The lore preserved by ancient Israelites is rich in images and tales of war. As in the wider ancient Near East, creation is often perceived in terms of a battle against chaos, while the deity, Yahweh, is frequently depicted as “a man of war,” powerful and victorious in battle. Israelites’ accounts of their own history describe both military successes and failures and include sophisticated intellectual engagement with issues pertaining to the causes and conduct of war. Exploring attitudes to war in ancient Israel, however, involves a number of methodological challenges. Questions arise about date, Israelite identity, and the relationship between the literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible and actual Israelites set in place and time. When one writes of attitudes to war in “biblical times,” in the earliest period of Jewish history, precisely whose attitudes is one uncovering?
The first eight books of the Bible trace a chronology from a period before the rule of kings in Israel (pre-tenth century), to the time of the monarchies (tenth century - 586), to a period after the monarchies when foreign superpowers take control (586 on).1 It would be wonderfully convenient for the study of ancient Israelite history and culture if sources describing the various periods were historically accurate and if views of war expressed in biblical sources paralleled actual political developments. As is the case with the great epic literature of any culture, however, the relationship between the Bible and actual historical events is often difficult to ascertain, while trajectories of intellectual and social history and threads of ideology are difficult to unravel.
Biblical narratives, often expressed in the formulaic language and conventionalized patterns of traditional discourse, have a long history, written and oral. Layers of voices and contributors are reflected in any one account along with the point of view of the
Composer who “got the last word.” Variations persist in the rich array of manuscript traditions that lie behind the edited Bible that one now reads. In addition, extrabiblical literary sources and archaeological evidence must also enter any analysis of aspects of ancient Israelite history and culture. We begin, in fact, with a brief overview of the history of ancient israel as revealed by archaeological evidence that richly, if sometimes enigmatically, informs our knowledge of the course of Israel’s social and political history, both of these being intimately interwoven with attitudes to war, its causes and conduct.
World History
