Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

You asked:

>What do you mean by "historically contemporary sources"? Inscriptions, 
>clay tablets etc? 

Yes, this is what I had in mind.

>If so, there are no "historically contemporary 
>sources" from the (alleged) united monarchy period to support united 
>monarchy, divided monarchy, or any sort of monarchy, tribal federation 
>or republic! 

And that is my understanding as well.

>Archaeology doesn't usually answer political questions. 

I think there is enough evidence from archaeology and epigraphy to
frequently point in the other direction. We know about Sargon's usurpation
of the throne of Kish from purely archaeological and epigraphic materials.
We know about the Hittites and their internal politics mainly through the
archaeological and epigraphic remains of Hattushish, Egypt and Mesopotamia.
>From the trade records at Ebla we get a reflection of the Mari political
situation. Also from the Ebla materials we have a good understanding of the
internal palace workings. The eclipse of a city at a particular time shows
political shifts. As a more recent example of archaeological and epigraphic
work, the coins of a society often give us better information about the
internal political situation than we get from written sources (especially
true in Rome).

I have often seen archaeology providing answers to political questions,
such as the type of relationship Persia had with the extremities of its
possessions, how Palestine was organised under the Ptolemies, the
improbability of Jerusalem being the administrative centre of a "united
kingdom" (when it was so small -- and I think topography eliminates the
hope that the town once extended where now the temple precincts are).

>If we discount the historical documents, as I think you are doing, the 
>whole period becomes a blank about which speculation is a waste of 
>time.

The so-called "historical documents" are only secondary materials, which
show a great amount of redaction prior to the time of their emergence into
a historical situation (in the DSS collection). One doesn't feel happy
relying on the lives of the Caesars by Suetonius because they are neither
contemporary nor apparently written with the intention of writing history,
yet he was writing within a century of a number of his subjects. People in
the twentieth century however want to take a naive literalist approach to
texts from any age, because the texts that they are used to are aimed at
imparting information that we expect from them. We don't necessarily know
much about the types of information that particular ancient texts impart,
yet we read them as we read modern texts.

>So how do you account for the later conviction that there had been a 
>united people of Israel, a united religion and a united monarchy, 
>given that there was no sign of such unity in post-exilic times (with 
>the Samaritans being opposed to the Jews=Judeans) any more than in 
>late pre-exilic times?

This is for me a deeply important question and I cannot give any easy
answers. 

A political scenario I'll propose here is that it is part of a propaganda
based on the annexation of Samaria by Jerusalem and the accompanying
centralisation of the Yahweh cultus in the Jerusalem temple as a means of
eliminating alternative intellectual centres around which conflict could
gravitate. An opportunity for this scenario would be after the destruction
of Gerizim by John Hyrcanus -- a very Josiah-like figure. Yet this is only
a scenario and while it is interesting to me, I don't advocate it as it
would require me to rethink the little that I know about the production of
the OT/HB texts.

The Samaritan problem is one of the principal issues that needs to be
resolved in order to have a hope of a clearer view of Hebrew history. To
Ben Sira, writing at the beginning of the second century BCE, sees the
Samaritans as "the foolish people that live in Shechem" (50:26b), yet to
Jason of Cyrene, the writer whose work was epitomized in 2 Maccabees, the
temple on Gerizim was a Jewish temple, spoken of in the same clause as that
in Jerusalem (6:1-2). The relationship between the two centres is long and
complicated, and deliberately clouded. Josephus tries to pass on the
polemic about Shechem being the home of Jewish apostates and that a
Sanballat built the Gerizim temple for the Zadokite Manasseh who had
refused to divorce his Samaritan wife against the wishes of the Jerusalem
establishment in the period prior to Alexander (AJ 12,8,2 & 6). (Any
thoughts on this spiny relationship would be much appreciated!)

One could imagine that, just as Jerusalem maintained records looking back
to a past cultural tradition based on pre-exilic Jerusalem, Gerizim did the
same sort of thing with pre-exilic Samaria, providing the sources for the
double traditions now found in the OT/HB. Again, this is speculation, but I
thought you might appreciate it a bit more than a simple "I don't know"!


Ian