicit acknowledgement of his part in the anti-Vietnam movement, he never mentions the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. In one of the most radical and controversial works of twentieth-century biblical studies, the question of Palestine remains unspoken. Similarly, Silberman can state, in his review of the hypotheses of Mendenhall and Gottwald, that: 'The "peasant revolt'" theory of Israelite origins had obvious rhetorical power in the 1970s, a time of modern national liberation movements and Third World insurgency' (Silberman 1992: 29). Yet Silberman, attuned as he is to the political construction of the past, makes no attempt to connect this theory of Israelite origins with the most obvious of national liberation movements, the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. The problem remains unspoken because the dominant discourse of biblical studies has silenced any notion of Palestinian history or expression of self-determination so thoroughly. Even though Gottwald in his radical critique, and Silberman in his acknowledgement of the wider political setting of such an hypothesis, see the connection with other struggles for national liberation, they are unable to draw out the implications of this construction of the past for understanding the contemporary struggle for Palestinian self-determination.
Gottwald's opening chapter, entitled 'Obstacles to a comprehensive understanding of early Israel', focuses upon Israel as 'a radical socio-religious mutation' (1979: 3). The obstacles, however, in achieving this comprehensive understanding are not due to any lack of industry or ingenuity in scholarly investigation but stem from the nature of the sources and a scholarly and religious aversion and hesitancy in conceiving ancient Israel as a social totality. In addressing this issue of the appeal to social scientific data and theories for understanding ancient Israel, he identifies a key problem:
One root of this inhibition is the canonical sanctity that still surrounds ancient Israel as the forerunner of Judaism and Christianity. The very patterns of our thinking about Israel have been imbued with religiosity, or with its defensive counterpart, anti-religiosity. It is difficult not to think of Israel as a people wholly apart from the rest of humanity. While our scholarly or secular minds may know better, our psychosocial milieu impels us to look for abstract religious phenomena and for all-encompassing theological explanations as indices to the meaning of Israel. As a result, the radical historical mutation of Israel in human history is accounted for by the supernatural, or by retrojected theological meanings from later Israel, or simply not accounted for at all.
-- Gottwald 1979: 5
The paradox of this is that while Gottwald eschews the key notion of the uniqueness of ancient Israel which has been central to the exclusion of Palestinian history from academic discourse, he refers to Israel as a 'radical historical mutation', picking up the key terminology used by George Ernest Wright which set Israel apart as unique from its environment. The overspecialization of biblical studies is condemned as contributing to the failure to conceive of Israel as a total social system which he traces back to intellectual, cultural, and sociological factors. His analysis represents a very strong attack upon the dead hand of theology in the study of Israelite history while decrying the failure of biblical studies to articulate and investigate the social, economic, and political factors which affect its scholarship. The key for Gottwald was 'the crucial factor of the social-class identity of the biblical scholar' (1979: 10): the location of biblical scholars within a capitalist middle class, espousing scholarly humanistic ideals, has produced a vision of society which has excluded many of its members (1979: 11). He acknowledges the subjectivity and limitations of the discourse of biblical studies, yet he does not go on to develop the way in which the domination of theology has constrained the study of the ancient Palestinian past; it is only perceived as an obstacle to a clear understanding of ancient Israel. His whole focus is upon Israelite society, particularly the role of religion in Israelite society, and remains firmly rooted to the discourse which has silenced Palestinian history. The influence of Alt's analysis of the political situation in Palestine prior to the so-called emergence of Israel is evident throughout, particularly in his identification of the settlement shift to the Palestinian highlands with Israel. He is reliant upon the analyses of Albright for the various material aspects of this 'Israelite culture', as identified in its ceramic and architectural traditions, unlike Mendenhall who had strongly denied the ethnic labelling of such material culture. Furthermore, Gottwald's analysis of the biblical traditions themselves is firmly rooted in the dominant discourse of biblical studies. [19]
He is able to refer to Israel as 'a recognizably novel and coherent system in Canaan' (1979: 34), stressing the relationship between 'Israel as a total social system and the prehistories of its component peoples' (1979: 34). The history of Palestine, either prior to or contemporary with the so-called emergence of Israel, is thereby reduced to the role of 'prehistory' for this later all-encompassing reality. Israel is allowed to dominate and exclude Palestinian history through his continual references to 'proto-Israelites' or 'Israelite prehistory' which claim Palestinian time for Israel. However, he offers a greater understanding of the value and worth of the history of the region with the recognition that 'Israel's origins are positioned in the midst of an ancient and highly developed arena of self-conscious civilization' (1979: 43). But the negative assessment of this internal history ultimately prevails since Israel is distinctive in its egalitarian social experiment and 'manages to do this in the face of the most serious threats from powerful surrounding systems of domination determined to prevent its liberation' (1979: 43). In essence, the reader is presented with a model of Israel as the carrier of traditions of liberation and democracy surrounded by powerful forces which seek to destroy it.
In his review and critique of the three standard models of Israelite origins, Gottwald (1979: 191-227) makes it clear that the identification of material culture is a key aspect of his understanding of the location of Israel in Palestine. He criticizes the Albrightian conclusion that the cumulative evidence of the destruction of many Late Bronze urban sites and the spread of poor, rural settlements
points to a culturally less advanced population living in temporary encampments or in poorly constructed houses without fortifications. Assuming the new residents to have been the destroyers of the Late Bronze cities on whose ruins they settled, it is easy to see them as the technically impoverished, 'semi-nomadic' Israelites.
-- Gottwald 1979: 195
However, although he recognizes that there are many possible explanations for the urban destructions, it is the identification of a distinct material culture associated with the increase in rural sites in the early Iron Age that remains important for his understanding of early Israel. He proposes an equally sharp distinction between Israel, as a socio-religious mutation, and the politically and economically oppressive Canaanite regimes. Indigenous Palestinian culture is denuded of any value and is seen as being transformed by Israel into something it was unable to become by itself.
The distinctive element of Gottwald's formulation of a revolt hypothesis is his stress upon the socio-political aspects of the model. As with Mendenhall's formulation, it would appear that this stress upon the socio-political conditions of Late Bronze Age Palestine offers a voice to Palestinian history. However, once again this voice is effectively excluded by the concentration upon Israel and the presentation of a corrupt indigenous socio-political system devoid of value:
When the exodus Israelites entered Canaan they encountered this stress-torn Canaanite society, which was in still further decline a century after the Amarna Age. Population in the hill country seems to have tapered off in the Late Bronze period, and the city-state units seem to have been reduced in number and size from the preceding century. The advocates of the revolt model for Israelite origins picture these Israelite tribes as immediate allies of the Canaanite lower classes. Both groups shared a lower-class identity. The former slaves from Egypt, now autonomous, presented an immediate appeal to the restive serfs and peasants of Canaan. The attraction of Israelite Yahwism for these oppressed Canaanites may be readily located in the central feature of the religion of the entering tribes: Yahwism celebrated the actuality of deliverance from socio-political bondage, and it promised continuing deliverance whenever Yahweh's autonomous people were threatened.
-- Gottwald 1979: 214 [20]
Despite the common assumption that both Mendenhall and Gottwald stress an internal revolt, the domain assumption is that the indigenous system is corrupt or deficient in some significant way, that it can only be transformed by Israel and its religious and political ideology which comes from outside. While extending and altering Mendenhall's original formulation of what came to be known as the revolt hypothesis, he was greatly influenced by the assumption shared with Alt and Albright that the settlement growth and shift to small rural sites in the marginal areas of Palestine was to be identified with Israel. His explanation of the nature and origins of Israel as largely internal has tended to mask this fundamental shared assumption of the dominant discourse of biblical studies. It is this domain assumption which remains at the heart of the failure to give Palestinian history a voice during a time when the search for ancient Israel has been all-consuming.
Gottwald, like Mendenhall, does not view Israel as unified ethnically:
The coalescing Yahwists were astonishingly diverse ethnically and culturally, but they had common social and political experiences and were forging together a common life of mutual defense and self-development.
-- Gottwald 1979: 215
What is interesting about this view is that it sounds remarkably like a description of early Zionism where Jews from many different European countries, or more recently from the influx of American, Russian, and Ethiopian Jews, among others, 'diverse ethnically and culturally', have been welded together as a modern nation 'forging together a common life of mutual defense and self-development'. He adds later that 'the model may have to be adjusted to the possibility that some Canaanite settlements were not so much polarized by the entering exodus tribes as neutralized, thus adopting a kind of live-and- let-live policy which Israel was willing or obligated to accept' (1979: 219). This offers a striking analogy with the modern period where Zionist immigration produced a situation in which Palestinian and Zionist settlements were located in close proximity, along with periods of conflict in which many Palestinian settlements have been driven out and deprived of their land. This again is reflected in his understanding of the rise of an Israelite state which 'overthrew the entire balance of power between Israelites and non-Yahwistic Canaanites' (1979: 219).
The fact that this model, just as much as the immigration and conquest models, is about claiming the land is made abundantly clear by Gottwald's elaboration of key questions of social structure which he believes have been overlooked or ignored by biblical scholarship because of a reluctance to draw upon social scientific data or models. He talks in terms of 'Israel's occupation of the land' or 'how groups of Israelites came to hold the land' (1979: 220). He elaborates that 'the conflict over models of land-taking is in reality a much larger conflict over the proper understanding of Israel as a social system' (1979: 220).
For the issue at stake is not simply the territorial-historical problem of how Israel took its land, e.g. the segments of Israel involved, the regions taken, the military or nonmilitary methods of occupation, etc., all the while being naively content with unexamined -- or at best only partly examined -- assumptions about the nature of Israelite society.
-- Gottwald 1979: 220
The focus on Israel is so all-consuming that there is no question that this is Israel's land: the problem of the rights of the other indigenous groups to a land or history is not raised. This is surprising given Gottwald's sensitivity to contemporary struggles for liberation, especially given his own involvement in the anti-Vietnam protests and acknowledgement of the importance of this in shaping his views. Yet what it demonstrates above all is the overwhelming power of the search for ancient Israel within the discourse of biblical studies. It is so overwhelming, so powerful, so all-consuming, that even within a critique that is sensitive to all kinds of socio-political implications the problem of Palestine remains unspoken. Palestinian time is claimed as part of Israel's past with the insistence that those indigenous groups who rejected the oppressive socio-political regimes and joined Israel were in effect 'proto-Israelites' (1979: 30, 32-43, 77, etc.). The Israel of the past and present have combined within the discourse of biblical studies to silence Palestinian history by laying claim to its time and its land.
Gottwald, despite various provisos, perpetuates the domain assumption of the discourse of biblical studies that Israel is unique. He is well aware of the problem of theological explanations:
How can we describe and account for the early Israelite mutation without falling into the miasma of sui generis religious "explanations" which in fact explain nothing, which are no more than tautologies, unassailable because untestable?
-- Gottwald 1979: 232
Yet he continues to emphasize the radical distinction between social systems of Israel and Canaan which he sees, following Mendenhall, can only be explained on the basis of the novelty of Israel's 'religious movement and motivation': 'I find myself in almost total agreement with Mendenhall on this point. The cult and ideology of Yahweh, the god of Israel, are at the nub of Israel's uniqueness' (1979: 233). Although his distinctive emphasis is to stress the material aspect of Israelite culture in trying to make sense of the articulation and realization of this religious ideology, it is clear that he remains rooted to the dominant view which professes the uniqueness of Israel, implying a lack of value in indigenous culture or history. His disagreement with Mendenhall is that he had imagined a community which attributed power to its god but did not wield power itself: for Gottwald, Israel took power for itself while attributing the source of that power to Yahweh (1979: 233). Yet even though he characterizes religion as 'the unmoved mover of the Israelite mutation', he is essentially wedded to the central role of the uniqueness of Israelite religion in distinguishing it from its Palestinian context.
The paradox inherent in Mendenhall's work is equally apparent in Gottwald's alternative formulation of the revolt hypothesis. His insistence upon the central role of Canaanite peasants throwing off the control of the urban elite appears to offer a voice to Palestinian history. In fact, he goes so far as to say that 'it is only in the literature of early Israel that the revolutionary consciousness of the Canaanite underclasses finds an articulate voice' (1979: 409). These groups are only given voice by Israel. Thus, Israelite tribalism is described as the result of a conscious choice by individuals and groups to reject the Canaanite centralization of power. Although his insistence upon 'retribalization' (1979: 325) is a distinctive aspect of Gottwald's proposals, it is little more than a variant on the fundamental assumption that has informed the discourse of biblical studies since the time of Alt, that Israel's political system is different from and fundamentally superior to that of the indigenous culture. The indigenous forms of organization were disjointed and incapable of unified action: 'we know of no such sustained collective leadership among the older Canaanite city-states which, even when faced with extreme external threats, had been capable only of episodic alliances markedly unstable in their membership and longevity' (1979: 412). [21] While there is an important focus on the conflict between indigenous groups, it is never articulated in terms of Palestinian history. It is only given voice as part of the history of Israel:
To the contrary, Israel, with a mutant sophisticated tribal mode of organization, made an "appearance" within the social system and territorial domain of Canaan. The people who came to be Israelites countered what they experienced as the systemic aggression of centralized society by a concrete, coordinated, symbolically unified, social-revolutionary action of aggressive self-defence.
-- Gottwald 1979: 326
The choice of the phrase 'aggressive self-defence' is particularly noteworthy since it mirrors apologetic language often used to describe the modern state of Israel in its foreign adventures into Lebanon, or elsewhere, in striking back against what it perceives as terrorist actions. This is not to suggest that Gottwald supports such aggression but simply to point out the way in which influential contemporary language and ideas become part of the vocabulary used by historians to construct the past.
The past is seen to be every bit as much a struggle for self-determination and the control of land as the present:
Appropriating the land and economic modes of production, this body of people organized its production, distribution, and consumption along essentially egalitarian lines. The specific historic rise of old Israel was thus a conscious improvisational reversion to egalitarian social organization that displaced hierarchic social organization over a large area previously either directly or indirectly dominated by Canaanite centralization and stratification for centuries.
-- Gottwald 1979: 326
Here is an invention of the Israelite past which mirrors the ideological projection of the present of the modern state of Israel which contrasts its democratic (egalitarian) ideal with the undemocratic (centralized and stratified) Arab states which surround it. His understanding of Israelite origins in the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition provides a striking parallel with conceptions of the Zionist movement prior to the founding of the modern state. Gottwald, in rejecting the validity of Noth's amphictyonic hypothesis, makes the striking claim that 'the Israelite confederacy was a consciously contrived surrogate state for its peoples' (1979: 383; his emphasis). His description of this imaginary Israelite past could quite easily function as a description of early Zionism prior to 1948 in which Israel is perceived as 'an egalitarian, extended family, segmentary tribal society with an agricultural-pastoral economic base' (1979: 389). Ben-Gurion wrote, before leaving Russia, that he wished to create 'a model society based on social, economic, and political equality' (cited by Elon 1983: 81). Similarly, Elon adds that 'the pioneers of the second wave saw themselves less as nation builders than as chalutzim of a new social order' (Elon 1983: 112). We might compare this with Gottwald's emphatic statement of the nature of ancient Israel:
Together, the societal segmentation and inter-group bonding of early Israel were adaptively related to the fundamental aims of these segmented but cooperating people to escape imperialism and feudalism imposed by outside powers and to prevent the rise of feudal domination within their own society.
-- Gottwald 1979: 389; his emphasis
This could quite easily serve as a manifesto of early Zionist ideals in the construction of a society by those fleeing the persecution and racism of Europe, a broad collection of imperial powers ranging from the modern nation states of Western Europe to the feudalisms of Eastern Europe. [22] It is a view of an egalitarian society, however, which fails to deal with the rights of the indigenous population.
In discussing the importance of Israelite religion he takes issue with Bright's view that Israel was not unique in the way that it took possession of the land and that its uniqueness stemmed from its religion. Instead, Gottwald (1979: 593) argues that 'Israel's sociopolitical egalitarian mode of life, involving an entire populace of formerly oppressed peoples, was unique in its explicitness and in its spatio-temporal effectiveness' (Gottwald 1979: 593). His complaint against Bright is that he isolates Israelite religion from its social setting. Similarly, he rejects Mendenhall's view of Israelite religion as idealist in the way it places it in 'an asocial and ahistorical vacuum' (1979: 601). Nevertheless, Gottwald does agree 'with Bright that Israel's religion was innovative in the ancient world in significant ways' (1979: 594). He claims that it is misleading to speak of Israelite religion as 'unparalleled ' or 'unique' and prefers to use the phrase 'Israel's innovative distinctiveness' (1979: 595). It is innovative and distinctive, for Gottwald, precisely because it is the expression of an egalitarian social revolution. Despite Gottwald's dispute with Bright, he is open to the very same criticisms as Albright, Wright, Bright, and Mendenhall in undervaluing the indigenous value system which can only be transformed from outside since the religious ideology is carried by the small group of Exodus Israelites. He does not deny that there is some continuity or comparability but suggests that this has been transformed in a way that simply was not possible without outside intervention.
Gottwald's programme of 'cultural-material research into early Israel', which he proposes towards the end his massive volume (1979: 650-63), highlights the central paradox of the volume: these proposals are crucial to the realization of a Palestinian history in its own right. The pursuit of settlement history, demography, economy, etc., in broad detail over a long period of time must be at the heart of any reappraisal of the Palestinian past. The irony here is that it is again Gottwald's distraction with the search for early Israel which does not allow him to see the need for the wider application of such a programme and prevents him from giving voice to Palestinian history. As with the Conquest hypothesis of Albright, it is the ever-increasing range and quality of archaeological data from the region which has shown that Gottwald's proposal, including various reformulations, is an imagined and invented past. Although there are important features of Gottwald's work which are essential to the realization of a Palestinian history in its own right, it fails to achieve this because of the distraction with ancient Israel. Any Palestinian claim to the past is effectively silenced by the pursuit of ancient Israel: it is a past that has no self-definition apart from its definition in relation to Israel.
CONCLUSIONThe changes in perspective on reading the Hebrew Bible which have raised serious questions about standard historical critical assumptions and use of the biblical traditions for historical reconstruction, along with the accumulating archaeological data from single site excavations and regional surveys in Palestine, have shown these various models or theories to be inventions of an imagined ancient past. The increasing inability of the three major constructions of Israelite origins to deal with this growing body of evidence, along with the undermining of its notion of a text, has highlighted the extent to which Israel has been invented. It is only in retrospect that it becomes possible to ask how this has come about. The driving force of biblical studies has been the need to search for ancient Israel as the taproot of Western civilization, a need that has been reinforced by the demands of Christian theology in search of the roots of its own uniqueness in the society which produced the Hebrew Bible. This has been reinforced with the foundation of the modern state of Israel, giving rise to a search by Israeli scholarship for its own national identity deep in the past.
Biblical scholarship, in its all-consuming search for ancient Israel, has reflected the myopia of the West, in general, and the early Zionists in particular, in ignoring the indigenous population and its claims to the land or the past. Elon's descriptions of the attitudes of early Zionist settlers could easily be applied to biblical scholarship:
There are few instances in modern history where the image of things overshadows reality as thoroughly as it did in Palestine during the first half of the twentieth century. One can think of no other country where a utopian state of mind persevered for so long a time. If the Arabs shut their eyes to reality, many pioneers of the second wave shut their eyes to Arabs. They lived among themselves in workers' camps -- closed communities that often resembled isolated religious orders. Contact with the Arab natives were few. It was as if the chalutzim deliberately banished the Arabs from their minds.
-- Elon 1983: 123
Biblical scholarship has also remained blind to the indigenous population; very often when it is acknowledged, it is dismissed as unworthy, immoral, corrupt, or primitive, thereby lacking any rightful claim to serious consideration. Elon's continued description finds similar striking parallels with the discourse of biblical studies:
The political imagination, like the imagination of the explorer, often invents its own geography. The settlers did not, of course, consider the country 'empty', as did some Zionists abroad. What they saw with their own eyes contradicted the ludicrous dictum attributed to Israel Zangwith, 'The land without people - for the people without land', which was current in Zionist circles abroad at least until as late as 1917. Yet even if there were people living in the country, the settlers saw that it was populated only sparsely. They believed they were operating in a political void; and not until the end of World War I were they fully cured of this naive illusion.
-- Elon 1983: 149
It is now becoming clearer that biblical studies has invented its own geography in trying to construct various versions of the past, heavily influenced by a variety of social, political, and religious factors which shaped the scholars' vision of the past and present. Just like the early Zionist settlers, they have believed, or at least tried to convey the belief, that biblical scholarship was operating in a political void. The self-delusion of the pursuit of objectivity continues to operate. Attempts to raise the spectre of subjectivity or the political implications of biblical scholarship for the contemporary struggle for Palestine have met with a hostile reception. Just as the First World War was a watershed, in Elon's view, in exposing the naivety of Zionist myopia, so post-modernism has exposed the fallacy of biblical studies' self-delusion to be interested only in 'objective' scholarship or its denial of any responsibility for or connection with contemporary struggles for Palestine. 'The public badge of scholarly impartiality', in the words of Silberman (1993: 15), continues to be used to mask the political implications and responsibilities of biblical studies.
It is striking, yet understandable, that all the models have invented ancient Israel in terms of contemporary models. This is not to suggest that this has been self-conscious or deliberately misleading or that all the scholars mentioned explicitly support the dispossession of the Palestinians. It exposes, rather, the power of the discourse of biblical studies which has projected an aura of objective scholarship when it is quite clear that subjective and unconscious elements have played a key role in constructions of the imagined past of ancient Israel. It helps to demonstrate the tyranny of the present which has silenced Palestinian history. The discourse of biblical studies is implicated in this process. The acknowledgement of these implications is a necessary prelude to the freeing of the Palestinian past from Israelite control. The realization of this proposal continues to be hindered by the perpetuation of many of the domain assumptions which were the foundations for the invention of ancient Israel in the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition. The edifice of the models may have crumbled, but what is being built in their place often utilizes the very same foundations. However, before examining the new search for ancient Israel and the ways in which it has continued to exclude Palestinian history from scholarly discourse, it is important to consider how this has been achieved by the other defining moment in the history of the region, the creation of an Israelite state.