Victorian Evolutionism, the Ethnography of Palestine and Biblical Orientalism

EMANUEL PFOH

Leiden

Workshop; Workshop ?The Impact of Victorian Evolutionism on Ancient Near Eastern studies (late 19th-early 20th centuries); 2023

IIA

Under the main umbrella of the ideology of progress, the development of evolutionism during the nineteenth century had a certain impact on Victorian anthropology, and consequently, on biblical archaeology and the practice of proto-ethnography in Ottoman Palestine. Such an impact was also evident in the field of biblical or Hebrew studies, especially in the many histories of ancient Israel appearing in the period well into the early twentieth century. This communication explores these issues, setting them into their correspondent ideological and historiographical contexts within the wider development of ancient Near Eastern studies under the shadow of European imperial expansion into the Middle East and its related Orientalist expressions.