Single reference to them from Egypt of about 1200 Bc) and many of the events recorded as history in the Hebrew scriptures have no separate archaeological or documentary evidence to confirm them. This has made any discussion of their history intensely difficult. Since the nineteenth century there have been western scholars preoccupied with fitting the stories of the Old Testament to historical evidence, some of them implying that the existence of the Christian God could be substantiated if such links were found, while the establishment of Israel as a state in 1948 led to intensive efforts to confirm the link of the Jewish people with their territory back to kings such as David.
Much depends on the status given the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament as a historical source. The scholar Amelie Kuhrt gives a balanced assessment: ‘Like many accounts of the past, [the Old Testament] was not intended to provide a critical historical study; rather it contained stories detailing the interaction of a people, Israel, with their god, Yahweh, who had chosen them to work out his divine plan. It is a complex, ideologically driven compilation, within which stories were refashioned to drive home particular lessons of the past.’ In other words, the historian should read the Hebrew scriptures as texts in which historical events have been shaped to provide a coherent understanding of how the Israelite people came to be, above all in relationship to their god, Yahweh. In this the scriptures remain the only account of a Near Eastern people that describes how they themselves visualized the emergence of their nation. Increasingly scholars are insisting that the history of Israel can only be fully understood if the first Israelites are placed among their neighbours of the region and seen as facing many of the same challenges. (See William Dever, Who were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, Grand Rapids, Mich., 2006 for a study that surveys this difficult area within the context of recent scholarship.)
After the creation and the birth of humankind, told in Genesis, came the age of the Patriarchs when Abraham emerges as the father of Israel leading his people through the lands of the Near East. It is his grandson Jacob who is first associated (by Yahweh) with the name Israel and with the begetting of twelve sons who become the ancestors of the twelve tribes. Jacob’s son Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt but then rises to a high position with the pharaoh and settles his family there. After oppression by the pharaohs the Israelites fulfilled their promised destiny by being led out of Egypt by Moses across the Sinai desert (the celebrated ‘Exodus’) and eventually, after forty years of wandering, to the edge of ‘the promised land’, Canaan. It was in this time that Yahweh gave Moses the Ten Commandments, part of the covenant through which he linked himself to his chosen people. It is Joshua who completes the journey into Canaan.
The Israelites may have been able to establish themselves in Canaan because of the depopulation caused by the disruptions of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries (although the archaeological evidence for the early settlement is hard to interpret) but they found little security. This is the era of the Judges, one in which the Israelites enjoyed no central administration or religious or cultural coherence. The ‘judges’ may have been war leaders who struggled to keep an Israeli identity alive at a time
Of turmoil. Among their early opponents were the Philistines, possibly other casualties of these upheavals, perhaps even, some have suggested, ‘sea peoples’ themselves who had come to settle along the south-western coast of Canaan. (The historian Herodotus, the first writer to use the word Palestine, may have derived it from ‘Philistine’.)
Eventually the twelve tribes gave allegiance to a single king, first Saul, then David, and, much later, Solomon. David is the Israelite king par excellence, unifier of the twelve tribes, defeater of the Philistines, and conqueror of Jerusalem, which became the capital of the kingdom. As yet little mention of David has been found in any document or inscription of the period outside the Hebrew scriptures. The reputation given to Solomon in the Book of Kings as a builder has, however, received some support from archaeologists who have found extensive rebuilding of several cities of the region in the tenth century BC. Even so, it is unlikely that the state would have stood out among its neighbours in this period.
After Solomon’s death his kingdom was split into two. In the north ten tribes preserved the name Israel, in the south the kingdom of Judah emerged, with Jerusalem a short distance within its territory. The citizens of Judah were known in Hebrew as yehudi, and from this, by way of the Greek ioudaios and the Latin judaeus, comes the English ‘Jew’. The two kingdoms coexisted for two centuries, although they were often at war with each other. In 722 BC the Assyrians annexed the northern kingdom and extinguished its national identity by deporting its inhabitants eastwards (see earlier, p. 94). Judah survived, but as a vassal kingdom of the Assyrian empire.
The Israelites rejoiced in a rich and varied body of sacred literature, much of it drawn from the common literary and religious heritage of the Near East. There is a creation story, narrated in the Book of Genesis, which has parallels with a similar account in the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish. In both myths God (Yahweh) fashions the world from a primordial abyss (this view was adopted by the early Christians but later discarded in favour of a creation of the world ex nihilo, ‘from nothing’, see later, p. 592) and his work of creation lasts six days after which he rests on the seventh. The story of the flood is, as has already been said, Sumerian in origin. The Garden of Eden seems rooted in a Near Eastern tradition, probably Mesopotamian, of an idyllic garden from which rivers flow. The theme of the righteous sufferer found in the Book of Job, perhaps the most profound and penetrating book of the Hebrew scriptures, is paralleled by similar stories in Babylonian literature. The range of the scriptures is wide, from the historical accounts of the formation of Israel and Judah to the gentle eroticism of the Song of Solomon, from the intensity of the Book of Job to the exultations and thanksgivings of many of the Psalms. As a varied collection of texts they evolved over a period of some 600 (some scholars would say 800) years and were eventually brought together as a single body of writings, the Hebrew scriptures, in about the second century BC.
The most outstanding feature of these writings and what gives them a coherent theme is that they focus on one god, Yahweh, the protector of the people of Israel. As we have seen, it was Yahweh who led the Israelites from Egypt and into Canaan, the promised land, having given them, through Moses, the Ten Commandments.
Early accounts of Yahweh see him as the supreme god among many. In Psalm 82, for instance, Yahweh asserts his dominance over a council of other gods. Gradually Yahweh becomes associated with the national identity of the Israelites, and other gods are seen as those of Israel’s enemies, to be despised as such. (This is one of the themes of the eighth-century Book of Hosea.) A century later in the Book of Deuteronomy Yahweh is identified not only with the people of Israel but with a place, Jerusalem. Woven into Deuteronomy is a concern for social justice. All men are brothers and there should be special concern for the poor. The development of an ethical tradition is an essential element of the Hebrew scriptures and is underpinned with a concern for ritual purity expounded in meticulous detail in the Book of Leviticus.
Central to the worship of Yahweh was the concept of covenant. A covenant, an agreement that bound two people together, was widespread in the Near East. In this context it was an agreement made between Yahweh and his people, Israel. In its earliest recorded form it presents Yahweh as the protector of Israel who will remain faithful to his people for ever. Later, from Moses onwards, the covenant is seen as dependent on the good behaviour of the people of Israel. If they desert Yahweh he can punish them in retaliation. The books of the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, for instance, are dominated by warnings of the catastrophe about to fall on Israel because of its wrongdoings. The prophets themselves are burdened figures (Jeremiah talks at one point of being seduced and overpowered by Yahweh when asked to spread the bad news that the Israelites will be overrun by the Babylonians), and they try hopelessly to avoid the task Yahweh imposes on them.
Jeremiah’s prophecies came true. Judah had retained a precarious independence among the surrounding city-states but Nebuchadrezzar proved too strong. Jerusalem appears to have been conquered twice by him, in 597 and 587, and, according to the Book of Kings, 10,000 inhabitants were carried off to Babylon. Although recent research suggests that the depopulation might not have been so great as the Hebrew sources suggest, from the psychological point of view this exile was a crucial moment in Jewish history and underlined the new image of Yahweh as one who could abandon his people to their suffering. It may have been seen as a time of desolation, but the exile was in many ways a creative one, and it was in this period that the early Hebrew scriptures were consolidated as a single collection. This first dispersion of the Jews was to establish an experience of exile that was to recur throughout Jewish history. Even when Jerusalem was restored to the Jews by the Persians many did not go back. The Temple was rebuilt about 516 BC but Jerusalem remained a relative backwater for centuries. (See the early chapters of Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, London, 2011, and New York, 2012.)
The Jews had created the world’s first sustained monotheistic religion. (The Egyptian king Akhenaten’s dominant sun god had died with him.) As the writings of the Old Testament show, it was a concept that left many unsolved philosophical problems about the nature of the one God. For some he was the source of both good and evil. (‘I am Yahweh unrivalled, I form the light and create the dark. I make good fortune and create calamity,’ writes the prophet Isaiah.) He was a protector god but
Also a god of retribution, able to destroy not only Israel’s enemies but also Israel itself when it offended him. The lesson of the Babylonian exile was that only through the admission of guilt and the acceptance of just punishment could the relationship be restored in a new covenant. There is some hope that this new covenant might be brought by an earthly ruler: in the prophecies of both Isaiah and Jeremiah a messiah is talked of, one who will bring everlasting justice and peace.
The monotheism of Israel needs to be contrasted with the different religious traditions of the other peoples of the Ancient Near East. The more common pattern was to have a mass of different deities living alongside each other (polytheism). At times one emerges as supreme over others, henotheism, which perhaps best describes the position of Amun in New Kingdom Egypt, or Ahura-Mazda in the Persian empire (below). The relationship between the supreme god and others varies. He may be linked to them through family ties, as with Zeus in Greece, he may absorb their identities (syncretism), or he may rule over them as distinct but subordinate deities. His supremacy may be maintained by presenting them as manifestations of his own power. Many of the successful civilizations described in this book were pragmatic in their religious policies, keeping their own gods as supreme, but tolerating the existence of others.
World History
