The problem of the origins of Israel

Among the populations of the Ancient Near East, the case of Israel is peculiar. Its historiographical evidence has been preserved in both the Christian and Jewish traditions. Therefore, archaeological and epigraphic discoveries pertaining to Israel have not uncovered some forgotten historical data ex novo. They have only provided further clarifications to be individually compared with the attestations found in the Old Testament. Moreover, archaeological and epigraphic contributions to the reconstruction of the history of Israel have been relatively modest so far. This is especially the case when compared to the history of the Assyrians, the Hittites, the Egyptians or the Sumerians. Without the Old Testament, then, it would be incredibly difficult to provide a historical reconstruction of ancient Palestine, whose history would otherwise be rather vague and uncertain for us.

The fortunate survival through time of a certain historical memory of Israel is clearly due to its importance in a book that is holy for both Judaism and Christianity. However, this aspect has caused several problems in the critical use of this crucial source. These problems have constantly affected the reconstruction of the history of Israel and continue to prevent the use of an unbiased and critical approach today. The main problem is the fact that, for the believers of these religions, this corpus of sources records a ‘truth’, revealed by God through a number of human agents. This view makes it impossible for these believers to question the historical value of holy books such as the Old Testament. For centuries, historiography could not overcome the nature of ‘revealed truth’ attributed to the historical memories of Israel. This interpretation continues to exist in more traditional Judaic circles, or among Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists, thus indirectly affecting even the most secular of scholars.

In particular, the analysis of the archaeological and non-biblical evidence in conjunction with the accounts attested in the Bible has frequently been pursued as a search for rather arbitrary ‘confirmations’ or, vice versa, ‘contradictions’. The contradiction between a ‘true’ account and ‘real’ archaeological evidence can often lead to a historical deadlock. In reality, biblical accounts are later (often considerably later) historical elaborations of the events described. Moreover, they are not only based on indirect and uncertain evidence, but also motivated by a specific purpose, which was often an expression of its own time.

Therefore, it is necessary to contextualise biblical sources in their period of composition, uncovering their political and cultural setting, as well as the problems, that led to their creation. It is indeed possible that these later historiographical reconstructions preserve some traces of documentary evidence or reliable memories. However, this is difficult to ascertain even after removing all the later political and religious interpretations from the original facts. On the contrary, non-biblical material is far more immediate in its use, since it was contemporary to its events and was normally guided by simpler and more obvious motives.

These difficulties become even more problematic when addressing the issue of the origins of Israel. On the one hand, biblical accounts on this issue were written much later than the period which they were trying to reconstruct. On the other hand, non-biblical sources are not very informative and quite rare. Moreover, as far as biblical accounts are concerned, the issue of the origins of Israel is a topic that has attracted the greatest number of biased interests (from national identity to political propaganda and religious explanations), thus further concealing those few traces of historical evidence.

Broadly speaking, the historical and archaeological context of Palestine at the beginning of the history of Israel can be summarised in the following way. The Egyptian empire had ruled over the Levant from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twelfth century bc. After the empire’s collapse, the local populations experienced a phase free of foreign rule and the intense exportation of resources. The Philistines settled in one portion of the territory left by the Egyptians, and tried to establish their supremacy over the remaining Canaanite cities, succeeding along the coast and in the valleys (Jezreel and the Middle Jordan). However, the hills remained outside their control. In the hilly and mountainous areas of the West Bank and the semi-arid Transjordan plateau, a typical Iron Age process began to be implemented. The latter involved considerable deforestations, the construction of terraces, canals in the wadis, wells and cisterns, and the spread of fortified cities and villages. This ‘new’ human element appearing in the Levant has been defined as the ‘Proto-Israelites’. These were tribal and pastoral groups who were not yet defined as Israelites. As mentioned above, the crisis of royal palaces led to a mass movement towards tribal groups of refugees. In this regard, it is possible to deduce an etymological connection between the name given to these refugees (habiru, or ‘br/ ‘pr) and the name for the Hebrews (‘br). The latter were probably seen by the Canaanite citizens as refugees without any specific geo-political position.

On a regional scale, it is difficult to match the micro-systems of settlements, which are archaeologically attested, with the tribal and political entities attested in the Bible. As a legacy of the Late Bronze Age, we have the surviving ‘Canaanite’ cities. At the end of the Late Bronze Age, not all palaces were destroyed, or, at least, not all at the same time. Nonetheless, the progressive impoverishment of these administrative structures is evident. As a new element, we have newly colonised areas, new villages and mountain citadels. These were all the result of the sedentarisation of pastoral groups. With the marked exception of the Philistine Pentapolis, the system was based on a composite balance, without a single seat of hegemonic power. If one accepts later biblical attestations, it is possible that there were several associations between tribes in the same fashion as the ones attested in the Middle Bronze Age. Moreover, it is equally probable that several tribes and cities signed some agreements to establish terms for farming, marriage and trade. Finally, it is possible that the tribes living in the central highlands developed a precocious sense of national identity to oppose other powers, particularly to the west (Philistines) and east (Ammonites).

This formative (pre-monarchic) phase of the ethno-political entity constituting ‘Israel’ became in its own historical tradition the phase in which all the foundation stories justifying later events and problems took place. With time, then, a genealogical structure was developed to act as a ‘charter’ of inter-tribal relations. In its final formulation, a single genealogical tree united the eponymous patriarchs of Israelite national identity (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) with the eponyms of each individual tribe (a dozen of sons of Jacob), all the eponyms of clans and villages, and the ones of individual heads of households. At this point, each individual family tree would take over. These genealogies were embedded in aetiological stories, meant to explain the reasons for the existence of certain rituals, borders and institutions. These stories, however, need to be repositioned in the period in which they were formulated (which varies for each individual case), rather than the period to which they refer.

Regarding the period of composition of these texts, some specific events further contributed to the deformation of the actual origins of Israel. First, there was the later Babylonian exile and return to Israel.

In order to justify their return to their homeland, and to support territorial claims over groups who stayed in the Levant, the foundational story of the initial immigration of Israelite groups from the outside became far more accredited. In this story, the ancient patriarchs, who were wandering in lands that did not belong to them, received the divine promise of becoming an immense population settling throughout the land. Then, there was the first exile in Egypt, and the exodus (or return) to the Levant (ca. thirteenth century bc), which mirrored the historical exile and return of the seventh century bc.

Joshua’s conquest, supported by aetiological stories such as the conquest ofJericho (which at that time had already been abandoned for centuries), was therefore used to justify the actions of the survivors of the Babylonian exile. The latter took possession of the land upon their return. By then, the Canaanites had long settled in this land, but were considered unrightful dwellers, since the divine promise condemned them to be exterminated. They were therefore considered to be the precursors of the ‘Samaritans’ and other groups. The survivors of the Babylonian exile saw both groups as foreigners who unrightfully settled in the land. The story of the exodus and the conquest of Israel, including the issue of the foreign origins of the people of Israel and their relations with the local populations, is therefore a composition created in response to the problems of the seventh century bc. Consequently, it has nothing to do with the issues surrounding the events of the twelfth century bc.

Another clearly datable element, thanks to the pro - and anti-monarchic controversies surrounding it, is the creation of a time of the Judges. This was a time when ‘there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what he saw fit.’ The Judges were non-hereditary tribal leaders. Their rule should have taken place between the time of the Canaanite monarchies, destroyed by Joshua, and the formation of the Israelite monarchy of Saul and David. The time of the Judges became the object of several debates between those who considered the lack of a king as a period of weakness and political chaos, and those who saw this period as the epitome of the ideals of freedom, equality and lower fiscal and administrative pressures.

This group of biblical sources also suffered from the problems of the post-exilic phase. At that time, there were no monarchies, and it was only possible to either hope for their return to re-establish the nation, or to hope for the consolidation of new types of government. In the twelfth and the eleventh centuries bc, however, a real ‘time of the Judges’, as described in the homonymous book, did not exist. In the Levant, kings continued to rule in the surviving ancient Canaanite city-states. These cities were seen as enemies by the tribal groups. However, the latter were not able to replace them. Certain accounts of the Book of Judges are purely mythical, and are meant to transmit ethical and religious values, rather than historical facts. Naturally, some authentic memories of that time, and even some lines from ancient poems, could have survived in these sources.

A third group of anachronisms concerns the projection back to the origins of Israel of the religion characteristic of later phases, first of the pre-exilic and then the post-exilic phase. Moses was seen as the founder of Yahwism as a revealed religion, thus already perfect in its final form, well before the return of the Israelites in the Levant. Not only would the people of Israel have entered the Promised Land already perfectly structured into a socio-political association of tribes ruled by common leaders. They would have done so perfectly formed into a monotheistic religious community of devotees of Yahweh, the national and exclusive deity of the Israelites. In reality, it had been a gradual process, which experienced fundamental developments in the religious reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah (seventh century bc), and especially within the exilic and post-exilic community. For the latter, religious faith constituted the main element of national cohesion after the disappearance of a solid political organisation.

Regarding the ‘pact’ (berit) agreed between Yahweh and his people and the foundation of a nationalistic religious community, its placement at the time of Moses and Joshua is completely artificial and anachronistic. Later legal texts could have preserved some ancient traditions, such as the reference to the social debate surrounding debt slavery. However, the ‘pact’ between Yahweh and his people resembles more the ‘pacts’ sealed between the Assyrian king and his subjects, rather than the Late Bronze Age agreements between great and small kings. Be that as it may, the identification of those elements that can be securely attributed to the twelfth century bc continues to be arduous. This is due to the nature of our main source, which experienced a long history of modifications and adaptations, mostly datable from the seventh century bc onwards.