INVESTIGADORES
PFOH Emanuel Oreste
libros
Título:
The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives
Autor/es:
EMANUEL PFOH
Editorial:
Equinox Publishing
Referencias:
Lugar: Londres, Inglaterra; Año: 2009 p. 236
ISSN:
9781845535292
Resumen:
THE EMERGENCE OF ISRAEL IN ANCIENT PALESTINE Taking advantage of critical methodology for history-writing and the use of anthropological insights and ethnographic data from the modern Middle East, this study aims at providing new understandings on the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine and the socio-political dynamics at work in the Levant during antiquity. Chapter 1 discusses matters of historiography and history-writing, both in ancient and modern times. The first part offers an overview of the last century of modern historiography on ancient Israel, providing a historiographic context into which the present study is to be placed. Then, a critical assessment on how to understand the ancient recallings of the past in biblical and Graeco-Roman literature is offered. It is argued here that a serious intention for providing accounts from the past in a historicist way was absent in biblical literature but also in the works of Graeco-Roman writers. We must understand first the ancient eastern Mediterranean manner of evoking the past in order to make an use of it when attempting critical history-writing. Modern paraphrases of ancient authors should not constitute the methodology of modern historiography dealing with Near Eastern civilisations. We must rely on our primary sources (archaeology and epigraphic remains) first for writing history out of them, and then attend to secondary or tertiary sources, such as our biblical texts. Finally, an evaluation on the incidence of the modern theological discourse in relation to history and history-writing is made. Chapter 2 evaluates the methodology used by biblical scholars for gaining knowledge on ancient Israelite society. A critique is advanced here, arguing that such attempts often apply socio-scientific models on biblical narratives without external evidence of the reconstructed past, producing a virtual past reality which cannot be confirmed concretely. The United Monarchy is used as an example of this methodology and its shortcomings. As an alternative, it is suggested the use of the concept of patronage or patron-client relationships for advancing an interpretation of many features of ancient Near Eastern literature but also of the social dynamics and structure of the Levant, including here, of course, ancient Palestinian (and Israelite) society and its archaeological remains. Chapter 3 deals with the archaeological remains usually held as clear evidence of Israelite statehood in the tenth century BCE. The main criticism is directed towards archaeological interpretations of the data which are led by the biblical narratives of the books of Judges and Samuel, resulting in a harmonic blend of ancient literature and modern anthropological models on state-formation. It is proposed here that the biblical stories on the rise of the monarchy in Israel should not provide us with a conceptual framework for interpreting the archaeological record. Instead, we must rely on the contemporary ethnographic record from the Middle East. Again, the concept of patronage seems to provide us with better interpretive results. Chapter 4 continues with the discussion on how anthropological models should be employed for history-writing. Socio-political concepts, such as "chiefdom society" or "state formation" should not be imposed on the contents of ancient literary sources (i.e., the Bible) but used instead to analyse our primary sources (the archaeological and epigraphic records), in order to create a socio-historical account. For illustrating the point, a number of examples from Amarnian, Hittite, Syrian and Assyrian texts are analysed through the concept of patronage. This concept also provide us with a better comprehension of the Covenant theology as we find it in the Old Testament and the royal ideology evidenced in ancient Near Eastern records. Chapter 5 attempts to provide an historical explanation regarding the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine without relying on the Bible but only on archaeology, epigraphy and anthropological insights. This ?Israel? is not the biblical one. This is the Israel from history, the one that the modern historian aims at recovering from the study of ancient epigraphic and archaeological remains. The first time the name "Israel" appears in the history of Palestine is in the so-called Merneptah?s Victory stele from the late thirteenth century BCE. However, the naming of this entity by the Egyptian pharaoh cannot be identified for certain with any society in the archaeological record of the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I Palestine. Therefore, we cannot speak of this "Israel" in historical terms nor write a history of it depending on the biblical picture from the book of Joshua or Judges. All we may have is a name. It is only during the ninth century BCE that we have firm evidence of a socio-political entity identified as Israel in Neo-Assyrian records (the House of Omri). Also the archeological record from this period seems to provide a secure ground for arguing that this society was not state-structured but kin-based, despite the traces of inner social hierarchy in the archaeology of the region. The application of models for understanding how such kin-based societies (i.e., chiefdoms) function allows for an historical explanation of the rise of the House of Omri during the ninth century, taking the re-activation of the long-distance trade in Western Asia as a main factor that triggered its appearance. This Israel finds its socio-political end with the take over of the land by the Assyrians at the end of the eighth century BCE. Yet, demographically its existence continued. The kingdom of Judah appears in the south precisely with the demise of the House of Omri, with its centre at Jerusalem and under the patronage of the Assyrians. In this change of geopolitical centre in the region, from north to south in the Palestinian highlands, we find the beginnings of the biblical Israel, evoking an Israel of old in a mythic world of literature. The book discusses many scholarly issues from the current debate on Israelite historiography and the Old Testament´s historicity, but it also offers critical insights on ancient historiography, historical method and historical interpretations of the archaeology and the anthropology of ancient Palestine aimed at a student readership. The arguments presented here build on previous critical scholarship, especially the works of biblical scholars from the universities of Copenhagen and Sheffield. Accordingly, it challenges the idea that the biblical writers were recording historical events as we understand this practice nowadays and that we can use the biblical records for creating critical histories of Israel in ancient Palestine. It also questions the existence of undisputable traces of statehood in the archaeological record from the Iron Age, as the biblical images about a United Monarchy might lead us to believe. Biblical images of society must be put aside in modern historical recontructions of Palestine´s past and the primary sources should take its place on this task. Thus, drawing on ethnographic insights, we may gain a better knowledge on how ancient Levantine societies functioned, providing us with a context for understanding the emergence of historical Israel as a major highland patronate, with a socio-political life of almost two centuries. It is during the later periods of ancient Palestine?s history, the Persian and the Graeco-Roman, that we find the proper context into which biblical Israel is created, beginning a literary life of more than two millennia.---------------------------------------------Reedición en formato tapa blanda con Routledge en Febrero de 2016; ISBN 978-1-138-66113-4.