Canaan and Israel in Antiquity

Canaan and Israel in Antiquity
CANAAN
AND ISRAEL
IN ANTIQUITY:
A TextBook
On History
And Religion
S e c o n d E d i t i o n
K . L . N o ll
Bloomsbury T&T Clark
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 175 Fifth Avenue

London New York
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www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
© K. L. Noll, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
K. L. Noll has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
Front cover photograph: the god El from Ugarit, 13th century bce (limestone).
Museum of Latakia, Latakia, Syria; Peter Willi; Bridgeman Art Library.
All interior photographs by Z. Radovan/www.BibleLandPictures.com.
All maps, and the sample stratigraphy, by Tina E. Noll.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted
by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this books is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-5674-4117-1
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, NR21 8NN

Contents
List of Figures ix
Abbreviations xii
Preface xv
Chapter 1
Canaan and Israel: An Overview 1
Introduction 1
What’s in a Name? 2
The Geography of the Ancient Near East and Canaan 10
Chronology of Ancient Canaan 15
A Word about the Bible 19
Chapter 2
What is ‘History’? 23
Introduction 23
Differing Definitions of ‘History’ 23
Three Types of Academic History 24
Tools for Study of the Ancient Past 33
Chapter 3
What was History in the Perception of the Ancients? 66
Introduction 66
The Practice of Ancient Historia 67
The Rhetoric of Authority in Ancient Historia 71
The ‘Truth’ in Ancient Historia 76
Does the Bible Construct a Past? Is the Bible a History? 78
A Test Case: Establishing the Dates of the Exodus and
the Conquest 95
vi Contents
Chapter 4
Prior to the Iron Age 105
Introduction 105
In the Beginning . . . 106
The Lithic Eras (Prior to 3500 bce) 107
Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Bronze Age 113
Canaan in the Bronze Age (3500–1550 bce) 117
The Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce) 122
The Egyptian New Kingdom and the Wars of Empire 123
Daily Canaanite Life in the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce) 129
‘Israel’ on the Merneptah Stela 137
Chapter 5
The Iron Age I 143
Introduction 143
What Is an Ancient Ethnic Group and How Is It to Be Found? 147
Seeking the Philistines in Canaan’s Material Culture 154
When Did the Philistines Arrive in Canaan? 157
How Did the Philistines Arrive in Canaan? 161
Seeking the Israelites in Canaan’s Material Culture 163
The Highlands of Palestine during the Iron Age I 164
Life in Highland Villages of the Iron Age I 176
Chapter 6
The Patron God in the Ancient Near East 182
Introduction 182
Patron–Client Relationships in the Ancient Near East 185
Divine Patronage: The Common Religion of the Ancient
Near East 186
The Ethics of Divine Patronage 196
The Patron God, the Temple, the City, and the
Sacrificial System 202
Chapter 7
The Transitional Decades 215
Introduction 215
The Bible and the Tenth Century bce (the 900s bce) 217
The Archaeological Case for a United Monarchy 231
The Case Against the United Monarchy Hypothesis 237
Contents vii
The Debate over High and Low Chronologies 245

Radiocarbon Dating and the New ‘Middle’ Chronology 252
Conclusion: Observations about the Transitional Decades
(950–900 bce) 255
Chapter 8
The Iron Age II 260
Introduction 260
General Overview of the Iron Age II 261
The Political Economy of Palestine in the Iron Age II 265
Neo-Assyria and Neo-Babylonia, the Mesopotamian Powers of
Iron Age II 270
Canaanite Regional Powers in the Ninth Century bce 280
The City of Dan and an Aramaic Royal Inscription 286
King Hezekiah, King Josiah, and the Hypothesis of Temple
Centralization 296
Conclusion 312
Chapter 9
Varieties of R eligious Experience and Canaanite Gods 315
Introduction 315
Varieties of Religious Commitment in the Ancient World 317
Varieties of Canaanite Gods 323
Divine Immanence and Divine Transcendence 340
Divination: The Most Common Form of Divine Revelation 342
Prophecy: The Second Most Common Form of
Divine Revelation 345
Prophets and Miracle Stories 351
Prophets and Visions of the Future 353
Conclusion 357
Chapter 10
The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods 359
Introduction 359
The Neo-Babylonian Period (586–539 bce) 359
The Persian Period (539–332 bce) 367
Yehud (Judah) during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods 371
The Biblical Depiction of the Persian Era: Problems
and Debates 376
viii Contents
Varieties of Judaism in the Persian Era 386

The Invention of the Bible 394
Postscript 406
Index of Modern Authors 409

Index of Scriptures 414
Index 427
List of Figures
Figure 1. The rugged terrain of Judah, south of Jerusalem. 5

Figure 2. The ancient Near East. 11
Figure 3. Four zones. 12
Figure 4. Ancient Palestine. 14
Figure 5. A chronology of Canaan. 17
Figure 6. Three modern Bibles. 21
Figure 7. ‘Belonging to Shema, slave of Jeroboam’. Artifacts
from the past generate the question ‘Who were
these people?’ 28
Figure 8. A sample stratigraphy. 37
Figure 9. Bronze Age pottery from the city of Gezer, in the
Shephelah west of Jerusalem. 39
Figure 10. Mount Ebal altar. 43
Figure 11. Victims of Sennacherib at Lachish in the Shephelah. 51
Figure 12. Qumran cave overlooking the Dead Sea. 59
Figure 13. Ancient Egyptian scribe. In the ancient world, scribes
did not share our modern obsession with an
accurate narrative of the past. 68
Figure 14. Iron Age Assyrian royal relief sculpture. In the ancient
world, the royal depiction of ‘reality’ was one of the
most common types of ‘history’. 89
Figure 15. Iron Age Assyrian holding a lion. Like this artwork,
ancient narratives often favored a vocabulary of
symbols.102
Figure 16. Neolithic plastered skull. 109
Figure 17. The Near East during the Bronze Age. 114
Figure 18. Palestine during the Bronze Age. 119
Figure 19. The Egyptian New Kingdom. 124
Figure 20. Pharaoh Ramesses II, Nineteenth Dynasty
(thirteenth century bce). 128
x List of Figures
Figure 21. Artistic styles on this Philistine bichrome vessel,

from the Iron Age I, differ sharply from the
Bronze Age styles shown in Figure 9. 155
Figure 22. An assortment of Philistine bichrome pottery, Iron
Age I, suggests gradual assimilation of Philistine
immigrants to local Canaanite culture. 162
Figure 23. Palestine during the Iron Age I. 166
Figure 24. Reconstructed floor plan of an Iron Age
Four-Room House. 174
Figure 25. The divine king of Ugarit was Baal, who was
depicted frequently in this pose, called ‘the smiting
god’ posture. 191
Figure 26. Small figurines of temple ‘holy ones’, such as this
one from the Negev near Arad, suggest that music
was a vital part of temple worship. 209
Figure 27. The hills of Judah near Jerusalem would have been,
according to a popular hypothesis, the political and
military center of an all-Canaan empire during the
Transitional Decades (950–900 bce).217
Figure 28. Palestine during the Transitional Decades and early
Iron Age II. 224
Figure 29. Excavation of the city gates at Megiddo, in the
Jezreel Valley. 234
Figure 30. Sample excavations. 236
Figure 31. A reconstruction of the city gates at Megiddo. 244
Figure 32. View of the Jordan River Valley looking east toward
the Transjordan Highlands. During the Transitional
Decades (950–900 bce), these highlands were
sparsely populated, yet this is where the Bible
locates King David’s most celebrated victories. 255
Figure 33. Palestine during the Iron Age II. 264
Figure 34. An ivory sphinx from Iron Age Samaria. 267
Figure 35. Neo-Assyria and Neo-Babylonia. 272
Figure 36. Israel’s King Jehu kneels before Shalmaneser III
of Neo-Assyria. 283
Figure 37. Tel Dan strata. 289
Figure 38. Tel Dan fragmentary inscription, circa ninth
century bce. 291
List of Figures xi
Figure 39. Neo-Assyrian Emperor Ashurbanipal (668–627 bce),

whose royal vassal treaties might have been the
model for the composition of Deuteronomy. 302
Figure 40. A reconstructed sacrificial altar from Beer-sheba,
Iron Age II. 309
Figure 41. The inner room of the temple excavated at Arad, Iron
Age II. Note the two stone pillars in the rear, sacred
objects prohibited by Deut. 16.22. 313
Figure 42. Fragment of a common type of household
goddess figurine. 328
Figure 43. Faint painted images on this broken storage jar depict
divine beings. Above them is an inscription
mentioning Yahweh and his Asherah. 332
Figure 44. Psalm 20 and a hymn to Horus (Baal). 335
Figure 45. Among the teraphim were small figurines depicting
the god Bes. This one was found at Dor. 339
Figure 46. King Darius I (522–486 bce). Many biblical scholars
credit this king with permitting the Jerusalem
temple to be rebuilt (Ezra 6), but this hypothesis is
weak.380
Figure 47. Every variety of Judaism known to us from Persian
times existed under Persian imperial authority. In
that context, texts such as Hag. 2.20–23 expressed
an unrealistic hope. 388
Figure 48. A scroll from the Dead Sea near Qumran,
Greco-Roman period. 402
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
ad anno Domini
ANES Ancient Near Eastern Studies
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
bc before Christ
bce before the Common Era
BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
BibInt Biblical Interpretation
BN Biblische Notizen
c. circa
ce Common Era
Chron. Chronicles
Cor. Corinthians
CR:BS Currents in Research: Biblical Studies
Dan. Daniel
Deut. Deuteronomy
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
Eccl. Ecclesiastes
Exod. Exodus
Ezek. Ezekiel
Gen. Genesis
Hab. Habakkuk
Hag. Haggai
Hos. Hosea
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
Isa. Isaiah
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
Jer. Jeremiah
Jn John
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Jon. Jonah
Josh. Joshua
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series
Judg. Judges
Abbreviations xiii
Kgs Kings
Lev. Leviticus
LHB/OTS Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
Lk. Luke
Macc. Maccabees
Mic. Micah
Mk. Mark
MT Masoretic Text
Mt. Matthew
NEA Near Eastern Archaeology
Neh. Nehemiah
Num. Numbers
PBA Proceedings of the British Academy
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
Pet. Peter
Prov. Proverbs
Ps., Pss. Psalm, Psalms
RC Religion Compass
Rev. Revelation
Rom. Romans
Sam. Samuel
Sir. Sirach
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
VT Vetus Testamentum
ZAH Zeitschrift für Althebräistik
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
Zech. Zechariah
Preface
This book has been written for an intelligent reader who has not yet
encountered academic study of the ancient world. If it is a successful
textbook, the reader can move smoothly from this volume into deeper
study and will develop a sympathetic understanding of the ancient
peoples whose lives are recalled in these pages.
I was motivated to write this book for two reasons. First is my
perpetual dissatisfaction as a teacher with the standard English-language
introductory handbooks. Some are too complex for an uninitiated reader.
Others remain in print long after their contents have become embarrass-
ingly out of date. Some textbooks promote a religious viewpoint, which
renders them irrelevant to academic research.
A second motivation has been to harvest the fruits from my nearly
two decades of rewarding interaction with students in Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Manitoba. My students have been young
and old, religious and secular, undergraduate and graduate. They
have described themselves as Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim,
‘spiritual’, agnostic, and atheist. For some, their semester with me was
difficult because the terrain was unexpected and sometimes bewil-
dering. A few have discovered that the truth-claims of a traditional
religion are unable to compete with evidence from the past, while others
have discovered unexpected value in religious traditions once dismissed
as useless. This book has been shaped by their responses to the first
edition and by class and after-class conversations, for which I am very
grateful. I have listened as well to criticisms from colleagues whose
suggestions have been incorporated into this edition.
Since my purpose is to offer a first step into the ancient past, I have
avoided complexities that would only confuse, simplified complexities
that could not be avoided, and repeated a few themes and details for
emphasis. Because the student’s needs come first, my apparatus is
not as complete as experts might expect, especially in chapters that
are less controversial than others. Also, a few academic battles of the
xvi Preface
past have been eliminated from these pages and my narrative follows
(and, perhaps, contributes to) a consensus that has emerged during the
past decade or so. Unless noted otherwise, translations from ancient
documents are my own.
Warm thanks go to my darling wife, Tina E. Noll, who performed a
complete copyediting of the manuscript. She also made the maps and
charts, as well as helping me with many details. Tina’s wit, wisdom,
and penetrating intelligence have made my life a joy for more than 30
years. I offer my thanks also to the friendly staff of T&T Clark, and
especially Dominic Mattos. Many conversations with colleagues have
played a role in my conceptualization of the ancient world, especially
discussions with Philip R. Davies, Cynthia Edenburg, Ehud Ben Zvi,
John Van Seters, Graeme Auld, Thomas L. Thompson, and Niels Peter
Lemche. The views presented here are entirely mine and should not be
blamed on anyone else.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Jack C. Noll
(December 9, 1930–November 13, 2011), and it is dedicated with my
love to my mother, Patricia Noll. Dad died unexpectedly while Tina
and I were completing this manuscript. My father was a professional
mathematician and an amateur historian. He taught me to love logic and
evidence, and to follow them wherever the path might lead. His wife,
my mother, has been my quiet and steady source of support without fail.
I hope this book, even with its many flaws, pays appropriate tribute to
these two wonderful people.
Chapter 1
Canaan and Israel: An Overview
Introduction
This book is about the lives of ancient people. Historians disagree with
one another about many aspects of these ancient lives. It sometimes
seems that we historians agree on only one point: the ancient past
happened a very long time ago. Beyond this, everything is debated. The
debates are important, but I hope that no debate will obscure our goal,
which is to discover real people who lived in an ancient, now dead,
culture. It is the people who ultimately matter, not the debates, and
everything that you and I examine in this book is designed to help you
encounter these people.
My conclusions in every chapter will be disputed by at least a few
historians. I cannot explain every point of dispute without writing
a multivolume book. Usually, I will present the facts that are less
controversial than most, to provide the reader with a solid foundation
from which to begin. The last four chapters, building on that strong
foundation, will present several sample topics that are more contro-
versial than those discussed earlier. The earlier, easier chapters will
prepare you for later chapters that are more complex.
This book is intended to equip you intellectually to read books by
historians who examine highly complex issues pertaining to these
ancient people. Each chapter includes suggested additional readings
to get you started. Some of the authors in these lists differ with my
assessment of the evidence and others will present views similar to
those in this book, but with more depth.
2 Canaan and Israel in Antiquity
What’s in a Name?
The names Canaan and Israel are controversial.1 Much of the contro-
versy is generated by the Bible, which is where most people today
encounter these two names. The Bible constructs a wall of difference
between people who are Canaanite and people who are Israelite. For the
most part, this difference is defined in religious terms. For example, the
biblical book of Deuteronomy exhorts Israelites to destroy Canaanite
religious temples and even worshipers. Deuteronomy does not describe
the differences between Israelite and Canaanite peoples because it
assumes that readers know those differences. However, we who read
this text many centuries later cannot understand differences that the
ancient writer assumed but never described. If we hope to understand
who these ancient Canaanites and Israelites were, we need to build
a definition of each term that can enable us to interpret ancient texts
cautiously and accurately.
In addition to the Bible, ancient documents recovered by archae-
ologists mention Canaan and Israel. Canaan is mentioned more often
than Israel. Outside of the Bible, Israel is mentioned only a handful of
times in ancient inscriptions that span nearly 1,000 years. Nevertheless,
using these ancient documents in conjunction with biblical documents,
the historian can define Canaan and Israel usefully. The results of this
historical research demonstrate that the antagonistic definitions of
Canaan and Israel in the Bible were not the most common uses of either
term.
The ancient label Canaanite was not an ethnic designation or a means
of personal identity. In the ancient texts, Canaan was a geographic
term designating, very roughly, the eastern shore of the Mediterranean
Sea. As a result, many ancient documents define a Canaanite as anyone
who lived in the land of Canaan, regardless of ethnic background. For
example, an ancient inscription that narrates the military achievements
of an Egyptian king lists Israel as one of several groups of people this
king had defeated in the land of Canaan. In other words, from this
Egyptian point of view, the people called Israel were Canaanite people.
This use of Canaan as a label for real estate can be found in the Bible’s
book of Ezekiel, chapter 16, verse 3. (Each unit of the Bible is called a
1 For extensive bibliography related to these controversies, consult K. L. Noll,

‘Canaanite Religion’, RC 1 (2007), pp. 61–92.
1. Canaan and Israel: An Overview 3
book, each book of the Bible is divided into chapters, and each chapter
is divided into verses. For convenience, a reference to the book of
Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 3 is normally written ‘Ezek. 16.3’. Chapter
and verse also can be punctuated ‘16:3’ or ‘16,3’.)
The word Canaan was used commonly for many centuries, and its
precise meaning changed from time to time. In some cases, Canaan
was a political term. For example, during the centuries when the eastern
shore of the Mediterranean Sea was part of the Egyptian Empire, Canaan
was one province within that empire. In other centuries, Canaan could
designate portions of this region, but not all of it. Although no one is
sure what the word Canaan meant originally, its root seems to derive
from an ancient word that meant ‘purple-dyed cloth’, which was an
expensive luxury item. As a result, Canaan sometimes designated a
merchant who traded in luxury items, as in the biblical book called
Proverbs (see Prov. 31.24).
Ancient writers rarely describe their own communities as Canaanite.
Among the people living along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean
Sea, each community preferred its own local ethnic designation. The
Bible mentions many ethnic groups who lived in the land of Canaan,
including Israelites, Philistines, Arameans, Gibeonites, Judahites,
Jebusites, Hittites, Hivites, Amorites, Girgashites, and Perizzites, to
name just a few. These labels were not precise, and some ancient texts
use one label in two or three different ways. Sometimes ancient texts
use two or more labels for the same group of people. Also, the cultural
lifestyles of all these ethnic groups were similar. As a result, neither
the Bible nor any other ancient source enables a modern archaeologist
to distinguish between these groups in the material remains of Canaan,
except in a few very rare (and debatable) instances.
Almost all researchers today speak of a single, relatively homogenous,
‘Canaanite cultural sphere’, of which Israel was a part.2 Therefore, in
this book, the word Canaan designates, generally speaking, the ancient
land and cultural sphere that existed throughout the regions known
today as Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian commu-
nities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sometimes this book divides
2 The phrase ‘Canaanite cultural sphere’ is from N. Wyatt, ‘Royal Religion in

Ancient Judah’, in F. Stavrakopoulo and J. Barton (eds), Religious Diversity in
Ancient Israel and Judah (London: T&T Clark International, 2010), pp. 61–81
(64). See also the discussion and bibliography in Noll, ‘Canaanite Religion’.
Canaan into a northern half, called Syria, and a southern half, called
Palestine. The southern half was equivalent, generally speaking, to the
contemporary political entities of Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian
territories. (The word Palestine derives from the ancient word for
Philistines, a community of people who lived in the coastal regions of
southern Canaan at the same time that Israelites lived in the highlands
of southern Canaan. The Philistines, as a distinct ethnic group, disap-
peared in ancient times.) In keeping with the majority viewpoint among
historians, this book views Israel as one among the many Canaanite
peoples who lived in the land of Canaan. However, the word Israel is
much more complex than the word Canaan and will require additional
discussion.
Although Israel is a common word in the Bible, it means different
things at different places in the biblical text. In the book of Genesis,
Israel is an alternate name for a man named Jacob, the grandson of a
man who also had two names, Abram and Abraham. More frequently,
the Bible uses Israel as the name of an ethnic group, the Israelites. The
Bible connects the man Jacob-Israel to the people Israel by telling a
story in which the man fathers 12 sons who in turn ‘father’ 12 tribes of
people. The 12 tribes are, collectively, the people of Israel. A story of
this kind has a name. Researchers who study world folklore call it an
eponymic legend. An eponym is a person, sometimes real but usually
fictional, who has given his name to a group of people.
Anthropologists note that the Bible’s use of the name Israel is similar
to eponymic legends found in traditional societies around the globe.
Ethnic identity is defined by telling a story of kinship.3 Frequently the
story does not reflect a biological reality, but rather a social or political
reality. When groups of people begin to cooperate with one another
for agricultural purposes, mutual defense, and so on, they express their
alliance by telling a tale of kinship. ‘You and I are brothers; your village
and my village descend from the same ancestor.’
The primary function of an eponymic legend is to create and sustain
a sense of community identity. Most of these stories are creative inven-
tions. The kinships are invented strictly for community identity, not
3 For a succinct description of the dynamics involved in using genealogy to construct

relationships and ‘history’, see J. Davis, ‘The Social Relations of the Production
of History’, in E. Tonkin, M. McDonald, and M. Chapman (eds), History and
Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 104–20.
Figure 1. The rugged terrain of Judah, south of Jerusalem

because the people involved are related biologically, although subse-

quent marriage exchanges will create biological relationships after the
alliance and its eponymic legend have been constructed. The eponymic
story is fictional, but it is not a lie because members who tell the story
know that it is an invention. They believe in the family tree they narrate
because it represents their social and political lives. When social and
political relationships change, these same people will alter the family
tree. ‘You and I are no longer brothers; we do not descend from the
same ancestor.’
The scribes of the Bible seem to have understood what an eponymic
legend was and how to use it, because the Bible uses this type of legend
regularly. For example, Genesis 10 is a long chapter full of names.
The names are organized as genealogical lists deriving from three
brothers. The genealogy is artificial and the three brothers are fictional.
The chapter lists every Near Eastern ethnic or political entity that the
author’s community knew. Another example is the list of Abram’s
ancestors in Genesis 11. Several of Abram’s so-called relatives (his
great-grandfather Serug, his grandfather Nahor, his father Terah, and
his brother Haran) were not individuals at all. These are the names of
several villages and a city in the region of Mesopotamia from which
Abram was said to have migrated. Likewise, in Genesis 25, Abraham
marries a woman whose name, Keturah, means ‘incense’, which was
a valuable commodity in ancient times. In the story, Abraham and
Keturah produce six sons, whose names appear to be the names of
southern communities (such as Midian) and regions to the northeast
(such as Shuah) along an ancient trade route that specialized in incense
and other exotic items.4
The biblical authors were not embarrassed to change their genea-
logical lists to keep them current with ever-changing social relationships
through the centuries. An example is a list of six small communities in
a region called Gilead. According to Josh. 17.2, these six were the sons
of a man named Manasseh (some English translations change ‘sons’
to ‘descendants’). But in Num. 26.28–32, the six communities are
designated the sons of Gilead and the great-grandsons of Manasseh.
The genealogy was altered because the communities represented by the
4 N. Na’aman discusses this ancient trade route in ‘The Contribution of the Suhu
Inscriptions to the Historical Research of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah’, JNES
66 (2007), pp. 107–22 (111–12; see also 108 n. 6).
eponyms had altered their relationships. After several thousand years,

we are no longer able to know which list is earlier and which came later.
Even at the individual level, fluctuation in ancestry can be discerned
in biblical texts. For example, a man named Zerubbabel is the son of
Shealtiel in Ezra 3.2, but he becomes the son of Pedaiah in 1 Chron.
3.19. Another example can be seen in the Christian New Testament,
in which the family tree of Joseph, father of Jesus, is traced through
David’s son Solomon in one biblical passage (Mt. 1.1–17), but through
David’s son Nathan in another place (Lk. 3.23–38), with the result that
many of the names differ between the two lists. This is not an error, but
a sign that biblical authors conceived of genealogy as something that
has little to do with biology.
Although the Bible speaks of 12 tribes of Israel and even personifies
them as 12 individual people, it is clear from many biblical texts that
these ‘tribes’ were really geographic regions. Anyone who lived in
one of these regions would be reckoned a descendant of the eponym
who gave that region its name. These geographic labels were fluid
and overlapping. For example, all biblical authors assumed that the
geographic center of the place called Jacob or Israel was the central
highlands of Palestine, but this real estate received a bewildering number
of eponymic names. Sometimes it is called Jacob or Israel, but in other
places in the Bible the same area is labeled Joseph (an eponymic son of
Jacob-Israel) or Ephraim (a son of Joseph) or Manasseh and Ephraim
(two sons of Joseph). All this can be very confusing unless the reader
of the Bible is aware of how eponymic legends function in traditional
cultures and how fluid these legends can be.
Here and there in the Bible, the reader encounters a full list of all
the tribes of Israel, but these lists are not consistent with one another.
Sometimes the list of tribes includes Levi (for example, Deut. 27.12–
13). In other cases, Levi is excluded from the list and the number 12 has
been maintained by replacing Joseph with his two ‘sons’, Ephraim and
Manasseh (for example, Num. 1.5–15). The conclusion most historians
draw from careful examination of these tribal lists is that the number 12
is entirely artificial. It was a traditional number, perhaps symbolizing
perfection or completeness, and the names of the member groups were
adjusted to fit the need for that number. It is worth noting that Levi is
not a tribe at all. That is to say, it is not the name of a geographic region.
Levi was the name of a class of priests, and the personification of Levi
as a son of Jacob fits awkwardly with the other geographic ‘sons’ and
‘grandsons’. Biblical scribes explained this anomaly by claiming that

Levi, unlike his brothers, never received an inheritance of land because
his divine appointment as priest was his inheritance; instead the Levites
received cities within each geographic tribe (Num. 35.1–8).
Careful examination of the Bible’s tribal lists demonstrates that
certain portions of land in Palestine became associated with the name
Israel much later than other regions, and some of the real estate assigned
to Israelite tribes might never have been Israelite at all. For example,
three regions on the northern periphery of Jacob-Israel are defined as
children borne by female slaves rather than by wives (Dan, Naphtali,
Asher; Gen. 30.1–8, 12–13). I will show in a later chapter that the land
of one of these northern peripheries, the city of Dan, was politically
affiliated with Israel only for short periods of time, if at all. It is possible
that the scribes were aware that all three regions were latecomers to,
or tangential members of, the Israelite eponymic coalition. Another
example is the tribe of Gad, also said to be the son of a slave girl (Gen.
30.9–11). The Bible associates Gad with land on the eastern periphery
of Jacob-Israel, but the biblical definition of this land is not precise.
The eastern location of Gad seems to slide slightly north or south in
various lists (for example, Num. 32.34–6; Josh. 13.24–8). An ancient
stone inscription provides evidence that Gad had not been affiliated
with Israel until an Israelite king occupied the land of the people called
Gad. That inscription suggests that Gad became Israelite through
military conquest.5 This might help to explain the tenuous status of Gad
in the biblical texts. Apparently the scribes did not believe these tribes
(Dan, Naphtali, Asher, Gad) were fully Israelite so they assigned their
eponyms to slave-girl mothers.
The descriptions of Benjamin and Judah provide intriguing evidence
for the late addition of Judah in the fictional list of Jacob’s eponymic
sons. According to the Bible, Benjamin was immediately south of
the central land known as Jacob-Israel. The Hebrew name Benjamin
(binyāmîn) means ‘sons of the south’. This suggests that at one time
Benjamin’s land was the southernmost portion of the affiliated groups
who were calling themselves Israel. Archaeological data are consistent
5 The Moabite stone presents Gad as an indigenous ethnic group who became pawns
in the wars between the Omri dynasty and Moab’s King Mesha. For discussion, see
E. A. Knauf, ‘King Solomon’s Copper Supply’, in E. Lipiński (ed.), Phoenicia and
the Bible (Leuven: Peeters, 1991), pp. 167–86 (178–9).
with this hypothesis. For centuries, the regions of Benjamin and

northward were inhabited but the region south of Benjamin was almost
entirely uninhabited. Later, this southern region became inhabited, and
this is the region the Bible calls Judah.
In other words, if one scans a map from north to south, one sees the core
of Jacob-Israel, then Benjamin just south of that core, and then Judah to
the south of Benjamin, and this is roughly the order in which these lands
became inhabited. The Bible provides a similar picture in an old poem now
located in Judges 5. According to that poem, the tribes of Israel fought
a battle against other Canaanites at a place called Megiddo. The poem
includes a tribal list that names 10, not 12, tribes of Israel. Several common
names do not appear (Joseph, Manasseh, Gad, Levi, Simeon) and several
uncommon names are included (Machir and Gilead). Judah is missing
entirely, and a number of researchers have suggested that this is because
the poem was written in an early era, when the region of Judah was not yet
inhabited and Benjamin was the southernmost geographic tribe of Israel.
Because Judah was a very late addition to Israel, the Bible’s use of
these two names can be confusing. Many parts of the Bible maintain
a distinction between Jacob-Israel to the north and Judah to the south
(for example, 2 Sam. 5.5; Isa. 65.9), but other parts of the Bible present
Judah as an integral portion within ‘all Israel’ (for example, 1 Chron.
2.1–2). Likewise, in some passages of the Bible, Benjamin is reckoned
as part of Israel to the north (for example, Judg. 3.15) and in other
passages it is part of Judah to the south (for example, 1 Kgs 12.20–1).
In a few cases, a biblical text uses the word Israel to designate the
region of Judah instead of the region of Israel (Isa. 44.23–28). A variety
of historians have tried to place these biblical texts in a chronological
sequence so that they can determine when each geographic region
became part of Israel or ceased to be part of Israel, but no hypothesis
has satisfied a majority of researchers. Likewise, hypotheses exist to
explain why the region of Judah seems to have adopted the name Israel
for itself at some, apparently late, stage in the formation of the biblical
literature (which seems to be the case in biblical books with a strongly
Judahite orientation, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah).6
6 For example, P. R. Davies, The Origins of Biblical Israel (London: T&T

Clark International, 2007); N. Na’aman, ‘The Israelite–Judahite Struggle for the
Patrimony of Ancient Israel’, Biblica 91 (2010), pp. 1–23; idem, ‘Saul, Benjamin,
and the Emergence of “Biblical Israel” (Part 2)’, ZAW 121 (2009), pp. 335–49.
From this survey it is clear that when you encounter the word Israel
in the Bible, it is always a good idea to pause and determine how that
word has been defined by the text you are reading at the moment. Israel
can be an eponymous ancestor, or a collection of tribal groups that are in
reality geographic regions somehow politically or socially aligned with
one another, or a kingdom in the central highlands of Palestine, or even
a substitute label for the kingdom of Judah and the city of Jerusalem.
To summarize, this book uses Canaan to designate the land of Syria
(northern half) and Palestine (southern half), as well as the common
cultural sphere associated with that region. In this approach, Israel is
viewed as one of many ethnic groups of Canaanites, people who lived
in the land of Canaan and participated in this common cultural sphere.
The common elements of Canaanite culture, as well as any distinctive
features associated with specific Canaanite ethnic groups, will be
clarified in other chapters of this book.
The Geography of the Ancient Near East and Canaan

As the map in Figure 2 shows, Canaan was the land bridge between three
great centers of ancient civilization. To the northeast lay Mesopotamia,
to the north Anatolia, and to the southwest Egypt.
The word Mesopotamia derives from the Greek language and means
‘between two rivers’. The two rivers were the Euphrates and the
Tigris. These rivers provided the water and rich soil that sustained
peoples called Assyrians (in the north) and Babylonians (in the south).
Important Mesopotamian cities included Nineveh and Ashur on the
Tigris, and Babylon on the Euphrates.
North of Canaan was Anatolia, home of a culture called Hatti. The
people were called Hittites. Just south of Anatolia, the northern portion
of Canaan was called Syria. Significant cities in Syria were Ugarit and
Byblos on the coast and Hamath on the Orontes River. The southern
half of Canaan was Palestine, in which the city of Jerusalem could be
found.
To the southwest of Canaan lay Egypt. An ancient Greek historian
named Herodotus called Egypt the ‘gift of the Nile’ because Egypt
was all desert except the fertile land created by the Nile River’s annual
flooding. Egypt can be subdivided into Upper Egypt (the southern
portion, higher in elevation) and Lower Egypt (the northern portion).
Lower Egypt (also called the Delta) is where the Nile River fans out
Figure 2. The ancient Near East
as it reaches the Mediterranean Sea. Lower Egypt was divided from

Upper Egypt by the important city of Memphis between the two.
Significant cities in Upper Egypt were Thebes and a border fortress
called Elephantine. Two of Lower Egypt’s primary cities were built
close together but existed at different times: first Avaris and later
Per-Ramesses.
Figure 2 shows that Canaan lay on a geographic arc that stretched
from Palestine (the region in which Jerusalem is located) northward
through Syria (where Hamath is located) and then eastward into
Mesopotamia. Some researchers call this geographic arc the Fertile
Crescent. Everything on the inside of this arc (the regions east and
southeast of Jerusalem) was desert wasteland. If an army wanted to
march from Babylon to Egypt, it would have to march through this great
arc, with its rivers and fertile lands. The army could not march directly
west across the desert, because the soldiers would have died en route.
That made Canaan strategically significant real estate. It was the focus
of many wars in ancient times.
Figures 3 and 4 are maps of Palestine, the southern half of Canaan.
This region is marked by a deep geological fault running north–south
that is called the Great Rift. The Great Rift runs from Canaan south
under the Red Sea and into eastern portions of the African continent.
This massive rift divides Palestine into four north–south zones:
Zone 1. The Coastal Plain, along the Mediterranean Sea
Zone 2. The Cisjordan Highlands, west of the Jordan River
Zone 3. The Jordan River Valley, part of the Great Rift
Zone 4. The Transjordan Highlands, east of the Jordan River
Each of these four zones possesses distinctive characteristics.
Zone 1. The Coastal Plain. This was the most densely populated
portion of Palestine throughout ancient times. This zone was divided
into two regions by Mount Carmel, which was part of the land mass
jutting into the Mediterranean Sea (see Figure 4). North of Mount
Carmel was Phoenicia, and south of Mount Carmel was the region the
Bible calls Philistia. The Coastal Plain was dotted by significant cities
(Sidon, Tyre, Dor, Joppa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza), many of which
were vital to international trade in ancient times.
Figure 3. Four zones

Zone 2. The Cisjordan Highlands. The geological backbone of

Palestine, this area was never as densely populated as the lowlands. A
significant lowland passageway through the middle of the Cisjordan
Highlands was the Jezreel Valley. North of the Jezreel Valley was the
region of Galilee, located west and north of Galilee Lake. There were
no significant cities in the Galilee, but two large cities bordered Galilee
where it meets the Jordan Valley: Dan (also called Laish), at the foot of
Mount Hermon, and Hazor, near Huleh Lake.
The Jezreel Valley was a wide, fertile passageway running from the
foot of Mount Carmel in the west to south of Galilee Lake in the east.
Because the Jezreel was the most significant lowland passage through
the Cisjordan Highlands, and a kind of agricultural breadbasket for the
region, it was strategic ground for any ruler who wanted to maintain
control over Palestine. The city of Megiddo overlooked the western
portions of this valley and Beth-shean marked the eastern side, where
the Jezreel met the Jordan River Valley.
The Cisjordan Highlands south of the Jezreel Valley and north of
Jerusalem (Figure 4) are the hills that the Bible calls either Jacob or
Israel; or Joseph; or Manasseh, Ephraim, and Benjamin. Much of the
Bible’s narrative takes place in or near this highland region. The city of
Samaria became the capital of the ancient kingdom called Israel. Other
significant cities were Tirzah, Shechem, and Bethel.
The Cisjordan Highlands from Jerusalem south past Bethlehem to
Hebron are called Judah in the Bible (see Figure 1). These highlands
were bounded on three sides by border regions. To the west of the
Judean highlands is a sloping region of foothills leading down toward
the Coastal Plain. These foothills were called the Shephelah, and
they were home to several significant cities: Gezer, Ekron, Gath, and
Lachish (Figure 4). To the south of Hebron lay the Negev desert, the
northernmost portion of which is the Negev Valley containing several
small cities: Beer-sheba, Masos, and Arad. To the east of the Judean
highlands, dropping sharply toward the Dead Sea, lay the Judean desert.
Zone 3. The Jordan River Valley. The Jordan River originates at
Mount Hermon (9,000 feet about sea level), west of the city called
Damascus. Its waters flow south into an ancient lake called Huleh Lake,
and from there continue south into the large freshwater Galilee Lake
(also called the Sea of Galilee). The Jordan continues south, rushing
ever downward to the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on Earth (1,300 feet
below sea level). The Dead Sea got its name because it is 25 percent
Figure 4. Ancient Palestine

salt, which means nothing can live in it. The region surrounding the
Dead Sea is arid desert. Two locations near the Dead Sea are Jericho
and Qumran.
Zone 4. The Transjordan Highlands. This zone is a series of hills
and valleys wedged between the Jordan Valley to the west and the
great Arabian Desert to the east. At the northern tip of the Transjordan
Highlands were the ancient city of Damascus and Mount Hermon.
Damascus was a home of the biblical Arameans. Just south of Galilee
Lake, the Yarmuk River divided Bashan to the north from Gilead to
the south. The River Jabbok marked the ancient region called Ammon,
home of the biblical Ammonites. South of that, the Arnon River marked
the territory of biblical Moab. At the southern extreme, this region
became a vast desert stretching to the Gulf of Aqabah-Elat on the north-
eastern finger of the Red Sea. The desert south of the Zered River was
biblical Edom.
Chronology of Ancient Canaan

The ways that humans reckon the passage of time are arbitrary. Most
cultures use a calendar based on Earth’s orbit around the sun. This solar
calendar contains 365 days per year. Since one full orbit does not end
precisely with the close of day 365, it is necessary to insert an extra
day into a solar calendar every fourth year. Some cultures prefer a lunar
calendar, based on phases of the moon. Twelve lunar orbits around
Earth coincide roughly, but not perfectly, with Earth’s seasons. These
constitute a year in the lunar calendar, provided an extra month is added
according to some fixed schedule so that the months stay in tune with
the seasons.
The arbitrary nature of time reckoning is especially apparent in
our seven-day week. Why seven days? Not every culture chose to
have a seven-day week. For example, prior to Caesar Augustus, the
Romans observed an eight-day week. But most ancient people believed
that there were seven ‘planets’. (They thought that a planet was a
‘wandering star’, a star that did not move in a fixed pattern with all
other stars.) Each planet, which was also a god, received a day in its
honor. Therefore most ancient peoples observed a seven-day week, as
did the Romans from the time of Augustus. Sun’s day and Moon’s day
remain evident in our names for days of the week, as does Saturn’s day.
These names derive from the Anglo-Saxon names of the gods, as do
all the names of our days: Tiw(5Mars)-day, Woden(5Mercury)-day,

Thor(5Jupiter)-day, Freya(5Venus)-day. The biblical creation story
in Genesis 1, in which a divine creator makes the universe in six days
and rests on the seventh, was a storyteller’s fictional explanation for a
customary seven-day week that had been common for centuries before
the Bible was written.
Our modern solar calendar is also arbitrary. It was introduced during
the reign of Julius Caesar (several generations before the birth of
Christ) and was modified many centuries later by Pope Gregory XIII
in the 1500s. The numbers assigned to our years are equally arbitrary.
For many centuries, a very different numbering system was employed.
However, as the Christian church began to dominate European culture
in the medieval period, it was decided to number the years from
the presumed date of the birth of Jesus Christ. A diligent medieval
monk consulted the meager records available to him and designated a
particular year during the reign of Caesar Augustus to be the year of
Christ’s birth. His calculations were off by at least four years, but he
had no way to know that. Our numbering of years remains determined
by that arbitrary and incorrect decision.
Today, many people are not comfortable with this numbering system
because it is sectarian, keyed to the doctrines of a religion that is not
universal. The abbreviation ad stands for anno Domini (‘in the year
of our Lord’). Therefore, when someone dates an event to a year ad,
that person has made a Christian confession of faith! Nevertheless, the
numbering system has become so ingrained that no one wants to change
it. So a compromise has emerged. Increasingly, the Christian labels are
replaced but the numbers remain unchanged. Now ce (for ‘Common
Era’) has replaced ad, and bce (for ‘before the Common Era’) has
replaced bc (‘before Christ’). The numbers have not changed. Julius
Caesar was assassinated in 44 bce or 44 bc, and the Second World War
began when German forces invaded Poland in 1939 ce or ad 1939.
Ancient cultures used a variety of calendars, and one fundamental
task of the historian is to key the ancient calendar systems to our
modern calendar, so that we can know when ancient events took place.
This is a complex topic that will not be surveyed here. Suffice it to
say that ancient Mesopotamia has given us calendars capable of being
correlated, after careful effort, to our calendar. To a lesser degree,
ancient Egypt offers some evidence for these correlations as well,
although some portions of Egyptian chronology remain a little fluid. (In
some cases, the dates assigned to a particular Egyptian king might vary
by several decades from one history book to another.) To determine
dates otherwise unknown, many clever methods are employed. For
example, when archaeologists uncover an ancient letter written by King
A to King B, we know immediately that Kings A and B were contem-
poraries. If King A has been correlated to our modern calendar, we now
have the means to determine a date for King B as well. Moreover, if
enough is known about King B’s dynasty, we can calculate the dates
for the kings before and after King B. When you read a history book,
the dates assigned to persons and events have been determined through
the painstaking process of creating these networks of correlations.
Archaeologists sometimes use scientific means, such as radiocarbon
(carbon-14) dating, to determine the age of artifacts. Almost without
exception, these scientifically determined dates for the artifacts are
compatible with dates already determined through the ‘old-fashioned’
method of correlated calendar systems.
All this effort has produced a table for the reckoning of time during
antiquity. The chapters and subsections of this book are arranged
according to Figure 5’s categories of time in the centuries bce.
Several aspects of this chart should be noted. First, the dates are
approximate and some resources use slightly different dates, especially
for the older periods. In some cases, the labels differ as well. For
example, the Greco-Roman era can be called the Hellenistic (which
means ‘Greek-like’) era. Also, the Neo-Babylonian era is labeled the
Iron Age III by a few archaeologists. A handful of archaeologists divide
the period this book calls Iron Age II into two periods called Iron Age
NAME OF ERA DATES (bce)

The Lithic Eras Prior to 3500
Bronze Age 3500–1550
Late Bronze Age 1550–1150
Iron Age I 1150–950
Transitional Decades 950–900
Iron Age II 900–586
Neo-Babylonian Era 586–539
Persian Era 539–332
Greco-Roman Era After 332
Figure 5. A chronology of Canaan
II and Iron Age III. The decades that this book calls the Transitional
Decades are part of Iron Age I in some books but part of Iron Age II in
others.
Second, labels for the early eras are based on technology. ‘Lithic
eras’ refers to the primary material used for making tools. Lithos means
‘stone’, so Lithic means ‘the stone age’. The oldest Lithic era was the
Paleolithic, the middle era was the Mesolithic, and the youngest or
‘newest’ was the Neolithic. After that, copper was introduced even
as stone remained the primary medium for tools, so this era is called
Chalcolithic, which means ‘copper-stone age’. After copper was intro-
duced, people learned to strengthen this metal by mixing about 10
percent tin with copper to make bronze. Although iron was known
during the Bronze Age, it became common in the era called the Iron
Age.
Toward the end of the chronology in Figure 5, technology is no
longer the basis for the labels. The Iron Age is followed by periods of
time labeled according to political and cultural domination. First, the
Neo-Babylonians became dominant, then the Persians, followed by the
Greeks, and finally the Romans. This switch of labeling from technol-
ogies to political and cultural dominion was a purely practical decision
by historians. From the technological perspective, all these periods
remain part of the Iron Age. In fact, one could say that the Iron Age
came to a close only very recently, when computer technology began to
transform people’s lives almost as dramatically as did iron technology
when it was introduced. Because the era of iron technology was so long,
historians decided to switch to political labels rather than continue with
the numbering of Iron Ages (I, II, III, etc.).
Another important feature of this chronology is that the numbers
get smaller as one moves toward recent times. The year 586 bce
happened before the year 332 bce. Related to this is the numbering of
centuries. Because the first century bce includes years 100 to 1 bce,
and the second century includes years 200 to 101 bce, the number of
the century differs from the one-hundreds column of the year-dates. For
example, the year 586 bce was in the sixth century bce, and the year
332 bce was in the fourth century bce. This counting system is part of
your own experience. You live during the twenty-first century ce, but
the years are numbered in the 2000s, not the 2100s.
One final comment about the chronology chart in Figure 5: many
books dealing with the Bible use a different set of labels. For example,
the Neo-Babylonian era is sometimes called the Exilic Period by Bible

scholars. This is because the Bible tells a story about some people from
Jerusalem who were sent into exile during this era. That labeling system
calls the Persian era the Post-Exilic Era, and labels the Iron Age II the
Pre-Exilic Period or the Monarchic Period. Some call the Iron Age I
the Pre-Monarchic Era. All these labels are inadequate because they
burden an entire era with a label that applies, at best, to a few people
mentioned in the Bible. In addition, some researchers assume that the
Bible’s emphasis on temples that were built in the city of Jerusalem
reflects a religious belief shared by the majority of ancient people
living in Palestine. On the basis of this assumption, these scholars
have labeled the Iron Age II the First Temple Period, and they have
named the Persian and Greco-Roman eras the Second Temple Period.
All these labels that derive from Bible stories (or in some cases, from
idiosyncratic modern interpretations of Bible stories) are inadequate for
historical research. This book will use the labels that appear in Figure 5.
A Word about the Bible

Ancient Canaan produced one of the most famous works of literature in
the world – the Bible. Since it is a genuine artifact from the culture to
be considered in this book, the Bible will be a constant partner in our
conversation.
However, discussing the Bible as though it were a single entity is
misleading. The Bible is not a single book, but an anthology of books.
Prior to the Common Era, each of the books of the Bible circulated
independently on its own leather or papyrus scroll (papyrus was the
ancient world’s paper). During the early centuries of the Common
Era, the codex was invented. Unlike a scroll, a codex consisted of
individual sheets bound together on one edge. The codex was the
earliest version of a book, a bound volume with pages inside. When
the codex was invented, Jews and Christians were able to gather
individual scrolls and copy their contents into a single bound volume.
These early anthologies evolved, eventually, into the Bible as we know
it today. The ancient authors who composed the scrolls that were later
included in the anthology had no idea that they were contributing to
the Bible. Therefore, when I write about the Bible in the following
pages, I am discussing a loose anthology of literature, and a number of
the documents in that anthology have little or no relationship to other
documents in the same anthology. You might want to think of the Bible
as the ancient equivalent of an e-book reader, a very early Kindle. The
contents of the Bible did not depend on the people who wrote each
book, but on the personal interests of the individuals who gathered
books into a single collection, as routinely happens on an electronic
storage system.
Today, many people believe that the Bible exists because the books
it contains proclaim a message about a divine being. This, too, is
misleading. People believe this only because that is how the Bible is
interpreted by religious communities. However, the way that readers
interpret does not necessarily correspond to the way that the literature
was intended to be interpreted.7
It would be more accurate to say that these books were gathered
together because they were valuable to the ancient people who gathered
them, and one should suspend judgment about what kind of value they
saw in the literature until after long and careful study of the Bible has
been undertaken. Some of the literature gathered into the Bible was not
religious at all. For example, the Song of Songs (also called the Song
of Solomon or Canticles) is an ancient collection of secular love poetry.
Other books are, at best, nominally religious or even openly skeptical
about religious truth-claims. A book called Ecclesiastes (also called
Qoheleth) is an example. Even books of the Bible that are explicitly
religious do not always agree with one another about which kind of
religion is best (for example, Leviticus and Deuteronomy sometimes
contradict one another). It is never a good idea to assume that one
book of the Bible is trying to tell you the same thing as another book
of the Bible. As a matter of fact, some biblical books are themselves
anthologies of earlier literature, which means that a single book might
contain materials that are mutually contradictory (the book of Genesis
is an example). The modern reader of the Bible needs to remember
this reality so that biblical literature does not become bewilderingly
incomprehensible.
A final preliminary thought should be kept in mind: there is not one
Bible, but several. Because a variety of ancient religious communities
chose to select and distribute anthologies of literature, alternative
7 K. L. Noll, ‘The Evolution of Genre in the Hebrew Anthology’, in C. A. Evans

and H. D. Zacharias (eds), Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality: Volume
1: Thematic Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 10–23.
Figure 6. Three modern Bibles
versions of the Bible emerged. Several of these alternatives have

survived the centuries and still exist today. In the Western world, the
three most widely circulating Bibles are the Jewish Bible, the Roman
Catholic Bible, and the Protestant Bible (see Figure 6). The Jewish
Bible is the most conservative of the three. It contains fewer books
and shorter versions of some books that appear in expanded forms
elsewhere. The two Christian Bibles, Roman Catholic and Protestant,
call the books of the Jewish Bible the Old Testament, but they also
rearrange the order in which some of the Jewish books appear. Also,
the Roman Catholic Bible contains a number of books not included in
either the Jewish Bible or the Protestant Bible. And, of course, both
Christian Bibles include an appendix called the New Testament that is
not accepted as scripture by Jews. From a historian’s perspective, all of
these variant Bibles are artifacts from ancient times and, therefore, all
are worthy of the historian’s attention and study.
Suggested Additional R eading

Bickerman, E. J., Chronology of the Ancient World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2nd edn, 1980).
Davies, Philip R., and John Rogerson, The Old Testament World (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2nd edn, 2005).
Kirkpatrick, Patricia G., The Old Testament and Folklore Study (JSOTSup, 62;
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988).
Tonkin, Elizabeth, Maryon McDonald, and Malcolm Chapman (eds), History and
Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1989).
Common Bible Translations

A Jewish Bible: Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the
Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).
A Protestant Bible: The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1978).
A Roman Catholic Bible: The New American Bible (London: Thomas Nelson, 1983).
An Ecumenical Bible: The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
Chapter 2
What is ‘History’?
Introduction
How do we know what we think we know? Before one can discuss the
ancient past, it is necessary to determine how one is able to discuss the
ancient past. Historians disagree with one another on points both large
and small. How can you decide which historian’s viewpoint is more
reasonable? This chapter offers some ideas that might help you evaluate
any historical narrative.
Differing Definitions of ‘History’

History is an ambiguous word. It can mean different things, depending
on the context in which it is used. In popular usage, history often means
‘the past’ – history is what has happened. In this book, history never
designates the past. The past will be designated by the word ‘past’.
This book defines history as a construction of the past, usually in
narrative form.1 Obviously a history defined as a construction of the
past is not identical to the past. No history could narrate every event of
the past, nor would a reader want to read that kind of history. A history
is a selection of details from the past, placed in a particular order, to
provide a meaningful interpretation of the past. This is what is meant
by a ‘construction’ of the past.
If history is a construction of the past, it can take many forms. A
newspaper, such as the New York Times (or a news-oriented website,
such as nytimes.com), offers an informal history about recent events.
By contrast, an academic journal devoted to the study of the past offers
1 For my purposes, a definition is a working hypothesis that enhances one’s ability

to perceive. Throughout this book, I offer definitions for this purpose, and I do
not intend to suggest that other definitions are impossible or useless.
an entirely different form of history. The academic journal usually

provides two texts, sometimes printed on the same page. The main
text, which is always called the text, is a construction of the past. The
second text, called the apparatus, provides footnotes or endnotes or a
bibliography. Though often ignored by the casual reader, the apparatus
enables a careful reader to verify or refute the construction of the past
that appears in the main text.
Because a history is not the past but a construction that interprets the
past, a history can be inaccurate. Depending on the motivations of the
historian, a history could be nothing more than distortions or lies. In
other cases, a history could present the facts accurately but spin those
facts in a misleading way. However, even an honest historian who has
no intention of telling lies might produce an inaccurate history if honest
mistakes have been made when interpreting the facts. When you think
about it this way, you can see that it is far easier to produce, either inten-
tionally or by mistake, a false history than it is to produce a true history.
The goal of an academic historian is to approach the truth by elimi-
nating as much falsehood as possible. That is why academic history
frequently infuriates those who prefer popular histories. Popular history
is popular precisely because its interpretation of the past conforms to a
widespread set of popular beliefs. Those beliefs might derive from any
number of sources other than the facts of a real past or an honest inter-
pretation of those facts. For example, a historical novel might narrate
the facts of an event correctly, but so glamorize or pillory certain partic-
ipants that it renders the narrative false to a significant degree. Even if
this historical novel is popular, the academic historian is not satisfied.
Hollywood films that claim to be ‘based on a true story’ often distort the
past by eliminating specific events or combining the actions of several
people into one fictional character. The film simplifies the past for enter-
tainment’s sake and, once again, the historian is not satisfied.
Three Types of Academic History

Because every history is an interpretation of the past, there is no such
thing as an objective or unbiased history. Recognizing this fact, academic
historians attempt to neutralize as much bias as possible. Nevertheless, not
every academic history is the same, because each has its own intention of
communication. That is to say, in each case, the historian who constructs
a past does so for a specific reason and hopes to achieve a specific result.
2. What is ‘History’? 25
Among academic historians, there are at least three types of histories,

each with its own intention of communication. The first of these is
positivist history and the second can be called humanist history. The
third does not have a name because many academic historians have not
formally recognized it as a distinct type of history. Nevertheless, the
intention of communication in this third type of history differs radically
from the intentions of the first two. In this book, it will be labeled
ideological history.
Positivist History. Positivism is a philosophy, not a type of history
writing. However, historians who accept the philosophical principles
of positivism and apply those principles to study of the past have
created positivist history. As a philosophy, positivism limits formal
conversation to facts, eliminating all opinion. This does not mean that a
positivist hates all opinions. It means only that the positivist prefers to
limit philosophical conversation to facts.
A rule of thumb accepted by many positivists is this: any statement
that cannot be verified or falsified is a meaningless statement. Consider
this statement: ‘Potentially, this caterpillar will become a moth or
butterfly.’ This is meaningful because it can be verified or falsified
through observation. Another example of a meaningful statement is
‘Frogs always become human princes when kissed.’ The statement is
meaningful because it, too, can be verified or falsified (if you care to
do so!). The first example is both meaningful and true, but the second
statement is meaningful and false. Here is an example of a meaningless
statement: ‘God made caterpillars and frogs to teach us lessons about
life.’ The statement is meaningless on several levels. First, the concept
of a god is not open to verification or falsification and is therefore
meaningless. Second, the belief that biological creatures exist for a
purpose, any purpose, is impossible to demonstrate or refute. Therefore,
this belief is meaningless. The positivist rejects the third sample
statement because it is meaningless, not because it is false.
When positivism becomes a type of history, the intention of commu-
nication is to describe what happened as objectively as possible. This
can be challenging, because the positivist must find a way to deal with
the subjectivity of human experience while avoiding statements of
personal opinion.
Consider the outlaw Jesse James as viewed by a positivist historian.
From the end of the American Civil War in 1865 until his violent death
in 1882, Jesse James robbed a variety of targets, especially banks and
trains. During his career, popular accounts in newspapers and fictional

dime novels portrayed James as an American Robin Hood who robbed
the rich and gave to the poor. This portrait of Jesse James did not
disappear when James was shot dead. A traditional folk ballad, still sung
today, includes the following lyrics:2
Jesse James was a lad that killed many a man;
He robbed the Glendale train.
He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor,
With a hand and a heart and a brain.
These song lyrics demonstrate that, even though he has been dead for
more than a century, the memory of Jesse James stirs human emotions
and generates opinions about the man’s legacy and worth. A positivist
historian must deal with this reality and also avoid expressions of
personal opinion.
Although the folk song about Jesse James is a history in the sense
that it constructs a past, the positivist is interested to know whether the
assertions in it are meaningful and true. The last line of the poem is
meaningless, nothing but a poetic flourish. It is neither true nor false.
The first three lines are meaningful because one can examine evidence
and either verify or falsify their assertions.
Because a positivist is extremely cautious when sifting through the
available data, he or she often debunks popular historical accounts.
In this case, research demonstrates that it was James himself who
promoted the Robin Hood analogy, and not a shred of evidence supports
the claim that he ever enriched anyone but himself. Moreover, James
often shot and killed his unarmed victims.3 The positivist concludes that
two of the poem’s lines are meaningful and true: this man killed many
people and robbed many trains. But the third line is meaningful and
false: Jesse James was no Robin Hood.
The method of positivist history is useful but limited, and it has been
criticized for one weakness in particular. Positivism concentrates on
2 This version of the lyrics is from Anonymous, ‘Jesse James’, in J. Tottle (ed.),
Bluegrass Mandolin (New York: Oak Publications, 1975), p. 57. A Web search
will produce many variations on this song, including versions that have been
recorded by popular musicians.
3 T. J. Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (New York: Vintage Books,
2002). For discussion of the Robin Hood theme, see especially pp. 224–5, 236–9,
381–92.
facts, but facts do not explain their own significance; the interpreter
must do that. For this reason, it is impossible to exclude all statements
of opinion from an account of the past. Indeed, the very process of
sifting through the evidence involves personal values. In most research,
there are too many facts and one is not able to report them all. If the
historian chooses to mention one fact and not another, this decision is
based on an exercise of personal opinion.
The example of Jesse James illustrates why a positivist historian
is never able to avoid his or her own opinions. The folk tradition that
made a hero of Jesse James is based on a genuine fact. It is a fact that
James wrote letters to newspapers in which he portrayed himself as a
Robin Hood. Apparently his own propaganda influenced popular tradi-
tions about him. Another fact is that, although no evidence suggests that
James ever gave money to the poor, there is no explicit evidence to deny
that he did so. Which of these facts is more significant? In the end, the
positivist historian’s judgment is based on probability. It seems probable
that any gift of stolen cash to the poor might have generated a traceable
folk memory about Jesse James, but none exists. Certainly the positivist
historian holds an opinion that is much better informed than the popular
culture that produced the song lyrics quoted above, but it remains an
opinion nevertheless.
Humanist History. Today most historians continue to admire and
use the methods of research perfected by positivists, but they rarely
identify themselves as positivists. A variety of other labels are common,
but these labels can be subsumed under one general heading: humanist
history. Like positivism, humanism is a philosophy, not a type of
history. Nevertheless, those who accept the principles of humanism and
apply those principles to study of the past produce humanist history.
Humanism is difficult to define because there are many varieties of
humanist philosophy. All varieties have two elements in common. First,
humanists promote the subjective value judgment that every individual
person possesses dignity and deserves respect. Second, humanism
prefers to limit formal philosophical discussion to the natural world,
avoiding any speculation about the supernatural. Like the positivist
who avoids opinion but does not hate it, the humanist avoids specu-
lation about the supernatural only because such speculation cannot
enhance our understanding of humans and their natural context. The
humanist remains human-centered when engaged in research. For
example, a humanist might study the religious truth-claims affirmed by
a religious community but will refrain from believing those religious

truth-claims. Instead, these truth-claims are treated as beliefs and, as
such, help us to understand the people who hold these beliefs.
In many cases, it might be difficult to notice a clear difference
between a history that was written by a positivist and a history composed
by a humanist. Humanism’s avoidance of the supernatural makes it
compatible with positivism’s desire to focus on meaningful statements.
The process of gathering and evaluating evidence is identical. Both
types of history try to avoid speculation that goes beyond the facts. The
difference between the two rests with the intention of communication.
If a positivist historian intends to describe what happened, the
humanist prefers to focus on who was involved in the events. The
positivist seeks (but never quite achieves) objectivity. The humanist
hopes to understand the human condition as it has been experienced
in the past. The ever-present humanist questions are ‘Who were these
people?’ and ‘What were their lives like?’
The best way to clarify the difference between these two types of
history is to consider an example. During the American Civil War, a
battle was fought at a place called Shiloh. Soldiers who had fought
at Shiloh claimed that a key part of this battle took place in an open
Figure 7. ‘Belonging to Shema, slave of Jeroboam’. Artifacts from the past

generate the question ‘Who were these people?’
field bounded at one end by a dirt road. According to the veterans,

waves of Confederate troops charged across this open field to attack
Union soldiers defending the road. The central defensive position
along the dirt road gained the nickname ‘Hornet’s Nest’ because of the
metaphorical sting of bullets. The Union soldiers held the Hornet’s Nest
against repeated assaults and, so the story goes, the tenacity of these
soldiers spared the Union side from a devastating defeat.
Positivists have noted that many of the facts about the battle of
Shiloh do not match the story told by the veterans who survived in
the Hornet’s Nest. Positivists have examined officers’ records of troop
positions that were kept during the events, as well as medical reports
about the locations and numbers of wounded and dead. From these
data, positivists can argue that the Hornet’s Nest had been a focus of a
few skirmishes but was not strategically central to the battle’s outcome.
Most of that day’s battle did not take place in an open field, but on the
flanks, where Confederate soldiers were able to use forests and thickets
as cover against Union bullets. The soldiers in the Nest remembered
their own role in the battle and, having survived, were eager to promote
those memories, but they distorted their own strategic significance in
the process of retelling their tale.4
This example illustrates how the positivist and the humanist can
agree on the objective facts and yet write different types of history.
From a positivist’s perspective, the memories of soldiers who fought
in the battle are not as accurate as other sources of data and are not the
focus of a historical narrative. If we want to know what really happened,
field archaeology combined with documentation of troop movements
and medical records can reveal the actual events. The humanist is not
satisfied to stop with this positivist account of what happened.
From a humanist’s perspective, the faulty perception of the Union
war veterans is a vital element for one who hopes to understand a
significant battle. In the confusion of a heated battle, the men in the
Hornet’s Nest perceived their role as central, for that was the only part
of the battle they experienced. At day’s end, they were amazed to have
held their ground, not realizing that their life-and-death struggle, while
4 As with many battles, there are quite a few popular accounts of Shiloh that are
not consistent with the evidence. For entry into this complex historical topic,
see T. B. Smith, The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006).
genuine, was not strategically significant. The tale that these veterans
told may not be what happened, and yet it is worthwhile to see it from
their perspective, a perspective that is as limited as any human-centered
perspective always must be, and therefore central to understanding this
life-and-death situation. In other words, the positivist and the humanist
will interpret this battle differently, because the positivist is concerned
with what happened and the humanist prefers to focus on the experience
of the people involved.
Ideological History. In spite of the very different intentions of
communication between positivist and humanist histories, these two
types share an interest in the past for the sake of the past. The goal
is to understand the past as something that is fixed and finished, and
interesting in its own right. This shared value about why the past
matters is quite rare. More often, especially but not exclusively at the
popular level, historical narratives construct the past with an eye on the
present. In my view, this constitutes a different type of history because
it involves a different intention of communication.
People who study the past because they want to mold and influence
the direction that the present is taking write a type of history that I
call ideological. Usually, this third type of history is composed by
individuals who identify with a group that advances a cause of some
kind. The cause might be political, social, religious, economic, or even
ethical. It is a history not for the sake of the past but for the sake of the
present, and perhaps the future.
Ideology has been defined in many ways. In an effort to place the word
in a neutral light, I prefer this definition: an ideology is any reasonable
hypothesis designed to defend the legitimacy of an identity group. In other
words, to qualify as an ideological history, a hypothesis about the past
must possess two specific qualities. First, it must be reasonable. Crazed,
paranoid hypotheses about the past, such as Holocaust denial, do not
qualify as ideological because they are utter nonsense. Second, a hypothesis
about the past qualifies as an ideological history if it is designed to defend
a group with which the person who advances the hypothesis identifies.
Many narratives about the past fit these two specific qualities. Marxists
write Marxist history; capitalists promote capitalist history; and feminists
advance feminist history, to name just a few. The common element in every
ideological history, and the element that distinguishes ideological history
from either positivist or humanist history, is the intention of communication.
Ideological history has constructed a past to advance a cause in the present.
Ideological history can be good history or bad history. At its best,

ideological history can be as sound as anything that a positivist or
humanist has written, advancing our knowledge about the past. At its
worst, ideological history distorts the past to defend an agenda in the
present.
An example illustrates ideological history at its worst and at its best.
In the United States prior to the Civil War, most people of African
descent were slaves. After the Civil War, a descendant of slave owners
wrote a history in which the institution of slavery was described as
benign and beneficial to slaves.5 Although this historian gathered
valuable factual data that no one can dispute, the spin of his narrative
downplayed many other facts that were inconvenient to his ideological
interpretation of the past. Later, an African American scholar wrote a
history that undermined the thesis of a benign and beneficial institution
of slavery.6 He was motivated by an ideological desire to affirm the
positive role played in America by people of African descent. A third
ideological historian, a Marxist, responded directly to the ‘benign and
beneficial slavery’ thesis.7 His book demonstrated that the economic
institution of slavery was complex as well as brutal, demeaning for both
slave and slave owner, and the author stressed that slaves found ways to
resist slavery even prior to the Civil War’s attempt to liberate them. All
three of these histories were ideological. The second and third of them
produced sound interpretations that compel Americans to wrestle with
a difficult part of their country’s past.
Whether good or bad, ideological history can be subtle and, if a
reader does not notice this history’s intention of communication, the
5 U. B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (New York: Appleton and Co., 1918);
reprinted as American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and
Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1966). My thanks to Dr. Terry Beckenbaugh for
this reference and for general clarification of the scholarship dealing with slavery
in the antebellum South and with the Civil War.
6 W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part
Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America,
1860–1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1935).
7 E. D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York:
Pantheon, 1974). Genovese built on and critiqued significant research by K. M.
Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York:
Knopf, 1956). Later, Genovese repudiated Marxism.
reader can be misled. Consider an example from Libya during the

1970s. A traditional kin group called the Zuwaya of Libya maintained
a vibrant oral tradition about the exploits of their ancestors in various
wars. Colorful tales about struggles against Ottoman Turks, the French,
and the Italians were handed down in a loose storytelling fashion
that tended to collapse chronology, misremember social or political
contexts, obscure significant details, and exaggerate human valor, but
was rarely entirely inaccurate. During the 1970s, a Libyan government
official, working for the totalitarian ruler Qaddafi, collected oral stories
from a member of the Zuwaya for inclusion in an official government
history. The government official interpreted this man’s memories as
examples of the Zuwaya’s participation in Qaddafi’s ‘national struggle
of the Jihad’.8 In this example, an ideological history has exploited
genuine, albeit imperfect, data about real events to construct a past that
never was.
The example from Libya is particularly significant in light of this
book’s title: Canaan and Israel in Antiquity. Because our topic is closely
related to a Bible deemed sacred by millions of people today, ideological
historians frequently write histories about ancient Israel. Some of these
historians are Jews who take pride in their Jewish heritage and others
are Christians (and a few Muslims) who view Israelite history as a
prologue to their own religious heritage. There is nothing wrong with
these ideological motivations, but a reader of an ideological history
should have the savvy to recognize the intention of communication and
possible temptations toward distortion that this intention might entail.
For example, a history of ancient Israel that dominated North American
universities and seminaries some forty to fifty years ago was composed,
quite overtly, as a Protestant Christian spin on the Bible.9 Its author was
an expert in the evidence from the ancient world but consistently found
ways to make the evidence endorse his own religious interpretation
of the Bible. Like Qaddafi’s ‘national struggle of the Jihad’, religious
8 J. Davis, ‘The Social Relations of the Production of History’, in E. Tonkin, M.

McDonald, and M. Chapman (eds), History and Ethnicity (London: Routledge,
1989), pp. 104–20 (113–15).
9 J. Bright, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959). Several
revised editions have been published. For an evaluation of Bright’s ideological
spin, see K. L. Noll, ‘Looking On the Bright Side of Israel’s History’, BibInt 7
(1999), pp. 1–27.
interpretations of the Bible tend to transform elements of an ancient,

dead culture into stories about ‘ancestors in the faith’. (This was the
case already in ancient times; for examples, see Sirach 44–50 and
Hebrews 11.) These religiously motivated histories are another instance
in which ideological historians have exploited genuine, albeit imperfect,
data from the past to construct a past that never was.
In sum, types of history differ from one another with respect to their
intentions of communication. Ideological histories engage in what
one philosopher has called ‘retrospective politics’.10 The other two
types of history, by contrast, study the past because the past is inter-
esting to study. Positivists and humanists think of the past as fixed and
finished, yet fascinating, and useful to the present only in the sense that
knowledge of the past enriches our lives in many and unexpected ways.
However, these two types part company over intentions of communi-
cation as well. The positivist tends to ask ‘What has happened?’ but the
humanist prefers to ask ‘Who were these people?’ As a result, the kinds
of narrative they produce differ in many, often subtle, ways.
The book you are reading is designed to be a humanist history,
although at times it will seem more like a positivist history. Because
the people whose lives this book hopes to examine died more than two
thousand years ago, it is often all we can do merely to determine the
basic facts as a positivist would define them. When possible, I intend to
go beyond those basic facts and ask, ‘Who were these people and what
were their lives like?’
Tools for Study of the Ancient Past

A study of the ancient past is difficult because the eyewitnesses are
long dead, the evidence that survives is, at best, fragmentary and
incomplete, and, most significantly, the cultural assumptions shared by
ancient people have disappeared. Those ancient cultural assumptions
are crucial, for they gave meaning to everything an ancient person did
or said. Think of all the routine activities in your own life. Would you
bother with most of them if you were suddenly transported out of your
culture and into a wholly different one, with alien values and assump-
tions? Your deeds and words have meaning to you because they are
10 M. Oakeshott, ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’, in Rationalism in Politics

(New York: Basic Books, 1962), pp. 137–67.
grounded in a particular social context. Out of that context, they become

meaningless. Likewise, if historians examine an artifact or document
from ancient times but do not know the cultural values that made the
artifact or document important, how can they evaluate its significance?
Both artifact and document were part of a network of interrelated
activities and their associated meanings.
Two tools for recapturing the ancient social context are archaeology
and textual research. A specific example of textual research that is
pertinent to the subject of this book is the collection known as the Dead
Sea Scrolls. We turn now to these three topics.
Archaeology. The stereotyped image of the archaeologist is a person
wearing a pith helmet and covered in dust, scraping layers of dirt from an
ancient mound called a tel. However, archaeology is not only digging up
artifacts buried in the ground. Archaeology is the systematic recovery and
careful examination of artifacts from the past. The objects recovered might
have been buried in the ground, but sometimes they are at the bottom of an
ocean or lake, or hidden in a cave or an old vault. In some cases, the objects
were never buried or lost, only neglected. In all cases, the archaeologist does
two things. First, the archaeologist recovers the artifacts in a systematic way,
recording the exact find-spot and the treatment of the object from the time
of its finding. This gives the artifact an official record called a provenance.
Second, the archaeologist examines the artifacts carefully, using methods
that have evolved through the combination of several academic disciplines.
An artifact’s provenance has two important aspects. First, every
artifact that has a provenance can be compared and contrasted with all
other provenanced artifacts. In this way, the archaeologist notes patterns
of similarity and difference in the find-spots from which the artifacts
were recovered, and then relates those patterns to the qualities of the
artifacts themselves. If a sufficient quantity of artifacts from a variety
of find-spots can be examined, a portrait of daily life begins to emerge.
A second important aspect of provenance is its capacity to protect
an artifact’s value. Without its provenance, the artifact is nothing more
than an object. Because archaeology involves the destruction of the site
under investigation (when an ancient village or campsite is dug up, it is
destroyed), each artifact’s provenance is the only source of information
about it. Every future reevaluation of the excavation depends on the
precision with which each artifact’s provenance has been documented.
In contrast to properly excavated artifacts, many objects turn up on the
antiquities market. These objects were not recovered by archaeologists;
they were dug up by poachers who earn their living from illegal
excavation. More often than not, the objects are utterly useless to an
archaeologist because they lack a provenance. In the absence of that
provenance, an artifact is nothing more than a curiosity, incapable of
telling its story. It is fair to say that an object on the antiquities market
is an artifact that has been desecrated.
Lack of provenance often requires the researcher to reject an object,
because high-quality fakes have become common. Those who earn a
living from the sale of antiquities can read academic publications by
expert archaeologists. These publications describe, in great detail, the
rigorous tests to which an artifact is subjected. Some people who lack
scruples have developed sophisticated methods to undermine these tests
and trick the experts. For example, a few years ago a stone inscription
appeared on the antiquities market. This inscription seemed to be a
monument for display in an ancient temple, and its details were similar
to those in 2 Kings 12. At first, many researchers (including myself)
thought this object was too good to be true, and then we realized it
really was too good to be true. Scientific examination revealed that the
inscription was a modern forgery.11 Today, forgeries have become so
sophisticated that many researchers are reluctant to accept historical
hypotheses that rely on objects that lack a provenance.12
The second stage of archaeological research is the systematic exami-
nation of each artifact recovered from an excavation. It is impossible for
one person to do this alone. The examination process involves experts
from many disciplines, including geologists, chemists, anthropolo-
gists, historians, art historians, and architects. The goal of examination
is to reconstruct the context of daily life in the time and place under
investigation.
If a clay pot is recovered, for example, it might undergo seven or more
examinations. An art historian can study its shape, size, and markings,
comparing it to other pottery styles known from antiquity. A scientist
11 Y. Goren et al., ‘Authenticity Examination of the Jehoash Inscription’, Tel

Aviv 31 (2004), pp. 3–16. See also F. M. Cross, ‘Notes on the Forged Plaque
Recording Repairs to the Temple’, IEJ 53 (2003), pp. 119–23; I. Eph‘al, ‘The
“Jehoash Inscription”, a Forgery’, IEJ 53 (2003), pp. 124–8.
12 C. A. Rollston, ‘Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced
Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic’, Maarav 11 (2004),
pp. 57–79.
can perform tests such as petrography and neutron activation analysis.

The former analyzes the physical composition of the clay and the latter
traces its geographic source. An anthropologist can study how the pot
was used, comparing its function to the larger cultural matrix of which it
was just one element. An economist can attempt to discern how the pot
fits into the trade relationships of the community in which it was used.
A botanist can examine and test the pot’s content, searching for traces
of ancient grains, beer, or wine. If animal bones were found in the pot,
an osteologist can examine them. If there is writing on its surface, an
epigrapher can examine the letters or words to determine matters such
as the identity and age of the dialect (historical linguistics) and style of
formation for the individual letters (paleography). And, of course, the
content of the inscription will be of interest as well! As each artifact is
studied, a body of data accumulates, so that the corporate personality of
an archaeological site begins to emerge.
The two most common methods of field archaeology are vertical
and horizontal. Vertical archaeology is better known. In the study of
ancient Canaan, it is usually, though not always, associated with a tel.
A tel (which is the Hebrew word for ‘ruin’) is a mound that had been
an ancient city. In ancient times, it was a good idea to build a city on
high ground, for protection against flood and invasions. When a city
was abandoned or destroyed, its ruins were left as they had fallen.
Later, when others decided to build a city, they usually built on the
same spot for the same reason: the tel was high ground. After that city
collapsed, another would be built on the ruins, and so forth. Over the
millennia, a tel could grow through constant rebuilding to a height of
fifty feet or more. Archaeologists can cut a trench down through the
tel, removing earth and ruins like a slice of layer cake. By so doing
they are able to examine the layers of occupation that have accumu-
lated through the ages. Each layer is called a stratum (plural: strata;
see Figure 8).
Less glamorous but equally significant is horizontal archaeology,
which is the systematic survey of land surfaces. As the centuries roll by,
some of the broken pottery from a long-buried village or city will make
its way to the surface. This might happen as burrowing animals bring
dirt to the surface, rains erode a hillside, or farmers plow the ground.
In fact, so many changes stir a given section of land over the millennia
that one can expect to find a reliable random sample of tiny potsherds
on the surface of the site at any given time. If these potsherds are
Figure 8. Sample stratigraphy

gathered in a systematic way, they provide a statistically valid data-set

for constructing the occupational history of a site or an entire region.
One very significant historical hypothesis comes from systematic
horizontal surveys: estimates of population size. Frequently, in later
chapters, you will read that a certain number of people lived in a
particular city or geographic region. How are these numbers deter-
mined? They are educated guesses. First, the archaeologist surveys
societies of our own time whose traditional lifestyles and daily use
of objects match those of the archaeological record. The researcher
determines, on the basis of averages from many samples, the number of
people who live in a given house type, village type, and so forth. This
provides the archaeologist with a population density coefficient that can
be applied to ancient times with similar lifestyles. The coefficient is an
average number of people for a given type of occupational site.13
Pottery, especially broken pottery, is the most common category of
artifact found at any archaeological excavation. The humble clay pot
provides the most significant key to unlocking the ancient past. Pottery
breaks easily, so it was replaced regularly, and every village produced
thousands of potsherds. Sometimes, these potsherds were reused by the
ancients in creative ways. Some of the larger pieces became stationery.
In spite of the ragged edges of these broken pieces, the smooth clay
surfaces were ideal for writing tax receipts, letters, and inventory lists.
In other cases, thousands of potsherds were gathered and used as floors
for a room or patio. Sometimes potsherds became part of the fill needed
for the foundations of building projects. More often, however, potsherds
were simply discarded. Bits of pottery were the roadside trash of the
ancient world.
Often, the strata of an archaeological dig can be dated on the basis
of these potsherds. How is this possible? It is done by a method called
13 For discussion of method, see M. Broshi and I. Finkelstein, ‘The Population

of Palestine in Iron Age II’, BASOR 287 (1992), pp. 47–60, with significant
bibliography on pp. 47–8, 58–60. For additional discussion and bibliography,
see O. Lipschits, ‘Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and
Fifth Centuries B.C.E.’, in O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp (eds), Judah and the
Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003),
pp. 323–76; and G. Lehman, ‘Reconstructing the Social Landscape of Early
Israel: Rural Marriage Alliances in the Central Hill Country’, Tel Aviv 31 (2004),
pp. 141–93 (152). Throughout this book, population estimates are from books
and articles cited in notes or listed in the suggested additional readings.
pottery typology. This is the study of pottery style aimed at determining

a sequence of style change. To use a modern example, think of the
way car and truck designs change from year to year. The person who
knows enough about cars can date a car by its size and shape, the style
of its bumper or headlights, its accessories, and so forth. One can do
the same with Coca-Cola containers. The thick, dark bottles common
in the late nineteenth century gave way to thinner, more stylized bottles
in the early twentieth century. Later, Coke was distributed in cans, and
eventually plastic containers. One who knows enough about Coca-Cola
packaging can date a photograph by examining the Coke container held
by a person in the photo.
Art historians and archaeologists have reconstructed a complex
network of data on the stylistic changes in ancient pottery. The pottery,
thus sequenced, provides a relative chronology so that pots found in an
excavation can be matched to the sequence. In some cases, the sequence
of pottery styles can provide an occupation date for a site to within a
century or so.
Like all methods of research, archaeology has its limitations; it is able
to do some things but not others. One thing that archaeology does quite
well is to refute a historical hypothesis. All history writing involves
Figure 9. Bronze Age pottery from the city of Gezer, in the Shephelah west of
Jerusalem
a three-stage process. The historian first examines data and, second,

formulates a hypothesis. Third, as new data or new ways of thinking
about the data emerge, the hypothesis will be tested. Many hypotheses,
probably most, do not survive such testing without modification.
Quite a few hypotheses do not survive this process of testing at all.
Archaeology is one of the means by which to test and, in many cases,
refute a hypothesis.
While archaeology can refute a hypothesis unequivocally, it can
never prove a hypothesis. This point must be emphasized because some
historians tend to forget this basic reality of historical method. No
hypothesis is ever proven. At best, archaeological data are compatible in
every respect with a hypothesis. In many instances, archaeological data
are compatible in most respects with a hypothesis. Not infrequently,
archaeological data are only minimally compatible with a hypothesis or
entirely incompatible.
The topic of this book is Canaan and Israel in antiquity, so a few
words need to be added about the use of the Bible in archaeological
study. First, it must be emphasized that a poem or narrative in the Bible
is not a historical hypothesis. Rather, biblical texts are one among many
sources from which a historian constructs a hypothesis. Later in this
chapter, we will discuss methods for the study of ancient texts, but here
the focus is on the way that archaeological data are either compatible or
incompatible with hypotheses that derive from biblical stories.
In many cases, perhaps most, a hypothesis that derives primarily
from a biblical narrative is refuted by archaeological research or, at
best, it is judged to be compatible in only a few respects with the
archaeological data. The consistency with which archaeology tends to
be incompatible with hypotheses derived from the Bible might surprise
a person who is unfamiliar with the research. The popular media (such
as television, the Web, sensationalistic magazines, and even the publica-
tions of a few popular ideological historians) present a barrage of claims
that this or that discovery proves the authenticity of a biblical account.
Among academic historians, such sensationalism is usually ignored.
Nevertheless, even cautious and competent researchers frequently
propose hypotheses based on biblical narratives and, more often than
not, their hypotheses either fail the process of testing or require severe
modification in light of the evidence.
Only in the rarest of instances are archaeological data compatible in
every respect with a hypothesis that is derived literally from the pages
of the Bible. A classic example is found in 2 Kings 18. A brief account

narrates an attack against Judah by a Neo-Assyrian emperor named
Sennacherib (2 Kgs 18.13–16). The Bible claims that Sennacherib
‘took’ (captured) all the fortified cities, and the king of Judah was able
to protect his own status on the Judahite throne only by paying a huge
tribute and making full submission to the Neo-Assyrian emperor. After
this brief biblical account, a long folktale has been inserted that suggests
divine intervention and defeat of the Neo-Assyrian army (2 Kgs 18.17–
19.37). The humanist historian excludes these supernatural claims about
divine intervention (claims that are, from the positivist’s perspective,
meaningless in any case). The remaining portion of the biblical story
is plausible and can be reformulated as a historical hypothesis, which
states: during the final decade of the eighth century bce, a Neo-Assyrian
invasion of Judah forced the king of Judah to submit to Neo-Assyrian
imperial power.
Archaeological discoveries are compatible in every respect with the
hypothesis of a Neo-Assyrian imperial conquest of Judah. Excavations
reveal a consistent pattern of devastation at fortified sites in the region
of Judah, especially in the Shephelah and Negev Valley at cities such as
Lachish, Beer-sheba, and Arad (see Figure 4). Pottery analysis and other
dating techniques indicate that this pattern of destruction took place
near the close of the eighth century bce. Material data suggest that the
damage was caused by a Neo-Assyrian army. At the city of Lachish, the
excavator discovered remnants of a military siege mound against the
city walls and hundreds of Neo-Assyrian arrowheads among the burnt
ruins.14 That the conquest was comprehensive seems beyond doubt.
Many of the sites became uninhabited ruins and others regained only a
fraction of their former populations. Surveys of the region suggest that
the Shephelah was so ravaged by this war that, one hundred years later,
it had regained only about 25 percent of its former population.15
In most history books published recently, the invasion by the
Neo-Assyrian emperor Sennacherib is treated as a fact and dated (for
14 D. Ussishkin, ‘Sennacherib’s Campaign to Philistia and Judah: Ekron, Lachish,

and Jerusalem’, in Y. Amit et al. (eds), Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near
Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2006), pp. 339–57 (344–5).
15 N. Na’aman, ‘The Debated Historicity of Hezekiah’s Reform in the Light of
Historical and Archaeological Research’, ZAW 107 (1995), pp. 179–95 (189).
reasons to be discussed later) to the year 701 bce. This is reasonable,

given that the data are compatible in every respect with the hypothesis.
Nevertheless, one should be aware that this ‘fact’ is a hypothesis, not
a fact, and it is a hypothesis that rests on the systematic evaluation of
all available facts. This hypothesis and the facts upon which it rests
do not prove the Bible. The biblical narrative is an ancient story that,
in many respects, is fanciful and unrealistic (especially many, perhaps
most, details in 2 Kgs 18.17–19.37). Our historical hypothesis is a
construction of the past that used the Bible as one of its sources. In
some respects, the biblical narrative, if construed as a history narrative,
is exposed as inaccurate. For example, although the Bible mentions the
city of Lachish (2 Kgs 18.14, 17), it fails to mention that this city was
utterly destroyed by Sennacherib!16
If the example of Sennacherib’s invasion illustrates how archaeology
can support (but never prove) a hypothesis derived from a biblical
narrative, a second example illustrates the more common fate of a
hypothesis derived from the Bible: full refutation. Several decades
ago, an archaeologist discovered and excavated a site on the slopes of
Mount Ebal.17 This is one of two rolling hills that rise above the city of
Shechem (see Figure 10). To the south of Shechem is Mount Gerizim
and to the north is Mount Ebal. The name of Shechem is based on a
Hebrew word that means ‘two shoulders’. Gerizim and Ebal are, no
doubt, the shoulders from which the city got its name.
The archaeological site on Mount Ebal was interpreted to be a large,
open-air religious center that dates to the Iron Age I (see Figure 5). The
date is based on the pottery found in excavation, which is identical to
pottery at other Iron Age I sites. A huge stone structure was uncovered
that has been interpreted as an altar for meat sacrifices. The excavator
uncovered great quantities of ash mixed with the butchered bones of
fallow deer and domestic farm animals. Small pieces of broken plaster
were found in the rubble as well. The altar was visible to large crowds
of people who, apparently, gathered around its short enclosing walls to
16 For discussion, see K. L. Noll, ‘The Evolution of Genre in the Book of Kings:
The Story of Sennacherib and Hezekiah as Example’, in P. G. Kirkpatrick and
T. Goltz (eds), The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate
Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 30–56.
17 A. Zertal, ‘An Early Iron Age Cultic Site on Mount Ebal: Excavation Seasons
1982–1987’, Tel Aviv 13–14 (1986–7), pp. 105–65.
Figure 10. Mount Ebal altar
watch or participate in the religious ceremonies. This site was active for
about one century.
Although the excavator was appropriately cautious, it was clear that
he believed he had found a religious shrine that is mentioned in the
Bible. Mount Ebal appears in three biblical chapters (Deuteronomy
11, 27; Joshua 8). In the first of these (Deut. 11.26–32), a set of ritual
blessings and curses are to be ‘given’ to the two peaks that overlook
Shechem. In the second (Deut. 27.11–13), a ritual is described in which
half the participants were supposed to stand ‘upon’ Gerizim and the
others were to stand ‘on’ Ebal. Also, Deut. 27.2–8 commands that an
altar be built on Mount Ebal, along with a stone monument covered
with plaster. In the last passage to mention Ebal (Josh. 8.30–35), the
command from Deuteronomy appears to be fulfilled. In this story, the
people build an altar on Mount Ebal (Josh. 8.30–32). However, the
author seems to have interpreted Deuteronomy’s command to stand
‘upon’ Gerizim and ‘on’ Ebal (Deut. 27.11–13) to mean that they should
stand ‘over against’ these peaks, so this author places all the people in
the valley between Gerizim and Ebal (Josh. 8.33).
The excavator of the Iron Age altar concluded that his discovery
‘correlates with the biblical tradition by the date of the events, the
location and general character of the site’.18 In other words, he equated

his excavated Iron Age I altar with ‘Joshua’s altar’ as described in Deut.
27.4–5 and Josh. 8.30–2. The archaeologist’s desire to connect his find
with the Bible is understandable, but in spite of the caution with which
he formulated his hypothesis, his conclusions are not convincing.19 At
least four considerations undermine his hypothesis.
As we shall see in the next chapter, the Iron Age I date of the Ebal
altar does not correlate with the biblical chronology. The excavator’s
assertion of this temporal correlation is based on a common, but implau-
sible, manipulation of the Bible’s chronological system.20 According to
the Bible’s chronology, a person named Joshua, if he ever lived, would
have been active in the first half of the Late Bronze Age and would have
been dead for several hundred years before the Iron Age I began (see
Figure 5). Joshua would not have lived long enough to see construction
of this altar on Mount Ebal.
In addition to the glaring chronological mismatch between the
excavated altar and the biblical story, three other considerations suggest
that the location and general character of the Ebal altar are not
18 Zertal, ‘Early Iron Age Cultic Site’, p. 158. In another publication, Zertal writes,
‘The results of the excavation, together with the location, point to the cultic center
and the altar described in Deut. 27,1–10 and Joshua 8,30–5’ (The Manasseh Hill
Country Survey, Vol. 1, The Shechem Syncline [Leiden: Brill, 2004], p. 533).
19 Many researchers are not convinced that this was a religious site. For example,
D. Ussishkin suggests that the excavator at Mount Ebal has ‘restored an
imaginary altar’, in ‘Archaeology of the Biblical Period: On Some Questions of
Methodology and Chronology of the Iron Age’, in H. G. M. Williamson (ed.),
Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007), pp. 131–41 (133).
20 The excavator dates the earliest phase on Mount Ebal to about 1240–1200 bce
and the second phase to 1200–1130 bce. Using the Bible’s chronology (in
which Solomon’s fourth year was 1016 bce), Joshua was active about 200 years
before the Ebal altar was built (about 1456 bce). Using the commonly manipu-
lated revision of the Bible’s chronology (in which Solomon’s fourth year was
about 956 bce), Joshua was active more than 100 years before this altar was
built (about 1396 bce). To attain the correlation that the excavator desires, one
must also modify the 480 years of 1 Kgs 6.1 so that Joshua can be active closer
to 1200 bce (see discussion of the impossible biblical chronology in Chapter
3). The excavator’s estimates for each phase have been questioned. Compare
Zertal, ‘Early Iron Age Cultic Site’, pp. 109 and 144, with I. Finkelstein and E.
Piasetzky, ‘The Iron I-IIA in the Highlands and Beyond: 14C Anchors, Pottery
Phases and the Shoshenq I Campaign’, Levant 38 (2006), pp. 45–61 (50).
consistent with the Bible’s descriptions. First, the bones recovered from
the excavated altar included a significant percentage of fallow deer,
an animal that is not defined by any passage in the Bible as suitable
for ritual sacrifice. One researcher has noted that the cranial bones of
the deer make up a high percentage of these remains and hypothesizes
that the altar was part of a religious ceremony involving ritual use of
deer antlers, clearly not a biblically approved ritual.21 In any case, the
finds at this site suggest that its religious rites, while authentically part
of the Iron Age I Canaanite culture in which some Israelites might
have participated, were not part of any religious tradition preserved in
biblical literature. In fact, the book that seems to command an altar on
Mount Ebal (Deut. 27.4–5) is likely to have condemned this particular
altar as ‘false’ religion (for example, Deut. 7.1–5; 11.13–28).
Also, the biblical texts are not consistent with the location of the
excavated altar. As noted above, these texts are not entirely consistent
with each other. Nevertheless, a literal interpretation of Deut. 27.11–13
suggests that the altar mentioned just a few verses earlier (27.4–5) was
located somewhere on the southeastern slope of Ebal, overlooking
Shechem and facing Gerizim (see Figure 10). The story of Josh. 8.30–5,
though its details differ from Deuteronomy 27, also seems to require
an altar visible to the people in Shechem (Josh. 8.33). However, the
excavated altar on Mount Ebal is on the northeastern slope at a distance
of several kilometers and facing away from Shechem and Gerizim. The
archaeologist has investigated all of Mount Ebal and has not found
any other suitable religious installation.22 In other words, there is no
evidence of an altar in the location that these biblical texts seem to
suggest.
21 R. D. Miller II, ‘A “New Cultural History” of Early Israel’, in L. L. Grabbe (ed.),

Israel in Transition 2: From the Late Bronze II to Iron IIA (c. 1250–850 BCE);
The Texts (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 167–98 (184, 186).
22 A. Zertal, Manasseh Hill Country Survey, pp. 527–48. The excavator identifies a
small Iron Age I settlement in the valley to the north of Mount Ebal and suggests
that the altar was associated with that community (site #273; pp. 529–30). He
also notes that two significant sites, #280 and #281, were found on the upper
eastern and southeastern slopes of Mount Ebal and date to the Persian era and
later (pp. 543–6). It might not be coincidence that the scribal revisions preserved
in 4QJosha and the variant readings of Deut. 27.4 date to roughly the same era in
which a significant Samaritan presence was located on Mount Ebal. The presence
of people on Ebal’s slopes might have motivated this anachronism.
A final consideration undermines the equation of the Ebal excavation

with any biblical text. It is not certain that any biblical command or
narrative originally placed an altar on Mount Ebal. To explain this
point, three anomalies in the Bible are worth noting. First, Deut. 11.30
is an odd verse that seems to place the twin peaks of Gerizim and Ebal
just across the Jordan River, on its banks, near a place called Gilgal, far
from Shechem. Only at the close of this odd verse does the passage also
add that these peaks are near the oaks of Moreh, a place that has been
associated with Shechem in alternate biblical traditions (see Gen. 12.6).
In other words, Deut. 11.30 does not make geographic sense. The second
and third anomalies derive from the ancient handwritten manuscripts of
Joshua and Deuteronomy. On the one hand, an ancient manuscript of
Joshua places an alternate version of the story now found in 8.30–35
between chapters 4 and 5, not in chapter 8. Although this manuscript is
damaged and the story is not complete, its version suggests that Joshua
and the Israelites built their altar at or near Gilgal ‘on the day’ they
crossed the Jordan, which fits nicely with Deut. 27.2–3, but contradicts
Deut. 27.4–8. On the other hand, some manuscripts of Deuteronomy
command that the altar be built on Mount Gerizim, not Mount Ebal
(Deut. 27.4–5).23
These three biblical anomalies are by-products of normal practice
among ancient scribes, a topic to be discussed in greater detail
later in this chapter. In each of the three instances, the evidence
suggests that an earlier manuscript was revised by later scribes.
The common pattern in all three anomalies is a tendency to alter
the location of the events described in Deut. 11.29–30, 27.2–8, and
Josh. 8.30–35. Hypotheses have been advanced to explain how each
text has been revised and what the earliest version of the text might
23 The command to build on Gerizim, not Ebal, in Deut. 27.4 predates the
so-called Samaritan schism because it is attested in the Old Latin, which
was a translation from the Old Greek, which was based on the pre-masoretic
Hebrew, as most textual critics have concluded. See, for example, A. Schenker,
‘Textgeschichtliches zum Samaritanischen Pentateuch und Samareitikon’, in
M. Mor and F. V. Reiterer (eds), Samaritans, Past and Present: Current Studies
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 105–21. For an alternate (but less convincing)
viewpoint, see M. N. van der Meer, Formation and Reformulation: The
Redaction of the Book of Joshua in the Light of the Oldest Textual Witnesses
(Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 501.
have contained.24 For our purposes, the blunt fact that variation exists
should caution us against placing too much weight on the locations
mentioned in any particular manuscript, such as Gerizim or Ebal in
Deut. 27.4. For example, when one compares Deut. 27.2 with 27.4,
it is clear (especially in the Hebrew original) that the two verses are
variants of each other. One nearly identical sentence was used twice,
each with its own additional phrases. This suggests that the phrase
‘on Mount Ebal’ (or, in some manuscripts, ‘on Mount Gerizim’) was
a later addition to 27.4. The original version of that verse mentioned
no location at all.
This final consideration dashes any lingering hope that the excavated
Ebal altar has anything to do with the Bible. The archaeologist’s
hypothesis depends exclusively on Deut. 27.4–8 and Josh. 8.30–2.
The anomalies in the ancient manuscripts of these texts suggest,
however, that a sacred altar on Mount Ebal was a late, fictional revision
of Deuteronomy and Joshua. The excavated altar on Mount Ebal is
genuine, but the biblical command to build an altar on Ebal is a fiction
that did not emerge until about nine hundred years after this altar had
been abandoned (and, in all likelihood, had been forgotten, because it
was covered with layers of rubble).
24 A compelling hypothesis has been presented by E. C. Ulrich, ‘4Q47: 4QJosha’,

in E. C. Ulrich et al. (eds), Qumran Cave 4.IX: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
Kings (DJD, 14; Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 143–52. A. G. Auld notes that
the semi-parallel texts of Josh. 5.1 and 9.1–2 are remnants of the cut-and-paste
process that moved the story of Josh. 8.30–35 from its original context prior
to Joshua 5 (as preserved in a Dead Sea Scroll) to its later locations in either
chapter 8 (masoretic version) or chapter 9 (Old Greek version). The fact that
the story floated from place to place in the ancient manuscripts is evidence in
favor of viewing the story as a later addition to the narrative. See Auld, ‘Reading
Joshua after Kings’, in J. Davies, H. Graham, and W. G. E. Watson (eds), Words
Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F. A. Sawyer (JSOTSup,
195; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 167–81 (178). M. N. van
der Meer defends the medieval Hebrew text, but does so by relying on (outdated)
hypotheses about ‘deuteronomistic’ composition and revision prior to the Greco-
Roman era, in Formation and Reformulation, pp. 479–522. A useful discussion,
though also burdened with assumptions about a ‘deuteronomistic’ editor, is
N. Na’aman, ‘The Law of the Altar in Deuteronomy and the Cultic Site Near
Shechem’, in S. L. McKenzie and T. Römer (eds), Rethinking the Foundations:
Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible; Essays in Honour of John
Van Seters (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), pp. 141–61.
These examples from two biblical passages (Sennacherib in 2 Kings

18 and an altar in Deuteronomy 27) illustrate the necessity of maintaining
a clear distinction among three elements of history research: archaeo-
logical data, ancient texts, and historical hypothesis. The first two are
evidence from which the third is constructed. Any hypothesis about the
past could be false or it might approach the truth. As one evaluates a
hypothesis, it must be emphasized that the evidence can refute it or the
evidence can be partially or fully compatible with it, but the evidence
never proves the hypothesis. A refuted hypothesis should be abandoned,
but a sound hypothesis should be reevaluated as new evidence comes
to light or as new methods of evaluation are advanced. Even when a
historian declares that a hypothesis is beyond reasonable doubt, this
declaration is correct only insofar as evidence and research have estab-
lished it. New evidence can change the assessment.
Textual Research. The Iron Age I altar excavated on Mount Ebal
raised issues pertaining to a second method of research into the
ancient past: textual research. One of the reasons for rejecting the
Ebal hypothesis has to do with the variant versions of ancient biblical
texts, and we turn now to this kind of research. However, before it is
possible to explain why a biblical passage (Deut. 27.4) circulated with
two different mountains named in it (Gerizim in some manuscripts and
Ebal in others), or another biblical story floated between Joshua 4–5
and Joshua 8–9, some background information is necessary. What kinds
of documents existed in the ancient world, and how did scribes handle
those documents?
The ancient world produced thousands of documents, and these are
vital to the historian who hopes to construct an interpretation of the
ancient past. Some ancient documents were lost in ancient times and
recovered by archaeologists from the dirt. Other ancient documents
were copied many times by scribes over many generations, so that they
survived into the medieval period. Eventually, these documents were
published after the printing press was invented (in the 1450s ce), and
that is why they remain known in modern times. The Bible is only one of
the most famous of these ancient documents that survived the centuries.
Others include the Iliad from ancient Greece and the Qur’an from
medieval Islam. Less well known, but significant, are literary works
from the Greco-Roman era (see Figure 5), such as a set of history narra-
tives by a Jew named Josephus and histories by non-Jewish authors such
as Herodotus, Diodorus of Sicily, and Tacitus, to name a few.
Today, a reader can open a published volume of the Bible or other

ancient literature and read a smooth translation in English, French,
German, Spanish, or another contemporary language. These translations
disguise the enormous challenges that the scholars faced when they
undertook the task of preparing a modern translation from an ancient
document that had been composed in an ancient, now dead, language.
Each document from the ancient world presents its own unique diffi-
culties. Most ancient documents, even very short documents, require
many hours of careful study before a satisfactory translation can
be achieved. The translator must be proficient in multiple ancient
languages, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Greek, and Latin. Even
then, the expert encounters many cases in which an accurate translation
is not possible. For example, in the Bible, a short fragment of poetry
appears in Num. 21.14–15. Although every contemporary Bible trans-
lates this passage as though translation were possible, the reality is that
this ancient Hebrew text is obscure, perhaps corrupt, and its meaning is
entirely uncertain.
Ancient texts were written on a variety of surfaces, most of which
do not survive. Papyrus (plural: papyri), which was made from the
papyrus plant that grew in marshes, was analogous to paper and used
extensively in Egypt. Other impermanent surfaces included wooden
tablets, wax tablets, and parchment (leather) scrolls. Clay tablets were
used, particularly in Mesopotamia, and were inscribed with a blunt
instrument that made impressions in the soft, wet clay. These tablets are
called cuneiform, meaning ‘wedge-shaped’, which describes the marks
made by the blunt instrument. Because they were cheap, potsherds were
used for writing as well. When a potsherd contains a text, it is called an
ostracon (plural: ostraca).
Like modern books and magazines printed on paper or encoded by
software that can become obsolete, all these ancient texts were designed
to survive for a short time and then disintegrate. If a text was intended
to survive many generations, it would be etched on metal or carved in
stone, and these would be displayed in a public place for all to see, or
hidden in a temple or foundational trench so that only the gods could
read them. In some cases, a text was deemed to be permanent but any
particular copy of the text was not. In those cases, fresh copies would
be made as older copies disintegrated. This is how literature, such as the
Homeric literature and the Bible, was transmitted over the generations.
In almost every case in which ancient literature survived the centuries
and remains known to us today, we know it exclusively from copies that

are removed from the original authors by many generations.
Each writing material lent itself to particular types of writing.
The most impermanent materials were used for the most pragmatic
purposes. Papyri and ostraca, as well as wooden and clay tablets,
contained legal records, such as deeds of land ownership, tax receipts,
contracts, lists of property (including slaves), and so forth. Government
bureaucrats kept official records on the same kinds of material. These
might include tax records, daily astronomical diaries, chronicles of
royal or religious deeds, and administrative reports from outlying
regions of the kingdom. On rare occasions, literature was produced as
well, but this represents a fraction of the known texts from the ancient
world.
Media designed to be permanent, such as carved stone and etched
metal, were used almost exclusively by royalty and other high-ranking
leaders. Royal annals, royal memorial monuments, building inscrip-
tions, temple inscriptions, and tomb inscriptions were common. Some
kings would display sample legal codes, such as the famous Code of
Hammurabi, erected by a Babylonian king of the eighteenth century
bce. Other kings would boast of their accomplishments in monuments
erected in their own honor. Sometimes, a king would erect a royal
memorial monument on behalf of a predecessor.
The value of ancient documents recovered by archaeologists can
be illustrated by returning to the story of the Neo-Assyrian emperor
Sennacherib, whom the Bible credits with devastating Judah during the
reign of a Judahite king named Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18.13–16). Earlier,
we noted that the biblical story and archaeological excavation provide
data that are fully compatible with the hypothesis that Sennacherib
invaded Judah near the close of the eighth century bce. This hypothesis
also matches archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia, where the
ruined remains of the ancient Neo-Assyrian capital city, Nineveh, were
excavated. In that city, Sennacherib’s royal palace was discovered. In
the throne room of that palace, a stone-carved image of Sennacherib’s
capture and destruction of a city can be seen (see Figure 11). An
inscription declares that the city depicted in this carving is Lachish (2
Kgs 18.14).
Like many ancient kings, Sennacherib commissioned stone
monuments boasting of his accomplishments. These Neo-Assyrian
royal annals provide a description of Sennacherib’s war against Judah
Figure 11. Victims of Sennacherib at Lachish in the Shephelah
that nearly matches the Bible’s tale in 2 Kgs 18.13–16. Sennacherib

speaks from the ancient inscription and declares:25
25 My version of the text from Sennacherib’s royal annals is modified slightly (for
easier reading) from A. L. Oppenheim, ‘Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts’,
in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2nd edn, 1955), pp. 265–317 (288).
As to Hezekiah, the Judahite, he did not submit to my yoke. I laid siege to

46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in
their vicinity, and conquered them. . . .
I drove out 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses,
mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and
considered them booty. [As for Hezekiah], I made him a prisoner in
Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . .
Hezekiah himself, whom the terror-inspiring splendor of my lordship
had overwhelmed and whose irregular and elite troops which he had
brought into Jerusalem, his royal residence, in order to strengthen it, had
deserted him, did send me [tribute], later, to Nineveh, my lordly city,
together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones,
antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches with ivory, nîmedu-chairs
with ivory, elephant hides, ebony-wood, boxwood, all kinds of valuable
treasures, his daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order
to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his messenger.
As mentioned earlier, this example is a rare instance in which the

Bible reports an event that can be reformulated as a hypothesis wholly
compatible with all extrabiblical ancient evidence. The Neo-Assyrian
texts enable a historian to formulate an even more precise version of
the hypothesis. For example, examination of the Neo-Assyrian calendar
enables us to date Sennacherib’s attack on Judah to a specific year, 701
bce.
Note, however, that the historian is not able to accept Sennacherib’s
account at face value, just as the historian is not able to accept the
biblical account without critical judgments. Sennacherib claims to have
deported more than 200,000 people. Archaeology confirms a massive
reduction in population, but fewer than 200,000 people had been living
in the kingdom of Judah prior to Sennacherib’s conquest and not every
person disappeared from the archaeological record after this war.
Sennacherib has exaggerated the numbers. Note as well that the Bible
lists 30 talents of gold and 300 talents of silver, but Sennacherib has
boasted of 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver. In many cases,
a historian’s hypothesis must depart, to some degree, from the details
of an ancient text in order to be compatible with as much of the data as
possible.
Almost without exception, the texts that survive from the ancient
world were created by professional scribes. This is because almost
everyone except professional scribes was illiterate. Education was
expensive and there was no such thing as public education. Only those
who could afford an education sought one. Even those who could
afford to do so did not always pursue education. Generally speaking,
the elite class of an ancient society had access to education and can
be expected to be moderately literate. That is to say, the aristocracy,
which might represent 5 percent of the population at most, could read
and write simple letters, contracts, and other day-to-day texts. Many of
the aristocracy did not bother to read, relying on professional scribes or
personal slaves to do that work for them. The lower classes were barely
literate or completely illiterate, except for some merchants and slaves
whose specialized work for the aristocracy resulted in some level of
literacy.
Complex literature was the exclusive domain of a tiny, highly
educated elite group of people. Scribes, priests, and a few aristocrats
were the audience for the ancient literature that remains famous today.
A complex anthology, such as the Bible, would have been incompre-
hensible to the vast majority of ancient people. As a matter of fact, the
Bible is an excellent example of what a historian would call an artifact
of privilege. The literature in the Bible ‘was primarily a corpus written
by elites to elites’.26 For example, the Ten Commandments (found in
both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) are not addressed to all members
of society. They are addressed to those who possess male and female
slaves as well as a household with fields and farm animals. In other
words, they are addressed to rich people. Since the addressees also have
wives, these were wealthy males. In fact, most of the commandments
in the Torah presuppose an audience of wealthy male landowners who
are encouraged to treat those below them on the social and economic
ladder with kindness and equity. Even passages in the prophetic books
that defend the poor, orphans, and widows speak of those people in the
third person. The prophets were members of the elite class and spoke
to members of the elite class. The lower classes never participated in
this conversation, though they were mentioned frequently (for example,
Isaiah 58).
From time to time, a historian will advance a hypothesis that the
people of Canaan, and specifically the ancient Israelites, were somehow
exempt from the common illiteracy of the ancient world, but this
26 C. A. Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic

Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010),
p. 133.
revisionist viewpoint lacks supporting evidence.27 From the earliest

evidence for writing until the Greco-Roman era, illiteracy was endemic
to all cultures in all regions. The ability to read and write remained a
privilege of a few, and almost always an elite few.
The rise of literacy among Jews began only during the Greco-Roman
era (see Figure 5) and can be traced to a significant innovation in Jewish
culture of that time. In the late third and early second centuries bce,
Jews would gather in a place called a synagogue (something that had
not existed in earlier centuries) and Jewish leaders would read sacred
texts to the gathered crowds.28 This stimulated interest in the literature
so that, gradually, copies of Jewish scrolls began to circulate among
literate Jewish elites. By the third century ce, private possession of
a Torah (the first five books of the Jewish Bible) began. From this
process of dissemination, Jewish literacy began to rise. The availability
of literature motivated Jews to learn to read. By the medieval era, Jews
were disproportionately more literate than other ethnic groups. But this
process began centuries after the period covered by this book and, even
in this later period, most Jews (and Christians) based their religious
customs on what was heard in a synagogue (or a church), not on what
was read in a private setting.29
The scholar who studies ancient texts faces a formidable task. In
most cases, the inscriptions and manuscripts are in bad shape, worn
by centuries of use or decayed by centuries of neglect. Ink fades, clay
27 For example, without supporting evidence, I. Finkelstein and N. A. Silberman

claim that the late Iron Age II saw a spread of literacy and popular preaching in
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin
of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 284.
28 Some researchers speculate that the synagogue has its origins in the Persian era,
but there are no data to support the conjecture. For entry into this complex topic
with sufficient bibliography, see B. Olson and M. Zetterholm (eds), The Ancient
Synagogue from Its Origin until 200 CE: Papers Presented at an International
Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001 (Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell International, 2003).
29 K. L. Noll, ‘Did “Scripturalization” Take Place in Second-Temple Judaism?’
SJOT 25 (2011), pp. 201–17; C. Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine
(Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001); K. van der Toorn, ‘The Books of the Hebrew
Bible as Material Artifacts’, in J. D. Schloen (ed.), Exploring the Longue Durée:
Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009),
pp. 465–71; M. S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in
Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
crumbles, stone monuments weather until they are smooth. Parchment

and papyrus manuscripts rot or get eaten by worms. Moreover, scribes
did not always use the best penmanship, nor are ancient spelling and
grammar consistent. Many ancient texts are composed in obscure
dialects or wholly unknown languages. Many inscriptions lack prove-
nance, turning up on the antiquities market. Many others were found
in legitimate archaeological excavations, but in secondary use. This
means that, in ancient times, the inscription ceased to function as an
inscription, and the material on which it was written was reused for
other purposes. For example, a royal inscription on stone might be
discovered by archaeologists as a series of broken pieces embedded
in a wall. Obviously the wall had been built by people who no longer
revered the king who had commissioned the inscription.
Ancient writings are beneficial to historians for the content of their
texts, but that is only one of the ways that they are useful, for the
language in which a text is written can be studied by a linguist with
productive results. This linguistic analysis can give an indication of
the social and political relationships between regions. For example, an
inscription written on a plastered wall in a temple at Deir Allah (see
Figure 4) was composed in a language that bears similarities to the
Aramaic language of the northeast Transjordan and to the Phoenician-
inspired languages of Cisjordan. This suggests that the people of Deir
Allah maintained a vibrant cultural contact in two directions, east and
west of the Jordan River.
Historical linguistics can determine the age of a text on the basis of
the grammar, usage of words, spelling, and syntax. Like clay pots and
Coca-Cola bottles, languages evolve, changing with every generation.
The English of Shakespeare differs radically from the English on this
page. A significant number of these differences are due to historical
changes over the past 400 years. Likewise, it is possible to create a
sequential typology for ancient languages. This method has even been
applied to the Bible.
On the basis of historical linguistics, it is reasonable to conclude that
every document now contained in the Jewish Bible (the Protestant Old
Testament) was completed no earlier than the Neo-Babylonian period
and no later than the final century or so bce (thus between 550 and
50 bce, give or take a few decades).30 In part, this range of dates is
30 E. A. Knauf, ‘War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache?’ ZAH 3 (1990), pp. 11–23.

based not on historical linguistics but rather on the existence of ancient

manuscripts from the Dead Sea region, which provide a latest-possible
date of composition for many of the books now included in the Jewish
Bible. However, the range of dates for composition of the Bible is deter-
mined in large part by historical linguistics.
Archaeologists have recovered ancient Hebrew inscriptions (usually
called epigraphs) that enable us to date the kind of Hebrew language
found in the Bible. With a few exceptions, these excavated epigraphs
date to the Iron Age II (see Figure 5). Epigraphs that date to the early
Iron Age II, such as a small calendar found at Gezer (see Figure 4),
reflect the spelling and letter formation of the Phoenician language.
Epigraphs that date to the late Iron Age II, such as a series of ostraca
found at Lachish and another series of ostraca from Arad (Figure 4),
demonstrate that the dialect of the region had evolved away from its
Phoenician-inspired origins and had become closer (though not yet
identical) to the kinds of Hebrew in the Jewish Bible.31
The several kinds of Hebrew found in the Bible fit comfortably after
the Iron Age II epigraphs and prior to the Hebrew that was used by
Jewish authors of the Greco-Roman periods.32 In other words, in the
forms we now have them, ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible
were composed in a Hebrew of the Persian era, give or take a century
(Figure 5). On the basis of many stray details in biblical Hebrew texts,
it is reasonable to suggest that some portions of the Bible had been
composed in the Hebrew known to us from the Iron Age II epigraphs
and that scribes of the Persian era modified and updated the Hebrew
to conform to their own times. Therefore, one can conclude that an
earliest-possible date of composition for some parts of the Bible is the
Iron Age II, while the latest-possible date is, as mentioned, marked off
by the existence of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the final two centuries or so
bce. It is not possible to narrow this range of dates for most parts of
31 A. Lemaire, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Millennium B.C.E. in the Light of
Epigraphic Evidence (Socio-Historical Aspects)’, in S. Fassberg and A. Hurvitz
(eds), Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2006), pp. 177–96 (182, 184, 187); Rollston, Writing and Literacy,
pp. 67–8, 110.
32 Knauf, ‘War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache?’; see also K. L. Noll,
‘Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment)’,
JSOT 31 (2007), pp. 311–45 (325–6).
the Bible.33 It should be emphasized, however, that a cautious historian

is likely to favor a latest-possible date of composition when there is
ambiguity or uncertainty.34
As the chronology chart in Figure 5 illustrates, the completion of
the Bible after the Iron Age II was a relatively late phenomenon. Many
great civilizations had arisen, survived for centuries, and collapsed by
that time. However, the chronology chart also demonstrates that the
process by which the Bible emerged was not short. It began not long
after 900 bce (the beginning of the Iron Age II) and continued into the
Roman era (after 63 bce), a period of more than 800 years. Even if we
assume, as the evidence suggests, that the primary period of textual
composition was the second half of that 800-year period, it is clear that
the Bible was not constructed quickly. Many anonymous scribes were
involved. If, for sake of argument, we assume two or three scribes in
each human generation made substantial contributions to the emerging
biblical scrolls, and if we assume a human generation is about twenty
years, then at least forty to sixty anonymous scribes contributed to the
33 For discussion and debate, see I. Young (ed.), Biblical Hebrew: Studies in
Typology and Chronology (London: T&T Clark International, 2003); and
I. Young and R. Rezetko, with M. Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical
Texts (London: Equinox, 2008). Some researchers remain unsatisfied with the
conclusions drawn by Young and Rezetko. I have not encountered a response that
breaks new ground.
34 This is the methodological strategy advocated by E. A. Knauf, ‘King Solomon’s
Copper Supply’, in E. Lipiński (ed.), Phoenicia and the Bible (Studia Phoenicia,
11; Leuven: Peeters, 1991), pp. 167–86 (171). Supporting Knauf’s approach, I
would emphasize that evidence from throughout the ancient world demonstrates
that scribes routinely modified their received texts with respect to content as well
as language, so that latest-possible dates of composition are, by default, usually
the best we can do. For example, M. Cogan demonstrates that three successive
copies of Ashurbanipal’s royal annals betray evidence that each scribe imposed
a personal imprint on the text, and this during only about a decade. See M.
Cogan, ‘Some Text-Critical Issues in the Hebrew Bible from an Assyriological
Perspective’, Textus 22 (2005), pp. 1–20. Compound the process by many
scribes over many generations, and the probability of successfully assigning
a specific date of composition to a specific biblical text becomes vanishingly
small. Because, as E. C. Ulrich notes, ‘ “Secondary” is an attribute of virtually
all biblical texts’, Knauf’s methodology is non-negotiable. See Ulrich, ‘The Dead
Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Scriptural Texts’, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The
Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Volume 1: Scripture and the Scrolls (Waco, TX:
Baylor University Press, 2006), pp. 77–99 (quotation p. 88).
construction of the Bible during the final 400 years of this process. This
estimate of the number of scribes involved is probably too low.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to the 1940s, when the Dead Sea Scrolls
were discovered, very few genuinely ancient copies of the Bible were
available. Most biblical manuscripts derived from medieval times, and
a few fragments of Greek translations dated to the Roman era. All that
changed when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cluster of caves
near an ancient ruin called Qumran (see Figure 4). These scrolls are
now the oldest versions of biblical documents known to exist. All the
Qumran scrolls were created by scribes who lived during the final two
and one-half centuries bce and the first half-century ce. Most of the
scrolls are from the second half of that 300-year period.
No one knows why these scrolls were placed in clay jars and stored
in caves overlooking the Dead Sea, but most researchers believe that
the Jews who owned the scrolls were trying to protect them during a
war fought between the Romans and the Jews from about 68 to 72 ce.
Apparently they hid the scrolls in the caves, hoping to retrieve them
after the war. That they did not retrieve them suggests that these Jews
were killed by the Romans during the war. This hypothesis is uncertain,
but it is the most common and perhaps the most plausible explanation.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include about 800 individual documents. No
one is certain precisely how many documents had been stored in the
caves because most of the scrolls have been damaged by centuries of
decay. Because of the hot, dry climate, a few scrolls have been preserved
almost entirely intact, but this is rare. In many cases, researchers
recovered only a single small fragment of what originally was a lengthy
scroll. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, some 230 are copies of books that
were later included in the Jewish Bible. The remaining 570 or so are
ancient Jewish writings that were never included in the Jewish Bible.
Except for the books of Nehemiah and Esther, at least one small bit
of every book now contained in the Jewish Bible is among the Dead Sea
Scrolls. In some cases, only one small fragment has been recovered. For
example, Qumran has yielded only one fragment of the book of Ezra
and one fragment that might be from 1–2 Chronicles, though this is
debated.35 Other biblical books are found at Qumran in multiple copies.
35 G. J. Brooke, ‘The Books of Chronicles and the Scrolls from Qumran’, in

R. Rezetko, T. H. Lim, and B. W. Aucker (eds), Reflection and Refraction:
Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (Leiden: Brill,
Figure 12. Qumran cave overlooking the Dead Sea
For example, more than 30 damaged copies of Deuteronomy and more

than 20 damaged copies of Isaiah were recovered from the caves.
It is clear that the Jewish Bible did not yet exist when these scrolls
were placed in the caves in the first century ce.36 Among the Jews at
Qumran, books that are not in the Jewish Bible were, in some cases,
more popular than books that are. In other cases, alternate versions
of a biblical book existed, and the ancient Jews who were reading the
alternate versions were not, apparently, bothered by the discrepancies
between them. Based on data from the Greco-Roman era (see Figure
5), including these essential finds at Qumran, most researchers agree
that the Bible as we know it today was not constructed until about the
second century ce, after the Dead Sea Scrolls had been entombed in the
caves near Qumran.
The Dead Sea Scrolls provide a window into the ways in which scribes
routinely interacted with the texts. The literary activity on display in
2007), pp. 35–48 (38–40). See J. Trebolle Barrera, ‘4QChr’, in E. C. Ulrich et al.
(eds), Qumran Cave 4.XI: Psalms to Chronicles (DJD, 16; Oxford: Clarendon,
2000), pp. 295–7, plate XXXVIII.
36 E. C. Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1999).
these scrolls was common to ancient Jewish scribal culture and to

ancient scribal culture generally. To make the following discussion
easier to understand, examples come only from Dead Sea manuscripts
of literature that eventually became part of the Bible. You can compare
these examples to a modern Bible.
Two varieties of data shed light on the way in which biblical literature
evolved. First, and by far the most plentiful, are examples of scribes’
errors. Frequently, a word was spelled incorrectly, several words were
left out by accident, or the scribe attempted to correct what he perceived
to be an error in his text and, in the process, made the error worse. Most
of these errors do not change the sense of the passage, and a reader
has no difficulty recognizing them as errors. In many significant cases,
however, a scribe’s error changed a text dramatically, and we might
not have realized that a change had been introduced without direct
manuscript evidence exposing the process of change.
An example of a scribe’s error discovered among the Dead Sea
Scrolls illustrates how these ancient scrolls can improve our modern
translations of the Jewish Bible. The book of 1 Kings tells a story
almost identical to a story in 2 Chronicles, but the version in Kings
suffered a significant scribe’s error in ancient times. Compare these two
passages, in which a human king quotes the words of his god:
1 Kgs 8.16 (from the standard medieval Hebrew text) –
Since the day that I brought my people Israel out of Egypt,
I have not chosen a city from any of the tribes of Israel in which to build
a house, that my name might be there;
and I chose David to be over my people Israel.
2 Chron. 6.5–6 (from the standard medieval Hebrew text) –
Since the day that I brought my people out of the land of Egypt,
I have not chosen a city from any of the tribes of Israel in which to build
a house, that my name might be there;
and I did not choose any man as ruler over my people Israel;
but I have chosen Jerusalem so that my name may be there,
and I chose David to be over my people Israel.
The portion in italics appears in Chronicles but not Kings, or so we

thought until a Hebrew manuscript of Kings was recovered from one
of the caves near Qumran. We now realize that the longer text had been
original to the version in Kings as well, but a scribe was inattentive
when he made a copy of this book. The scribe’s eye had skipped from
the first instance of the phrase be there to the second instance of that
phrase and, in the process, accidentally lost part of his text. All subse-
quent copies of Kings had been copied from the corrupted manuscript,
so that the italicized lines had been lost from the Hebrew text of Kings
for 2,000 years.37
Another representative example of a scribe’s error, clarified by
evidence from Qumran, can be found in 1 Sam. 14.41. A manuscript
from Qumran enables us to restore a text that had been lost by accident
(and is printed here in italic):
Saul said to the Lord, god of Israel, ‘Why have you not answered your
servant this day? If there is any guilt in me or in Jonathan my son, O Lord,
god of Israel, then give Urim. But if this guilt is among your people Israel,
give Thummim.’ Then Jonathan and Saul were selected, while the people
were released.
In the story, Saul is performing a religious rite using ancient sacred

objects called Urim and Thummim, which is similar to casting lots or
throwing dice. Unfortunately, a scribe who had been, perhaps, weary
from a long day of copying his text skipped from one instance of
the word Israel to another, accidentally losing a long passage from
the middle of Saul’s prayer. Although an ancient Greek translation
preserved a better version of the text, the standard Hebrew has lacked
the portion in italics for about 2,000 years.38
A second variety of data demonstrates that biblical literature evolved
almost every time a scribe made a new copy of a scroll. Each scribe
maintained complete control over the text. In some cases, a scribe
created an exact copy of an earlier text. In other cases, the scribe intro-
duced any changes deemed necessary. Scribes could erase portions of
a text or add substantially to it, rearrange blocks of text, insert a few
extra words or phrases (called glossing the text), or even compose an
entirely new text by borrowing details from previously existing texts.
This means that any scribe, at any stage in the transmission of a literary
work, could introduce any change that this scribe deemed appropriate
for any reason. In many cases, even an ancient scribe who claimed to be
37 J. Trebolle Barrera, ‘4QKgs’, in Qumran Cave 4.IX, pp. 171–83.

38 F. M. Cross, D. W. Parry, and R. J. Saley, ‘4QSamb’, in F. M. Cross et al. (eds),
Qumran Cave 4.XII: 1–2 Samuel (DJD, 17; Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), pp.
224–5.
handling a fixed, unchangeable, authoritative text actually handled this

text in an entirely free manner.39
In many cases, a scribe’s modifications were minor revisions. For
example, a scribe who copied 2 Sam. 12.14 was offended by the original
text’s statement that David’s actions had ‘surely scorned the Lord’.
This ancient scribe inserted a single extra Hebrew word into the text
so that David’s actions had ‘surely scorned the enemies of the Lord’.
This gloss not only changed the meaning of the sentence but clearly
made no sense in the context of the story. Nevertheless, it preserved this
scribe’s sense of piety! That the word translated ‘the enemies of’ was
a late insertion can be demonstrated from evidence at Qumran, where
a different scribe, also offended by the original text, glossed the text
differently so that David’s actions had ‘surely scorned the word of the
Lord’.40
Many examples from the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that sweeping
revisions were made to many books now included in the Jewish Bible.
For example, the book of Judges tells a story in which the Israelites
have been oppressed by foreign enemies and the Israelite god sends a
messenger to appoint a military savior (Judges 6). A manuscript from
Qumran demonstrates that, at a very late stage in the evolution of
this story, a new character was added to the tale: the section in Judg.
6.7–10 was not part of the original story.41 This addition introduces a
prophet who makes a short speech that fails to advance the plot in any
meaningful way. Many examples of these intrusive additions to stories
could be listed, but one additional example illustrates the creative way
in which an ancient scribe often integrated his newly invented material
into the previously existing text.
At Qumran, a variety of manuscript fragments have survived from
the book of Jeremiah, but these fragments demonstrate that Jeremiah
existed in two variant editions at that time. One version is quite similar
to most translations of Jeremiah in circulation today. The other version
39 So, for example, Josephus claims, in Against Apion 1.42, that the Jewish scrip-
tures were fixed and unchangeable, but his own quotations and paraphrases
demonstrate that this was not the case. See Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls and Origins
of the Bible, pp. 184–201.
40 F. M. Cross, D. W. Parry, and R. J. Saley, ‘4QSama’, in Qumran Cave 4.XII, pp.
143–4.
41 J. Trebolle Barrera, ‘4QJudga’, in Qumran Cave 4.IX, pp. 161–4.
is considerably shorter, and almost all researchers agree that the shorter
version was the more original.42 Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find
unambiguous evidence that anonymous scribes added new material to
the older, shorter version of the Jeremiah scroll.
Comparison of Qumran manuscript fragments from Jer. 10.4–11
demonstrates that this poem was, originally, a brief attack on idolatry.43
The earliest-known version of the poem is still preserved in some
ancient Greek translations, but it was lost from the standard Hebrew.
Researchers are able to reconstruct the earliest-known version as
roughly equivalent to these verses and partial verses from the modern
translation: Jer. 10.4, 5a, 9, 5b, 11. (Because verse 11 is composed in
Aramaic, not Hebrew, many researchers believe that this verse also was
a later addition.) In modern editions of Jeremiah, the expanded version
of the poem now appears, in which the attack on idolatry has been
supplemented by verses that praise the biblical deity as the one and only
genuine god (Jer. 10.4–11). The example demonstrates that there was no
sense of original authorship in this ancient scribal culture and, therefore,
scribes saw no need to refrain from changing the texts.
From this discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one can begin to under-
stand how a passage in Deut. 27.4 that originally lacked any reference to
a location later included reference to either Gerizim or Ebal, depending
on the ancient manuscript one consults. At Qumran, researchers have
discovered numerous manuscripts of the five books attributed to Moses
that differ from the standard Hebrew version and shed light on the
Torah’s literary evolution.44 The romantic notion that one man named
Moses authored five books can be judged, on the basis of the evidence,
to have been a late fiction having nothing to do with the efforts of many
anonymous scribes over many generations. Changes, both minor and
major, were introduced into the Torah for hundreds of years, and the
minor gloss in Deut. 27.4 is a typical instance of that process. The same
42 That the Vorlage to Old Greek was earlier than proto-Masoretic Text was first
extensively argued by J. G. Janzen, Studies in the Text of Jeremiah (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), and is held today as the consensus
viewpoint.
43 E. Tov, ‘4QJerb’, in E. C. Ulrich et al. (eds), Qumran Cave 4.X: The Prophets
(DJD, 15; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 171–6.
44 Ulrich, ‘Dead Sea Scrolls and Hebrew Scriptural Texts’, pp. 81–4.
observation can be made about the ancient scroll of Joshua or, for that
matter, any book now contained in the Jewish and Christian Bibles.
Likewise, the examples from Qumran illustrate why it is not possible
to rely on a biblical poem or story in the absence of other sources of data
when formulating a hypothesis about the ancient past. Every document
in the Bible is the by-product of a random process of scribal revisions,
a process mostly hidden by lack of evidence and almost always unpre-
dictable and surprising when previously unknown evidence suddenly
sheds light on some stage in the text’s evolution.45 But to understand
why scribes handled their texts in the ways described in this chapter, we
must attempt to understand what the scribes thought they were creating
when they composed and revised this ancient literature, and that will be
the topic of the next chapter.

Bagnall, Roger S., Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (London: Routledge, 1995).
Biers, William R., Art, Artefacts and Chronology in Classical Archaeology (London:
Routledge, 1992).
Carr, David M., Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Davies, Philip R., Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures
(Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998).
Davies, Philip R., George J. Brooke, and Phillip R. Callaway, The Complete World of
the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002).
Fritz, Volkmar, An Introduction to Biblical Archaeology (JSOTSup, 172; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1996).
McDonald, Lee Martin, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007).
Rollston, Christopher A., Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel:
Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2010).
Skibo, James M., Michael W. Graves, and Miriam T. Stark (eds), Archaeological
Anthropology: Perspectives on Method and Theory (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 2007).
Stanford, Michael, An Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell, 1998).
45 E. Tov, ‘Literary Analysis, the So-called Original Text of Hebrew Scripture, and
Textual Evaluation’, in C. Cohen et al. (eds), Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible,
Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom
M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (2 vols; Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2008), pp. 943–63.
Tonkin, Elizabeth, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
The sample stratigraphy on page 37 does not represent an actual excavation, though
some of its details derive from R. E. Tappy, The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria. I.
Early Iron Age through the Ninth Century bce (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992).
Chapter 3
What was History in the Perception of the Ancients?
Introduction
Hecataeus of Miletus speaks thus: I write what follows as it seems to me
to be true; for the stories of the Greeks are varied, and, as is manifest to
me, ludicrous.1
These words initiated a tradition in the ancient world. Hecataeus of

Miletus appears to have been the first author to evaluate with a critical
eye the stories of his own culture, judging them to be ‘varied’ and
‘ludicrous’. He tried to replace those stories with narratives of his
own, in which he hoped to describe events of the past as accurately
as possible. In other words, Hecataeus invented an entirely new idea.
His idea was that ‘true’ narratives about the past can result only from
careful research. In his ancient Greek culture, the word for research was
historia, which meant ‘inquiry’.
Although ancient historia is not identical to modern academic history
as discussed in the previous chapter, it was the necessary first step in
a long process that resulted, eventually, in our own culture’s obsession
with knowing what really happened. Today, many people routinely
strive to know the truth of a matter, dismissing the stories of their own
community as ‘varied’ and ‘ludicrous’. Hecataeus of Miletus introduced
that obsession. He was active in the late sixth and early fifth centuries
bce. A glance at the chronology chart for ancient Canaan in Figure 5
will remind us that this innovation, the invention of history writing as
we know it, was a very late addition to human culture.
Hecataeus was not the first person to write about the past, but history
narratives prior to his time were never critical evaluations designed to
arrive at the truth through careful inquiry. For example, ancient Near
1 Translation from J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 5.
3. What was History in the Perception of the Ancients? 67
Eastern kings frequently erected stone monuments to themselves in

which their deeds were narrated, but often exaggerated to flatter the
royal image. Likewise, a few ancient societies had developed a list,
called a chronicle, in which brief reports of noteworthy events were
recorded in chronological order and kept in an archive. A chronicle
can be somewhat accurate, but it was never the product of inquiry and
rarely provides much depth of information. There were other ancient
documents about the past, such as lists of kings and bureaucratic
records. However, the most common way to construct a story of the
past in the ancient world was to construct the kind of narrative that
researchers today identify as folklore. We encountered an example of
folklore, the eponymic legend, in Chapter 1. Folklore can include many
kinds of stories, including tales about gods, heroes, legendary rulers, kin
groups, and detailed descriptions of romanticized events. These are the
tales that Hecataeus dismissed as ‘varied’ and ‘ludicrous’.
Because almost all ancient literature was not historia, it is necessary
to explore what the ancients believed about the past. It would be
irrational to assume that they thought about the past the same way that
we, who live in an era obsessed by accurate reporting of real events,
think about the past. How did the ancients think about the past and
how did they write about it? What was history in their perception? We
will begin by examining the closest thing to our conception of history:
ancient Greco-Roman historia. That discussion provides a basis for
comparison and contrast with other ancient writings, such as the Bible.
The Practice of Ancient Historia

The kind of history invented by Hecataeus of Miletus and perfected by
later Greek and Roman authors, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and
Polybius, differed from everything that preceded it in one crucial way:
the Greeks and their Roman heirs stressed a need for inquiry. Greek
historians insisted that before one can write competently about the past,
one must gather the evidence, investigate that evidence carefully, and
formulate a hypothesis about the past. Described this way, the Greco-
Roman attitude sounds distinctly modern. However, the practice of
historia was not as modern as one might think. The difference between
ancient historia and modern academic history lies with cultural assump-
tions about what constitutes evidence, investigation, and hypothesis.
Let us look at each of these three terms.
Figure 13. Ancient Egyptian scribe. In the ancient world, scribes did not share
our modern obsession with an accurate narrative of the past
For an ancient Greek or Roman author, evidence was something quite

different from the modern definition of that word. Today, an appeal to
evidence is an appeal to physical data – artifacts and documents from
the past that shed light on past events and people. In ancient historia,
artifacts and documents from the past were relatively unimportant and
were only rarely included in the category of evidence. Often, when an
artifact or document was called upon as evidence, it was the unusual

or atypical nature of that item that caused it to be noticed, another
departure from the routine treatment of such items by modern histo-
rians, for whom the typical or commonplace provides a more clear
comprehension of everyday reality in ancient times.
Historia defined evidence as an idea that seemed vividly realistic and
self-evident to the human mind. For example, when confronted by the
heroic tales of ancient Troy, in which mighty Achilles battles the god
of the river Xanthus, Diomedes fights and even injures the god Ares,
and the city ultimately falls by a ruse involving a large, hollow, wooden
horse, the ancient Greek historian assumed that he was dealing with
tales too ludicrous to accept. These were not evidence, for they were not
reasonable, and they were dismissed from consideration. Nevertheless,
within the tale of the Trojan War is an idea that seemed quite plausible
and realistic to an ancient historian, and thus might serve as evidence.
The idea that two armies fought one another and that one ultimately
destroyed the city of the other was very reasonable indeed. Therefore
one will never encounter an ancient Greek author who doubted that
the Trojan War actually happened. All that was necessary was to strip
the tale of its unreasonable elements and repackage what remains as
a plausible, realistic narrative, and an ancient historian had produced
properly critical history. Frequently an ancient historia was a folktale
from which the gods had been eliminated and human heroes were
reduced in stature. Thus purged of elements that were not reasonable,
the folktale was treated as evidence, that is to say, a narrative that
conforms to self-evident reason.
The ancient approach to investigation differed from a modern academic
approach as well. A modern historian investigates as many aspects of
the time and place chosen for study as possible. The ancient historian
was far more selective. The usual form of investigation was to review
what others had written and published on the subject. (In the ancient
world, publication was a process of making hand-copied volumes, and
a published document had a very limited circulation.) The sources of
investigation that are the stock in trade of a modern historian, such as
archives, official records, private letters, archaeologically recovered
artifacts, and the like, were almost never investigated by the ancient
historian, even when such things were known and available to him.
Each Greco-Roman historian would investigate the previously
published literature about the past. Herodotus had read his predecessor
Hecataeus. Thucydides had read Herodotus. Polybius had read

Thucydides. Having done so, the historian would criticize the past
accounts, accepting in large measure their narrative but adjusting it
according to the criterion of evidence as discussed above. Frequently,
a historian would copy, verbatim, significant portions of a previous
historia, more often than not without explicitly indicating that this
had been done. (Today this is called plagiarism and it is considered
unethical, but it was a routine procedure in the ancient world.) The
Greco-Roman historian would rearrange the previous accounts into a
new version.
The Greco-Roman historian’s investigation might have included
interviews with living persons. When researching a time long ago,
the historian sought a community’s shared memories. If the historian
was investigating the more recent past, eyewitnesses were favored or,
at least, individuals who might have told pertinent tales. In no case,
however, would this ancient historian have evaluated these testimonies
as researchers routinely do today. The modern historian would seek to
verify or falsify human testimony by investigating artifacts and primary
documents from the past, but the ancient historian applied the usual
criterion of what seemed self-evident to human reason. The version of
events that seemed most plausible was selected as the correct version. If
several versions seemed plausible, the historian might display virtuous
impartiality by including each, introducing one with ‘The Athenians say
. . .’ and the next with ‘but the Corinthians tell it this way . . .’, and so on.
In addition to these differences between ancient and modern defini-
tions of evidence and investigation, ancient and modern historians also
develop a hypothesis quite differently. A modern hypothesis is stated as
a thesis; then the thesis is defended by a survey of pertinent evidence
and argumentation that demonstrates not the plausibility of the thesis
but the probability of it. A modern historian desires to demonstrate
that his or her hypothesis is fully compatible with all available data.
By contrast, the ancient historian made a decision about the reality
of the past and narrated that version. Like a modern journalist, the
ancient historian gathered information and wrote a seamless account.
The reader was expected to accept that account as fact. There were few
citations, no bibliography, no survey of evidence.
As might be expected, ancient historia was produced by authors of
integrity and by charlatans. Bogus tales about the past were sometimes
passed off with the same degree of certainty as more reliable information.
Since ancient readers could be as skeptical as any modern audience, it

was imperative that the ancient Greek or Roman historian establish a
rhetorical tone of authority, a topic that requires additional discussion.
The Rhetoric of Authority in Ancient Historia

Although the practice of ancient historia differed from the practice
of academic history in our own day, its rhetorical structures are much
more similar to our own than to any other ancient writings. This is a key
point, because in the ancient world, it was only Greco-Roman historia
that addressed the reader directly with a plea to believe that the events
described actually had happened. Most ancient literature was similar to
a biblical book such as Genesis, whose ‘author’ is an unidentified and
disembodied voice that declares what happened ‘In the beginning . . .’.
A disembodied voice of this kind never explains how it knows about the
topics narrated or why it is telling the reader about them. Moreover, the
voice never addresses the reader directly and never suggests that you,
as reader, should believe this tale. By contrast, the author of an ancient
historia directly addresses the reader, identifies the author, and asks
the reader to trust the narrative. To understand why historia does this
requires discussion of some general characteristics of literature.
In every human culture, one of the most difficult aspects of reading a
history narrative is distinguishing it from a fictional narrative. Because
a fiction can be based on real people or events, a fiction differs from
history in one, and only one, significant way. The author of a fiction
can narrate events of the past accurately whenever it suits the author’s
needs, but the author is free to transcend the strict limitations imposed
by the real past at any time and without signaling to the reader that this
shift has been made. For example, a real American president is featured
in the recent novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.2 For a historian,
adherence to the real past is essential, but the author of a fiction can
make things up.
As discussed in Chapter 2, most academic histories in our day can be
recognized as non-fiction from clear rhetorical markers in the text. Most
significantly, the existence of a secondary text, called the apparatus,
is usually a message of serious intention to the reader. This apparatus
2 S. Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (New York: Grand

Central Publishing, 2010).
reminds the reader that the narrative did not simply fall from the sky and
was not invented by a creative storyteller. Also, the apparatus reminds
the reader that the narrative voice is not an anonymous and disem-
bodied voice like the one who narrates the book of Genesis. Rather,
this narrative voice was constructed by a flesh-and-blood author who
researched the evidence and listed those data in the apparatus for the
reader’s inspection.
Now and then, the line between modern fiction and academic history
has been erased. For example, a few years ago a historian published a
biography of American President Ronald Reagan in which the historian
invented facts and even invented sources for those facts. Adding to
the confusion, the historian included citations of the invented sources
in the book’s apparatus, thus imitating the normal rhetorical structure
of an academic history and yet imparting fictional information.3 This
example illustrates how difficult it can be for an unsuspecting reader
to discern whether a document genuinely strives to construct, describe,
and interpret a real past.
A primary reason that history and fiction can become confused is
that both are narrated in the past tense, which makes both narratives
seem like a construction of a past, but the identity of the narrator can be
ambiguous so that the reader is not entirely certain about the narrative’s
intention of communication. For example, a reader who had never heard
of the humorous storyteller Mark Twain might mistake the following
quotation for part of an authentic memoir written by a barely literate
person:
You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was
made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things
which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.4
3 E. Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House,

1999). One scholar commented: ‘Morris has in fact reverted – knowingly or not –
to the practice of ancient historians, aligning himself with the likes of Herodotus,
Thucydides, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus in his methodological approach, in which
speeches, motives, psychology, even history itself were fabricated with a great
deal of freedom’ (S. H. Rutledge, letter to the editor, The Washington Post Book
World [December 19, 1999], p. 13).
4 M. Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (repr.; London: Octopus Books,
1983 [1884]), p. 1.
In this passage, an authoritative voice speaks in the first person (‘You

don’t know about me’) and evaluates a ‘past’ in which a book that
mentioned him had been published. A reader who did not suspect that
the grammar is atypical of history narratives might pause for a moment
before deciding that this is a fiction. Consider the following quotation:
The fog clung to the damp earth like a vaporous shroud. Leaves of the
jungle underbrush collected the tropical moisture and dripped like a
thousand slowly leaking faucets. The first gray light of morning filtered
through the mist and revealed the hazy greenness of the world around me.5
In this example, the first-person narrator constructs a ‘past’ quite vividly,

but the intention of this construction is not clear. The abundant use of
adjectives and similes in this passage produces an excessively earnest
tone that seems like overwrought fiction, so the reader might conclude
that this is a fictional story. Nevertheless, this narrative is shelved in the
non-fiction section of a library or bookstore because it is the memoir of
a soldier. These two examples illustrate how easily confusion can arise
concerning the relationship between fiction and history.
In the ancient world, this difficulty with interpreting an author’s
intention of communication was more acute than it is today. The ancient
world was not familiar with public libraries or bookstores, and there
was no expert available to shelve each document in its own section,
one marked ‘fiction’ and another ‘non-fiction’. The ancient author
was compelled to find a way to advertise the narrative’s intention of
communication. Any ancient author who did not advertise an intention
was compelled to accept that an ancient reader might have no idea why
the author’s narrative exists. For example, among literate Jews, a scroll
such as Genesis, which gives its reader no explicit guidance about what
its contents intend to communicate, was not universally interpreted as
an authoritative history, which is why some Jewish scribes felt free to
rewrite the book, as was discussed in Chapter 2.
Consider the challenge that an ancient Greek author, such as
Hecataeus of Miletus, faced. Within the literate portion of Greek
society, many scrolls were circulating. There was Homer, for example,
who occasionally claims divine inspiration for his poetic tales, saying,
‘Sing to me now, you Muses!’ Another Greek author, Hesiod, spoke
5 D. Donovan, Once a Warrior King: Memoirs of an Officer in Vietnam (New

York: Ballantine Books, 1985), p. 1.
with authority about gods and heroes. Both authors narrated a ‘past’
of sorts, one that was accepted as a true account by a few members of
Greek society; but it was a past that Hecataeus and many other Greeks
dismissed as ludicrous. That is why Hecataeus hoped to distinguish his
own narratives from this kind of folklore.
Beginning with Hecataeus, a tradition of rhetorical techniques
evolved by which the Greco-Roman authors of historia distinguished
their narratives from the other popular literature. That tradition placed
primary stress on three key elements in the text of the narrative.6 An
ancient reader who encountered these three elements discerned that the
narrative was a historia, and not a folktale or allegory or traditional epic
inspired by divine Muses. These techniques were applied in different
ways by each ancient historian, but all three were common.
The first, and most significant, rhetorical technique used by the
ancient historian was the use of the first-person pronoun as an intrusive
element in the narrative account. In almost all cases, a historia was
narrated in the third person: ‘he did this, they did that, she spoke these
words’, and so forth. However, historia is marked by the periodic
intrusion of the author’s own personality in the form of a statement
about what ‘I’ have done or seen or said or believe. These intrusions into
the narrative remind the reader that the story is not told by a bodiless
and all-knowing third-person voice, as is so common in fiction (for
example, Gen. 1.1). Rather, this voice has been constructed by a real,
mortal, and fallible human (almost always a male), who speaks on the
authority of his own inquiry (historia).
One of the most famous Greek historians made abundant use of this
intrusive narrative technique. The first sentence of his multivolume
historia introduces the man who is responsible for the story: ‘These are
the inquiries of Herodotus of Halicarnassus.’7 Frequently, Herodotus
intrudes to remind his reader that he, Herodotus, has done his homework.
The story has been sprinkled with little rhetorical interventions such as
‘the truth of the matter is as follows’ and ‘as it appears to me’ as well
as ‘I, myself, saw’. Herodotus pauses now and then to declare that a
6 For in-depth study of these techniques, see Marincola, Authority and Tradition.
7 The seven quotations or references from Herodotus, in order of appearance, are
from Histories 1.1; 5.52; 5.58; 5.59-60; 3.111; 2.123; 1.171. See Herodotus,
The Persian Wars (trans. A. D. Godley; Loeb Classical Library, 117–20; 4 vols;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920–5).
particular report seems ‘probable’, or to suggest that a report might not

be plausible and the reader should beware. For instance, in a section of
tales about Egypt, Herodotus declares:
These Egyptian stories are for the use of whoever believes such tales: for
myself, it is my rule throughout this history that I record whatever is told
me as I have heard it.
Try to imagine a similar sentence as part of the book of Genesis:

‘These Jewish stories are for the use of whoever believes such
tales. . .’. The absence of such a sentence from Genesis, and from
most ancient literature, illustrates the radical departure that historia
tried to make from all other literature of the ancient world. The
authors of historia emphasized that they made extensive inquiries
even with respect to very minor details, as in this example, again
from Herodotus:
The Carians were a people who had come to the mainland from the
islands; for in old times they were islanders, called Leleges and under the
rule of Minos, not (as far as I can learn from reports) paying him tribute,
but manning ships for him.
The phrase ‘as far as I can learn from reports’ reminds the reader that
the Carians are not a fictional invention, but an obscure people whom
Herodotus has researched. Above all, it is this intrusive use of the
first-person pronoun in an otherwise third-person narrative that gives
historia its distinctive quality.
At first glance, this technique does not seem to differ from a few
types of fictional literature. We have seen that Homer sometimes
appeals to the Muses using a first-person pronoun, and even a fictional
narrator such as Huck Finn can speak in the first person. The distinction
between these fictional uses of the first-person pronoun and the ‘I’
who speaks in a historia lies in the distinctive manner with which
the pronoun is used. A reader of Huck Finn’s narrative encounters a
series of textual signals to indicate that Huck is fictional.8 A reader
of Herodotus encounters a steady stream of signals suggesting the
8 For example, the page that faces page 1 in Mark Twain’s novel (cited in n. 4)
reads: ‘Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR’. An explanatory
note concerning the use of dialects in the story also is signed ‘THE AUTHOR’.
opposite. Likewise, whereas Homer speaks directly to his Muse,

seeking divine inspiration, Herodotus addresses the reader directly,
seeking the reader’s trust. Significantly, the goal of this direct appeal to
the reader is to assure the reader that Herodotus does not claim divine
inspiration. The tale that Herodotus narrates does not derive from any
supernatural (and, therefore, possibly nonexistent) source, but from the
hard work of a real man whose labor was rigorous, extensive, fallible,
and trustworthy. This is historia – a human-driven process of careful
inquiry.
The second and third rhetorical techniques used by the ancient
historian were built on the foundation established by the intrusiveness
of the first-person pronoun. These two techniques were designed to
characterize the first-person narrator who has intruded, to provide that
voice with a personality that could be trusted by the reader. On the
one hand, the first-person voice is, quite often, explicitly positioned
as one who is sufficiently expert to render wise judgment about each
topic discussed. This could be achieved in any number of ways. Most
often, passages were introduced into historia that would emphasize the
author’s high status in society, often boasting of military leadership,
governmental posts, and other activities that would have placed the
author in positions where worldly experience would count as a plus.
On the other hand, the first-person voice is presented to the reader
as one who is absolutely impartial in his research methods. As with
the issue of expertise, the concept of impartiality could be stressed in
myriad ways, such as distancing oneself from biased sources of infor-
mation, exerting much effort to provide two or more sides to a story
and, above all, implying or explicitly stating that previous historians
were not as diligent, unbiased, or competent as the one who is now
writing. Explicit or implicit emphasis on these two characteristics
– expertise and impartiality – was a common feature of nearly all
Greco-Roman historia.
The ‘Truth’ in Ancient Historia

Perhaps the one thing that most surprises a modern reader of Greco-
Roman historia is that these ancient authors did not shy from writing
false statements when it suited them. As one recent historian puts it:
‘No serious ancient historian was so tied to specific factual truth that he
would not sometimes help general truths along by manipulating, even

inventing, “facts”.’9 Why did they do this?
The answer lies with the cultural context in which historia was
composed. Unlike their modern counterparts, ancient historians did
not operate in an academic community in which the study of the past
was a profession. Their readers were not other historians. Rather,
they were wealthy aristocrats with time on their hands. In the ancient
world, the majority of people were illiterate. Those who could afford
to buy an education were few, and the wealthy who bothered to buy
an education were fewer still. Those who were educated and could
read often did not bother to read lengthy literature. Thus, the ancient
historian was competing for the attention of a tiny group of discerning
non-professional readers who had available many kinds of literature,
from Homer to lyric poetry, and from philosophy to ancient science and
mathematics.
Against this backdrop, it is not difficult to see why the ancient
historian was compelled to produce something that people would want
to read. He was competing not only with other histories, but with other
literature, some of which was far more exciting, erotic, or aesthetically
pleasing than a narrative that presents a past. As a result, historia was
not a dry academic discipline, it was a form of literary entertainment.
Ancient historia is less like modern history and more like a modern
historical novel.10 It is based on a real past, and many but not all of the
people mentioned actually lived. The characters portrayed in historia
may have done many of the things attributed to them by the narrator. In
some cases, the words placed on their lips by the ancient historian might
even have approximated to what they actually said (though this was
not the case in most instances). But the whole account was designed to
offer a satisfying reading experience. The historian developed a theme
– usually a morality theme – and used the past to develop that theme.
When the past did not quite match the theme, it was ‘improved’. In this
respect, it is similar to the modern historical novel. By ‘improving’ the
9 J. L. Moles, ‘Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides’, in C. Gill and

T. P. Wiseman (eds), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1993), pp. 88–121 (120).
10 M. J. Wheeldon, ‘True Stories: The Reception of Historiography in Antiquity’, in
A. Cameron (ed.), History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 33–63 (59–62).
past, the ancient historian was not telling lies, he was presenting the
past in a more ‘truthful’ way than how it actually happened. Truth, as
any great author of fiction will attest, is not always identical to real life!
Does the Bible Construct a Past? Is the Bible a History?

In our own day, millions of people believe, or at least desire to believe,
that the Bible is a history. Moreover, many of these people hope that the
Bible’s construction of the past is accurate and reliable. Some people
insist on this as a matter of religious doctrine. This doctrine states that
every biblical narrative provides an inerrant account of the past that
need not be questioned. By contrast, others suggest, also as a matter of
religious doctrine, that significant portions of the Bible were not intended
to construct a past (for example, the book of Genesis), but other portions
were intended as history (for example, the books of 1–2 Kings). This
second religious doctrine is not necessarily an improvement over the
first, for it often generates unanswerable questions about which biblical
passages are histories and which are not, and by what criteria one can
distinguish between them.
The religious affirmation that the Bible was designed to be a history
derives from a premodern religious doctrine that the Bible was inspired
or revealed by a god and, therefore, the Bible presents a religious inter-
pretation of the past. This idea that a god associates itself with literature
is a key component in many religions (for example, the Jewish Bible,
the Christian Bible, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, and The Complete
Conversations with God).11 From the viewpoint of a religious believer,
there is no compelling reason to believe that a god would want to be
associated with any work of literature. It would be quite reasonable for
a person of faith to declare that a god does not author, co-author, inspire,
reveal, edit, publish, support, endorse, or even read books.
The affirmation that a body of literature was divinely inspired or
revealed presupposes a set of assumptions about what kind of god this
god might be, and those assumptions are rarely stated because they are
assumed to be self-evident. One of the unstated assumptions seems to
be that the god who inspired the Jewish Bible or one of the Christian
Bibles is a historian. The desire to believe that this god is a historian
11 N. D. Walsch, The Complete Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue

(New York: Putnam, 2005).
does not derive from evidence or logical reasoning. Rather, it derives

from a subjective desire to believe that at least some of the biblical
stories actually happened as described. Moses received the Torah and
Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, this god must be a god who reveals
Torah at a specific moment in time and who resurrects an individual at
a specific moment in time.
A religious believer who studies the Jewish or Christian Bible with
genuine religious devotion could conclude, on the basis of the text
itself, that the god who inspired or revealed this literature was not a
historian. Fiction is a common (perhaps the most common) kind of
literature in the Bible. For example, the psalmist speaks metaphori-
cally, not historically, with the words ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ (Ps.
23.1). Christians are aware of tales attributed to Jesus that were not
descriptions or interpretations of the past. They are called parables (for
example, Luke 15.11–32). Medieval Jews recorded the hypothesis that
the book of Job is a parable and not a story about a real person (b. Baba
Batra 15a). It is not illogical to extend these observations to the entire
biblical anthology. That is to say, the figure of Jesus can be as much
a parable as the figure of Job, and the story of Moses can be as much
a symbolic tale as Psalm 23 is a symbolic poem. There is no logical
reason to demand that any biblical text provide a reliable account of real
people or events.
Even the person who believes in an infallible or inerrant god should
have no difficulty believing this god reveals infallible or inerrant fiction,
folklore, fables, or mythology. Religious doctrine is a weak basis for the
suggestion that any god associated with biblical literature is a historian,
for that suggestion is not logically entailed by serious religious devotion
to the literature or to a god. It is not blasphemy to describe the biblical
god as a teller of tall tales or, perhaps, a god with a poetic or artistic
mind. In any case, enough has been said here to conclude that an appeal
to a religious doctrine is not able to demonstrate that biblical narratives
are histories.
The question, therefore, remains unanswered: is the Bible a history?
Those who prefer to answer this question without appeal to religious
doctrines usually compare biblical narratives with other narratives from
the ancient world and, especially, ancient examples of Greco-Roman
historia. Many researchers have devoted their careers to careful study
of writings from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Greece, and Rome.
Although there is no consensus about whether biblical literature is a
work of history, these comparative studies have been fruitful. Most

researchers have agreed on the following two points.
First, it would be difficult to defend the hypothesis that any biblical
narrative was designed to be a historia. Although a number of minor
similarities can be noted, the differences are immense. Above all,
biblical narratives almost universally lack the explicit rhetoric of
authority so common to historia. No biblical book declares that this
narrative is the truth, dismissing other tales told by the Jews as ‘varied’
and ‘ludicrous’. These ancient authors never intrude into their narratives
in the manner of a Herodotus, never attempt to disassociate their stories
from common folklore, and rarely use any other rhetorical techniques
to appeal directly to their readers. The Bible does not resemble the only
category of literature known to us from ancient times that explicitly
tried to construct history as modern people usually conceptualize
history.12
If there is an exception to this first point, it is found in one author
from the Christian New Testament. The Gospel according to Luke
begins with a first-person prologue (Lk. 1.1–4). Unlike a Hecataeus or
a Herodotus, this narrator does not name himself or, perhaps, herself.
(It was church tradition that later gave the anonymous author a name
and male gender.) Nevertheless, Luke begins ‘his’ narrative by asserting
that many others have written on the topic, that he has investigated
12 N. Na’aman asserts that the biblical authors ‘intended to write a history’ and
B. Halpern characterizes biblical authors anachronistically, as though their
methods were nearly modern. I have evaluated the data from which these
judgments were made and presented an alternative viewpoint in numerous publi-
cations. See N. Na’aman, ‘The Temple Library of Jerusalem and the Composition
of the Book of Kings’, in A. Lemaire (ed.), Congress Volume Leiden 2004 (Leiden:
Brill, 2006), pp. 129–52 (quotation p. 130); B. Halpern, The First Historians:
The Hebrew Bible and History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1996); K. L. Noll, ‘Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic? And Is It a
History?’ SJOT 21 (2007), pp. 49–72; idem, ‘A Portrait of the Deuteronomistic
Historian at Work?’ in K. L. Noll and B. Schramm (eds), Raising Up a Faithful
Exegete: Essays in Honor of Richard D. Nelson (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2010), pp. 73–86; idem, ‘Presumptuous Prophets Participating in a Deuteronomic
Debate,’ in M. J. Boda and L. M. Wray Beal (eds), Prophets and Prophecy in
Ancient Israelite Historiography (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming);
idem, ‘Is the Scroll of Samuel Deuteronomistic?’ in C. Edenburg and J. Pakkala
(eds), Is Samuel Among the Deuteronomists? (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, forthcoming).
everything carefully, and that he will now produce an authoritative

version of the events. This is a typical prologue to a Greek historia,
in which the author subtly suggests that the previous accounts were
not sufficient, thus necessitating his own ‘orderly’ presentation. A
sequel called the Acts of the Apostles echoes this prologue (Acts 1.1)
and includes occasional use of a first-person pronoun (Acts 16.10–16;
20.5–16; 21.1–18; 27.1–28.16). This makes the author known to church
tradition as Luke the only biblical author whose style resembles a
Greco-Roman historia.
Luke is not a perfect example of a Greek historia because the narra-
tives associated with his name do not follow the practice of historia
closely. Luke’s use of the intrusive first-person pronoun is awkward and
incomplete. His vague use of ‘I’ or sometimes ‘we’ does not attempt
to convince the reader that it represents an authoritative and impartial
investigator whose inquiries can be trusted. Moreover, unlike a proper
example of historia, Luke includes heroic deeds, miracle tales, and
stories about a god (specifically, the Jewish god and his relationship to
the Jew Jesus). Although the Greco-Roman historians were not univer-
sally dismissive of the supernatural and sometimes invoke divine will
in an abstract sense, Luke’s routine appeal to the supernatural is far
too crude for historia. It would have been dismissed as ludicrous by a
master of historia, such as the cautious author known as Thucydides.
In that sense, Luke’s narratives remain closer to the common folktales,
‘varied’ and ‘ludicrous’, from which historia sought to liberate itself.13
Those aspects of Luke’s literary method that conform to a typical
historia are those that are least similar to a historian’s research methods
today. For example, not only does Luke claim to have investigated
previous narratives while remaining, it would seem, oblivious to
physical data, he has also copied large portions of a previous narrative
– the Gospel according to Mark – and presented that narrative as his
own.14 Also, like a Greek historian who evaluates his sources according
13 L. C. A. Alexander is not impressed with a comparison between Luke and

historia because Luke’s prologue collapses ‘the distinction between outsider
(observer) and insider (believer)’, so that any historiographical intention could
have been grasped only by community insiders and not by general readers. See
L. C. A. Alexander, Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at
the Acts of the Apostles (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), pp. 133–63
(quotation 162–3).
14 J. M. Robinson, P. Hoffman, and J. S. Kloppenborg (eds), The Critical Edition
to the criterion of what seems self-evidently correct, Luke has rewritten

Mark’s tale, editing out portions of Mark’s narrative that violated
Luke’s sense of evidence. For example, Mark’s Jesus walks on water,
but Luke’s Jesus does not. Apparently that particular miracle was not
‘reasonable’ to Luke’s way of thinking. Thus, even if Luke has written
a historia, it would be unreasonable to suggest that Luke presents a
reliable account of the past. His narrative ‘improves’, without regard for
evidence or facts, the story he had received from others.15
A few researchers contend that a handful of Hebrew books are similar
to historia in spite of the almost complete absence of any rhetoric of
authority.16 Several books, most notably 1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles,
appeal to older written sources of information, such as the ‘Day Books’
of the kings of Israel and Judah (see, for example, 2 Kgs 15.6, 11).
This appeal to sources, it is sometimes suggested, resembles historia
by presenting the narrator as one who has gathered sources and created
connecting links between those sources to produce a seamless narrative.
Also, it has been suggested that these books of the Bible employ a
narrative style similar to that of Herodotus, who offers a mix of realistic
of Q: Synopsis including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas
with English, French and German Translations of Q and Thomas (Hermeneia;
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000); M. S. Goodacre, The Case Against Q: Studies
in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press
International, 2002); C. M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity:
Studies on Q (New York: T&T Clark, 2004).
15 I have evaluated the ideological thesis of R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:
The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), in
K. L. Noll, ‘Investigating Earliest Christianity without Jesus’, in T. L. Thompson
and T. S. Verenna (eds), Is This Not the Carpenter? The Question of the
Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (London: Equinox, forthcoming).
16 The best argument of this kind remains J. Van Seters, In Search of History:
Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983). See the general discussion by
K. M. Stott, Why Did They Write This Way? Reflections on References to Written
Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature (London: T&T Clark,
2008). In recent years, a number of researchers have defended the hypothesis
that biblical literature was created during the Greco-Roman era and not earlier.
These researchers have renewed the comparison to Greco-Roman literature,
including but not limited to historia. See, for example, R. E. Gmirkin, Berossus
and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the
Pentateuch (London: T&T Clark, 2006).
narratives spiced by a series of tall tales that are easily recognized as

inventions (see, for example, 1 Kings 12–13).
However, an unbridgeable gulf separates the books of Kings and
Chronicles from historia. The delightful yarns of Herodotus pale by
comparison with the wildest stories of Kings. In the latter, straight-
forward reports of political events, such as the war between Asa and
Baasha (1 Kgs 15.16–22), mingle with utterly fantastic tales, such as
Elijah’s flight to the sky in a divinely provided chariot (2 Kings 2).
Elijah’s fate has more in common with the Greek myth of Herakles,
who was transported to Mount Olympus in the chariot of Athena, than
with anything from the pen of Herodotus. Unlike Herodotus, who
pauses to warn the reader that the narratives might not be reliable (recall
the quotation about Egyptian tales, above), a book such as Kings or
Chronicles never appeals to its reader in an effort to establish the narra-
tor’s critical distance from the story.
To summarize this first point of general agreement, if biblical narra-
tives attempt to construct a past, they do not emulate the Greco-Roman
model of historia. It is no surprise that the ancient Hebrew language
contains no word equivalent to Greek historia or English history. If
historia is the model for a definition of history, then biblical literature is
not history.
A second point on which most researchers agree is that biblical
narratives have a great deal in common with ancient Near Eastern
compositions from Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Egypt. People living in
these regions lacked a tradition of inquiry and never produced anything
remotely resembling historia (until the Greco-Roman era, when a few
authors explicitly emulated Greek models). Nevertheless, like the Bible,
the ancient Near East provides an array of fantastic tales about gods and
heroes, kings and battles, the creation of the world, and the future fate
of the world; religious hymns of praise and lamentation; lists of kings;
and poetic philosophies that researchers have called Wisdom literature.
(A biblical example of Wisdom literature is the book of Proverbs.) Most
of these literary texts do not construct a past, but some of them can be
called histories in a very loose sense.
Returning to the biblical books of 1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles,
comparison is often made with a collection of Mesopotamian documents
called chronicles. Before discussing this comparison, a point of clarifi-
cation is needed. The resemblance between the title of the biblical book
1–2 Chronicles and the name of Mesopotamian chronicles is nothing
more than a coincidence of English translation. The Hebrew title of

1–2 Chronicles is best translated ‘Daily Affairs’ (literally, ‘the words
about the days’). Also, the word chronicle is a modern English catchall
label for a variety of ancient Mesopotamian texts, each of which bears
its own distinctive title. In other words, researchers who compare 1–2
Kings and 1–2 Chronicles with Mesopotamian chronicles have not
done so because of a similarity in ancient titles for these documents.
Moreover, the ancient title of 1–2 Chronicles (‘Daily Affairs’) was not
originally a part of its text. This title was given to the book by pious
Jews of a much later era. (One suspects that the title derives from a
common phrase found in 1–2 Kings: ‘the book of the words about the
days’ or ‘The Day Books’. This phrase will be discussed momentarily.)
Mesopotamian chronicles survive in a variety of forms.17 Most of
these chronicles were stored in royal archives or the personal libraries
of a few elites and were entirely unknown to the common population.
A few of the ancient chronicles have been discovered in multiple
copies dating to various centuries, so these texts enjoyed a long shelf
life among the elites who valued them. Most chronicles, however, are
known to us in one copy only, and it is difficult to know how widely
these texts might have circulated among literate people.
Mesopotamian chronicles differ radically from Greco-Roman
historia. A typical chronicle contains short descriptions of specific
events compiled chronologically in a long list. The impression is of
a series of unconnected and unrelated summaries of events deemed,
for whatever reason, to have been worthy of record. The reader of a
chronicle feels as though she or he has been exposed to a few highlights,
just as a television sports announcer presents filmed highlights from a
football game. No critical evaluation of the events is ever offered. The
only kind of evaluation contained in the chronicles is an occasional
notation in which the ancient scribe declares that the source-text from
which the information derives has been damaged. There is no rhetoric
of authority as in historia.
A typical entry from a Mesopotamian chronicle is this one (which
I have chosen because it is a rare example that contains information
directly related to biblical literature):
17 For entry into this topic, see J.-J. Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2004).
The seventh year, in the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his
troops, marched on Hatti, and set up his quarters facing the city of Yehud.
In the month of Adar, the second day, he took the city and captured the
king. He installed there a king of his choice. He collected its massive
tribute and went back to Babylon.18
This passage describes a Babylonian attack on Jerusalem in the year

597 bce. It is an excellent example of the terse style that makes
Mesopotamian chronicles distinctive, a style that lacks any editorial
comments or interpretations. No one is sure what function these
chronicles served, but a common hypothesis is that priests used
events of the past as omens for what the future might hold in similar
situations. This is uncertain and frequently debated. Also, some of
the Mesopotamian chronicles appear to be quite accurate, but some
documents are just as clearly fictional. Even the ones that are generally
accurate contain specific factual errors or, in a few cases, narratives that
appear to have been borrowed from other sources and added as fictional
embellishments.19
Only a handful of biblical passages bear much resemblance to
Mesopotamian chronicles, but those few passages are remarkably
similar. Most of the passages that are similar to chronicles can be found
scattered through the books of 1–2 Kings (especially portions of 2
Kings 24–5) and in a handful of chapters toward the end of the book
of Jeremiah (especially portions of Jeremiah 39–41 and 52). In Kings,
for example, the reader encounters brief descriptions of military events
that are similar in tone to Mesopotamian chronicles (for example, 1 Kgs
14.25–26; 2 Kgs 13.24–25; 18.13–16). As noted, the Bible even echoes
one or two specific events from Mesopotamian chronicles, such as the
attack in 597 bce (2 Kgs 24.10–17; see also Jer. 24.1; 27.20). Naturally,
researchers disagree with one another whether, or to what extent, a
biblical book such as Kings derives from an old chronicle housed at,
say, Jerusalem.20 All researchers agree that, no matter what the Day
18 Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles, pp. 230–1 (slightly modified for easier

reading).
19 Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles, pp. 48–51, provides some examples.
20 For recent discussion, see Noll, ‘Is Kings Deuteronomistic?’; Na’aman, ‘Temple
Library of Jerusalem’; M. Haran, ‘The Books of the Chronicles “of the Kings
of Judah” and “of the Kings of Israel”: What Sort of Books Were They?’
VT 49 (1999), pp. 156–64; L. L. Grabbe, ‘Mighty Oaks from (Genetically
Manipulated?) Acorns Grow: The Chronicle of the Kings of Judah as a
Books might have been, they surely would not have contained the
fantastic stories (not to mention anti-royal sentiments) contained here
and there in 1–2 Kings.21 Many of these narratives are best described as
folklore (such as 1 Kings 22 or 2 Kings 1).
One very good reason why some researchers believe that portions
of 1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles derive from an earlier chronicle is a
possible reference to such documents contained in these biblical books.
Frequently, when a story of a king is summarized, the scribe reminds
the reader that other information about that king can be found in a ‘Day
Book of the Kings of Judah’ or a ‘Day Book of the Kings of Israel’
(1 Kgs 14.19, 29; 15.7, 23, 31, and elsewhere). The usual form is a
rhetorical question, as in this example:
The remaining events of Hezekiah, and all his strength, as well as how he
built the pool and the conduit so that he brought water into the city, are
they not written upon the book of the words about the days concerning the
kings of Judah? (2 Kgs 20.20; emphasis added)
In some cases, seemingly more specific sources are cited, such as a

‘Day Book of King David’ or a scroll attributed to a prophet or court
official (for example, 1 Chron. 27.24; 29.29). Researchers have debated
endlessly about whether these named documents actually existed. It is
worth noting, for example, that little of the material in 1–2 Chronicles
could have derived from sources other than books now contained in
the Jewish Bible. For that reason, many researchers suspect that the
author of Chronicles has invented these references to additional old
documents.22
Source of the Deuteronomistic History’, in R. Rezetko, T. H. Lim, and B. W.

Aucker (eds), Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography
in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 155–73; M. Leuchter,
‘The Sociolinguistic and Rhetorical Implications of the Source Citations in
Kings’, in M. Leuchter and K.-P. Adam (eds), Soundings in Kings: Perspectives
and Methods in Contemporary Scholarship (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010),
pp. 119–34, 197–206; B. Halpern, A. Lemaire, and M. J. Adams (eds), The Books
of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography, and Reception (Leiden: Brill,
2010).
21 For example, Na’aman, ‘Temple Library of Jerusalem’, pp. 145–50.
22 For recent discussion and bibliography, see L. Jonker, ‘The Chronicler and
the Prophets: Who Were His Authoritative Sources?’ SJOT 22 (2008), pp.
275–95. For general background, see M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie
(eds), The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (Sheffield:
It must be emphasized (because scholarship frequently ignores this

point) that an ancient reader could not have consulted a text identified
in Hebrew as ‘the book of the words about the days’ of various kings.
A document identified this way was not, in all likelihood, similar
to a Mesopotamian chronicle. The consistent use of the distinctive
Hebrew phrase (see, for example, 2 Kgs 14.15, 18, 28) suggests that
the author of Kings envisioned a specific type of Egyptian document.
In ancient Egypt, a royal Day Book was not a chronicle retained in
an archive. Rather, it was a list of mundane daily activities recorded
at a royal court, and such records were discarded after a short time
when they were no longer useful.23 Even if the royal court in, say,
Jerusalem produced documents similar to the Egyptian Day Books,
these documents would not contain the kind of information found in
Mesopotamian chronicles or the biblical narratives. Moreover, because
the Day Books routinely were discarded after short periods of use,
neither the authors of 1–2 Kings nor their ancient readers could have
had access to such documents (unless they got lucky while digging
through ancient garbage heaps).
For a number of reasons, a variety of researchers have entertained the
possibility that the references to Day Books are fictional.24 A common,
though not universal, viewpoint among researchers is that the author(s)
of 1–2 Kings produced a narrative that was ‘essentially literary, and
not necessarily historiographical in character’, in which the Day Books
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and

S. L. McKenzie (eds), The Chronicler as Historian (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2007); G. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles: A New Translation with
Introduction and Commentary (AB, 12–12A; 2 vols; New York: Doubleday,
2004).
23 On royal Day Books, see D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 330–1.
24 Although opinions vary widely, many researchers agree that references to a Day
Book for the kings of Israel are fictional, while references to a Day Book for the
kings of Judah are taken more seriously, but often rejected. The following are
representative of a wide range of viewpoints: Van Seters, In Search of History,
pp. 292–321; Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, pp. 319–32; Grabbe, ‘Mighty
Oaks’, pp. 155–73; Na’aman, ‘Temple Library of Jerusalem’, pp. 142–5; Haran,
‘Books of the Chronicles’. See also S. B. Parker, ‘Did the Authors of Kings Make
Use of Royal Inscriptions?’ VT 50 (2000), pp. 257–78; Leuchter, ‘Sociolinguistic
and Rhetorical Implications’.
were invoked as a purely ‘conventional element’.25 Another viewpoint,

also not universal, is that an appeal to Day Books that both author and
readership knew were unavailable was part of an insider’s political
rhetoric, though somewhat obscure to a modern reader.26 If one follows
this line of reasoning, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that refer-
ences to these Day Books might have been part of a fictional parody
that is no longer entirely clear to us. (Parodies of other literature are
not uncommon in the ancient world.27) However, no consensus on
this topic has been reached and many researchers continue to interpret
the Day Books as identical to Mesopotamian royal chronicles. One
conclusion is reasonably clear: biblical references to Day Books are, at
best, ambiguous data that do not easily support the thesis that biblical
narratives construct a past.
The small cluster of biblical narratives that are similar to Mesopotamian
chronicles is overshadowed by many other biblical texts that are compa-
rable to other types of ancient Near Eastern literature. Most of these
other literatures do not attempt to construct a past. They include fasci-
nating compositions that cannot be discussed in detail here, such as
religious poetry, love poetry, prophetic speeches, and so-called Wisdom
literature. A few, however, can be described as history in a loose sense.
For example, the author of 1–2 Kings seems to have possessed an old
king list from which the names of the biblical kings were derived (for
example, 2 Kgs 21.1, 19; 22.1).28 King lists were common in the ancient
world. They usually provided the names of each king in succession,
with a few brief notes about length of reign and, on rare occasions, a
detail or two about the king’s accomplishments.
One of the most significant Mesopotamian categories of history is
known as a Royal Annal. This was a stone monument designed for
public display in which a king boasts of his accomplishments using
a first-person pronoun. A representative example is this passage from
25 Quotations in this sentence from Haran, ‘Books of the Chronicles’, pp. 162 and
164, respectively. I arrived at a similar thesis from an entirely different starting
point in Noll, ‘Is Kings Deuteronomistic?’
26 Leuchter, ‘Sociolinguistic and Rhetorical Implications’.
27 For an example of an ancient parody, see Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles,
pp. 146–9 (entry #6).
28 Many researchers agree that at least one king list lies behind the structure of
1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles. For example, Na’aman, ‘Temple Library of
Jerusalem’, pp. 134–8.
Figure 14. Iron Age Assyrian royal relief sculpture. In the ancient world, the royal
depiction of ‘reality’ was one of the most common types of ‘history’
Assyrian Emperor Adad-nirari III, who was active in the years either
side of 800 bce (Iron Age II):
In the fifth year of my rule, I sat down solemnly on my royal throne
and called up the country for war. I ordered the massive army of
Assyria to march against Palestine. I crossed the Euphrates at its flood.
As to the numerous hostile kings who had rebelled in the time of my
father Shamshi-Adad, and who withheld their regular tributes, the terror-
inspiring clamor overwhelmed them upon the command of Ashur, Sin,
Shamash, Adad, and Ishtar, my trust-inspiring gods. [The kings] seized my
feet in submission. I received all their tributes . . .29
These royal inscriptions were designed as propaganda and, depending

on the king’s needs, they can distort details a little or very much.
Although the Bible does not contain this kind of propaganda, some
biblical narratives reflect the influence of it.
An interesting example of the similarity between some of the ancient
Assyrian royal inscriptions and biblical narratives can be found in
29 This quotation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from A. L. Oppenheim,

‘Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts’, in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near
Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2nd edn, 1955), pp. 265–317 (282).
the book of Joshua.30 Each is a story of military conquest with motifs

similar to the other. Both narratives have a human hero (Joshua or the
Assyrian emperor) who benefits from divine support (the biblical god
or the Assyrian god). Sometimes a vision of a divine warrior appears
(as in Josh. 5.13–15). There is a river crossing with much fanfare (Josh.
3–4). Specific battles are narrated and others summarized (Josh. 6–12).
Special emphasis is placed on the capture and humiliation of enemy
kings (Josh. 10.16–28). Because they are terrified, a delegation from
the enemy seeks peace (Josh. 9). Decimation of a region is followed by
the settling of a new population (Josh. 13–24) and divine omens are not
uncommon (Josh. 10.12–13).
Like the Assyrian royal inscriptions, the biblical narrative does
not attempt to present a critical history, or historia. Rather, common
elements of folklore have been incorporated to glorify the royal hero
of the tale. The Assyrian king often (though not always) accomplished
the activities narrated, albeit far less successfully than the narrative
seems to imply; but the report of his activities has become a cliché, a
stereotyped litany of stock events common to the many Assyrian royal
inscriptions. The biblical author of Joshua has used the same stock of
folklore to glorify his hero.
The example from Joshua illustrates the key observation derived
from comparisons between the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern
literatures: the common element among all these writings is that the
scribes never failed to participate in folk traditions. Greek historians,
such as Herodotus, participated in folklore as well. However, the Greek
historian usually attempted to extract the past from folklore, which was
deemed ‘varied’ and ‘ludicrous’ and in need of critical evaluation. By
contrast, biblical narratives, like all ancient Near Eastern narratives,
steep themselves in folklore. Biblical authors seem to have enjoyed
the challenges of working within conventional ways of narrating. Even
Luke does this extensively, in spite of his historia-like prologue.
Social anthropologists who have studied folklore in many cultures
the world over have discovered that the past narrated in folk tradition is
a past that is required for the immediate present. The details of a story
can vary, depending on the needs of the audience, the whims of the
30 J. Van Seters, ‘Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography’,

SJOT 2 (1990), pp. 1–12.
teller, and even the social situation in which the story functions.31 Also,
details from many stories are mixed and matched to the occasion, and
pure invention is a frequent component. Even today, in modern Western
culture, one encounters folklore everywhere. You interact with folklore
every day and, more often than not, you do not even notice because
folklore is endemic to every aspect of your life.
One example of the way in which folklore in our own era constructs
a past without concern for accuracy can shed light on the way in which
biblical folklore functions.32 One day in 1969, U.S. President Richard
Nixon attended a university football game. Because the president
was at the stadium, young protesters against the Vietnam War staged
a rally. One of these young men was photographed perched in a tree
overlooking the football stadium. A few years later, rumors spread that
the young man in the tree had been Bill Clinton, a man who would
later become president of the United States. The rumor was false. Bill
Clinton had been far away from that stadium on that day in 1969.
Folklore ensured the survival of the story for decades, and it resurfaced,
sometimes with new details, each time Clinton campaigned for a public
office. For example, in one revised version of the story, a police officer
testified that he had dragged young Clinton from that tree. In another
version of the story, Clinton was naked in the tree!
Folklorists recognize that the story about Clinton in the tree is a
typical example of a story that has migrated from a less-known person
(the young man in the tree) to a better-known person (President Bill
Clinton). A similar phenomenon is easy to document in the biblical
books of 1–2 Samuel. The biblical hero David kills a menacing giant
named Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, but the original version of the tale is
preserved, in a terse summary account, at 2 Sam. 21.19. In that version,
someone named Elhanan kills the giant Goliath. A third version of
the story, in 1 Chron. 20.5, harmonizes the two tales from Samuel by
claiming that Elhanan killed the brother of Goliath, not Goliath himself.
31 S. B. Parker, Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on

Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 136–7. For an excellent general intro-
duction to these dynamics, see J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
32 This example is from B. Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004),
p. 165.
This last version of the tale could have been constructed only by a scribe
who was aware of the discrepancy in the two passages of 1–2 Samuel;
but this revision did not erase the earlier versions, it only added another
layer of folklore.
This tendency to change the details, and to permit details to migrate
from one person or story to another person or story, is a frequent
element in the Bible. Golden calves are made by the priest Aaron in
one story and by King Jeroboam in a similar tale (Exod. 32.1–35; 1 Kgs
12.28–33). In one biblical story, the Amalekites are entirely annihilated,
every man, woman, and child (1 Sam. 15.8, 32–3), but they appear
again in later stories (for example, 1 Sam. 27.8; 30.1; 2 Sam. 8.12).
Psalm 34’s superscription replaces Achish of Gath (from 1 Samuel
21) with someone named Abimelech. This person named Abimelech
might be a narrative fusion with the Abimelech of Gerar mentioned in
Genesis 26, or it could be a person named Ahimelech, not Abimelech, in
1 Samuel 21, who later becomes known as Abimelech in some ancient
variant manuscripts of the folktale. (See also the Gospel of Mark 2.26,
where this person becomes Abiathar, the fellow mentioned in 1 Sam.
22.20.)
In folklore, even seemingly significant events can be treated with
cavalier disregard for accuracy. For example, a reader of the Bible is not
able to decide who conquered the city of Jerusalem, or if Jerusalem was
ever conquered at all (contrast Judg. 1.8 with 1.21, and contrast 1 Sam.
17.54 with 2 Sam. 5.6–9). Biblical stories contradict themselves about
when, and under what circumstances, a specific divine name (the name
‘Yahweh’, which is usually translated ‘the Lord’ in English Bibles)
came to be associated with the biblical god (contrast, for example, Gen.
15.7 with Exod. 6.2–3; then contrast both those passages with Gen.
4.26). Some ancient manuscripts eliminate the prophet Elisha’s speech
to King Joash in 2 Kgs 13.14–19, and instead associate this speech with
King Jehu, as part of 2 Kings 10. Narrative switches of this kind were
not accidents. Ancient scribes chose to change the tales available to
them. In each case, why the change was made is a matter of conjecture,
but that a scribe had the authority to alter a story is beyond doubt. In
the realm of folklore, no tradition is so sacred that it cannot be altered,
often drastically altered, when a storyteller or scribe deems it useful to
do so.
The narration of a past within the cultural context of folklore has many
effects on the stories told in that culture. Frequently, stock storytelling
clichés are introduced to a tale in an effort to provide structure and

familiarity for the audience, as the examples from the book of Joshua
illustrate. There are many other biblical examples. For instance, there
is a pronounced tendency for people to meet near a water well (Gen.
24.10–20; 29.1–20; Exod. 2.16–22; 1 Sam. 9.11; and, in the New
Testament, Jn. 4.1–26). Also common is the motif of a husband who
introduces his wife to strangers as his sister (Gen. 12.10–20; 20.1–18;
26.6–11). Stock miracle tales often migrate from one miracle worker to
another. Elisha feeds one hundred people with a few loaves of bread,
which is the model for the later revision in which Jesus feeds thousands
with a few loaves and some fish (2 Kgs 4.42–4; Mk. 6.35–44).
Frequently, traditional storytellers are cognizant of, and respectful of,
variant details in a single story or blatant contradictions between two
stories. Have you ever asked yourself, for example, how many pairs
of each animal Noah loaded on his ark? Consider the variant details in
the story. Genesis 6.19–20 requires one pair of each species, but only
several verses later, in Gen. 7.2–3, seven pairs of each ritually clean
species are needed and one pair each of all other animals. The biblical
author no doubt recognized these variants in the oral or written sources
and chose to include both. Why the scribe did this will never be certain.
The concern might have been nothing more mysterious than a desire to
preserve variant options for the telling of an entertaining tale. Similarly,
a reader of 1 Sam. 15.35, in which we are told that the prophet Samuel
never again saw King Saul before Samuel died, might be surprised by
1 Sam. 19.24, in which a healthy, living Samuel encounters Saul one
more time, but there is no need for surprise. Precision in such matters
was never a priority of the ancient scribes. The priority was to preserve
traditional tales and find a place for them, however awkward this inclu-
siveness might be.
In many cases, the ‘past’ that is created through this dynamic process
of folklore bears no resemblance to a past that actually took place.
However, the ancient audience would not have been discomfited.
Members of a traditional community often believe that a ‘history’ can
be true even when it is not factual. The dismissive attitude expressed by
Hecataeus of Miletus is not at work. Rather, there is a great tolerance for
‘varied’ versions of a single past, no matter how ‘ludicrous’ those tales
might seem to outsiders. For example, Genesis includes two versions of
creation, which is a little odd if the ancient scribes were trying to tell
it exactly as they believed it happened. In Genesis 1, male and female
humans are created simultaneously in the image of their god and blessed
with fertility (Gen. 1.26–8). In Genesis 2–3, one human is created first
(Gen. 2.7), a second is created as a divine afterthought (Gen. 2.18–23),
and the two become ‘like’ their god only through rebellion (Gen. 3.22),
the result of which is a cursed form of fertility (Gen. 3.16). Today,
religiously motivated readers try to find ways to harmonize these two
narratives, but it is likely that the ancient scribe(s) never intended the
two to be harmonized. Almost every detail differs (even the chrono-
logical order in which vegetation, animals, and humans are created).
From the evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that biblical scribes
understood what folklore was and made an effort to gather as much of
their own culture’s folklore as possible. This is not to suggest that the
ancient scribes were researchers of folklore as are many academics
today; rather, these scribes were the intellectuals of their ancient culture,
a culture they no doubt loved and celebrated in their own intellectual
manner, by collecting, revising, and recording their people’s stories
and poetry. It is reasonable to hypothesize, for example, that Genesis
was designed by ancient scribes to be an anthology of variant Jewish
folklore. If the scribes who compiled these folktales were alive today,
they might be surprised, perhaps bewildered, to find that Genesis has
become a sacred document attributed to divine inspiration or revelation.
For biblical authors and their ancient readers, all these traditional tales
and poems were true even though they were aware that the tales and
poems have little or nothing to do with what actually happened. Some
biblical stories, such as Elijah’s flight into the sky (2 Kings 2), appear
naïve to a modern reader only because the modern reader overlooks the
degree of complexity common to a traditional culture’s sense of truth.
For example, it is sometimes alleged that biblical authors lacked a sense
of naturalism. According to this hypothesis, biblical authors believed
that miracles were possible and therefore accorded the fantastic details
of their stories the same truth-value as mundane details. This hypothesis
is incorrect. Biblical writers distinguished clearly between the fantastic
and the mundane, as many biblical stories indicate (for example, 2 Kgs
20.10). Social anthropologists note that the miraculous can be believed
by the traditional teller of tales, but believed in a qualitatively different
way from belief in the events of mundane stories. The fantastic is part of
a moral universe, not a physical universe, and tales of the fantastic are
true even though they did not happen. Such is the nature of traditional
storytelling. It is ‘varied’ and sublime, not ‘ludicrous’ at all.
A Test Case: Establishing the Dates of the Exodus and the Conquest
In sum, the anthology of literature that we call the Bible does not
attempt to construct a past. Like any author of a fiction, each biblical
author was free to invent narratives by using a few facts from the past
(a famous royal name, the vague memory of an event, or even an old
document perhaps found in a royal archive). But this author was free
to transcend the strict limitations imposed by the real past at any time
and without signaling to the reader that this shift has been made. Like
much of the folklore in the ancient world, the biblical narratives might
have been accepted as narratives about the past by some audiences, the
naïve audiences at which Greek authors of historia sneered when they
dismissed folktales as ‘ludicrous’. However, unlike historia, biblical
narratives are not marked by rhetorical elements designed to convince a
reader that the story is the truth and not just another of the many ‘varied’
narratives available.
Some biblical scholars continue to label narratives such as 1–2 Kings
‘history’, but this label imposes a set of expectations that the biblical
narratives were not designed to fulfill. A book like 1–2 Kings is an
anthology of stories strung together using a chronological framework.
The purpose of the framework was not to interpret the past, but to
provide space for any story the scribes deemed worthy of inclusion. New
stories could be fitted into the framework, like adding links to a chain,
and that is how the scroll evolved through the centuries.33 A few of these
stories used authentic fragments from the past (such as an authentic list
of kings), and that is the extent to which we historians got lucky. But the
Bible is not history; that is to say, it is not a selection of details from the
past, placed in a particular order, to provide a meaningful interpretation
of the past. It is a selection of stories and poetry, placed in a particular
order, and devoid of any interpretation at all, except for a few glosses
here and there that do not add up to a coherent message.
Perhaps the element of biblical narratives that most consistently
fools a reader today is their seemingly precise chronology. Genesis 1
announces what has happened ‘in the beginning’, and every narrative
from that point has been connected to the preceding by chronological
33 This is my thesis in Noll, ‘Is Kings Deuteronomistic?’ and ‘A Portrait of the

Deuteronomistic Historian?’ The analogy to links in a chain was advanced
first by T. L. Thompson, The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel: The Literary
Formation of Genesis and Exodus 1–23 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987).
links. In many cases, these links are vague, phrases such as ‘and then’
or ‘in those days’ or ‘after these things’. In other cases, a precise date is
given. For example, genealogical lists contain precise numbers of years
for each generation (as in Genesis 5). Also, leaders of cities, regions,
or kingdoms are said to have ‘judged’ or ‘ruled’ for specific numbers
of years (for example, Judg. 12.8–15; 2 Kgs 15.1–38). All this concern
for chronology gives the modern reader the impression that the biblical
authors were trying to construct the past as accurately as possible.
Thus, it might come as a surprise to learn that the chronology of the
Bible is almost entirely artificial. Moreover, there is every reason to
believe that this chronology would have been recognized as artificial by
any ancient reader. The narratives persistently defy their own chrono-
logical frameworks, and do so blatantly. For example, a man named
Omri became king of Israel in the thirty-first year of Judah’s King Asa,
and Omri’s son Ahab succeeded his father in the thirty-eighth year
of King Asa (1 Kgs 16.23, 29). This implies that Omri reigned about
seven years, but the text gives him a twelve-year rule (1 Kgs 16.23). In
another example, a king named Jehoram of Israel is said to have begun
his reign either when King Jehoshaphat of Judah was in his eighteenth
year or when Jehoshaphat’s son, also called Jehoram, was in his second
year (compare 2 Kgs 3.1 with 1.17). Some modern researchers try to
harmonize these inconsistencies by speculating about co-regencies or
variant calendar systems, but the biblical text is silent on such matters,
which suggests that the scribes were not concerned with clarifying the
confusion that their own pens had generated.
Many of the chronological markers are clichés common to much
ancient Near Eastern storytelling. For example, in antiquity, when one
wanted to say that a state of affairs continued for a long, but indefinite,
period of time, one said that the situation continued for forty years. The
number forty was as common a cliché for the ancients as ‘once upon
a time’ is for us. Note that many sequences in the book of Judges last
‘forty years’ (Judg. 3.11; 5.31; 8.28; 13.1), the Israelites wandered in
the wilderness for ‘forty years’ (Exod. 16.35; Num. 32.13; Josh. 5.6),
and both David and Solomon ruled as kings for ‘forty years’ (2 Sam.
5.4; 1 Kgs 11.42). The oddness of the ‘forty years’ cliché did not bother
the author of 2 Sam. 15.7, who states that Prince Absalom plotted
against King David for ‘forty years’, bringing his plans to completion
with a visit to the city of Hebron. But the same storyteller’s chronology
implies that Absalom was less than forty years old when he died (2 Sam.
3.3; 5.5; 18.15, 24–32). Apparently some later scribes were bothered by
this and changed ‘forty’ to ‘four’ in some manuscript copies of Samuel.
To illustrate the artificiality of the biblical chronology, let us attempt
to establish the dates for the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt under
the leadership of Moses and the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, two
events narrated in the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua. For the
sake of argument, let us assume that the Bible describes a real exodus
from Egypt and a genuine military conquest of Palestine. When did
these occur?
The dates for these events cannot be determined from evidence
outside the Bible. No archaeological or inscriptional data shed light
on the issue. For example, there is no evidence that Egypt suffered a
massive loss of population at any time in its ancient past. The Bible
would lead us to expect this massive loss of population. Ancient Egypt’s
population numbered about three million. The books of Exodus and
Numbers suggest that some 600,000 men of military age followed
Moses from Egypt (for example, Exod. 12.37). If one adds women,
children, and elderly men to this figure (also suggested by the biblical
story), a total of about two million followed Moses. That is to say, two
of every three inhabitants of Egypt left with Moses! It is reasonable
to expect that such a massive exodus should be recognizable in the
archaeological record of ancient Egypt, but it is not. Also, there is
no pattern of military conquest in Canaan in any ancient period that
could be equated with the narrative of Joshua. So, if the dates of these
two events are to be determined, they will derive exclusively from the
Bible’s chronology.
There is a biblical text that seems to establish a precise date for these
events. In a summary statement related to the reign of King Solomon,
the Bible states that Solomon’s fourth year was the 480th year after the
Israelites left Egypt (1 Kgs 6.1). Thus, if we can determine a calendar
date for Solomon’s fourth year, we can count backward to establish
the date of the exodus. As luck would have it, we can establish a date
for Solomon’s fourth year. As noted earlier, a Babylonian chronicle
mentions a Babylonian military attack on Jerusalem, and the Bible also
describes this event (2 Kings 24). Our hypothesis about this event is even
supported by another ancient text from Babylon. A list of food rations
in the Babylonian royal archive mentions a prisoner from Judah, King
Jehoiachin, who is described in 2 Kgs 24.12. Because the Babylonian
calendar can be correlated with our calendar, we can calculate that
King Jehoiachin was taken captive in 597 bce. The book of 1–2 Kings
provides the precise number of years for each king from Solomon to
Jehoiachin, so we can add up those numbers to determine the years of
Solomon’s reign. According to the Bible, there were 423 years from the
start of Solomon’s reign until the end of Jehoiachin’s reign. If one adds
these years to the date of 597 bce, then Solomon began to reign in 1020
bce and his fourth year was 1016 bce. Returning now to 1 Kgs 6.1, we
can add the years mentioned in that verse to the year 1016 bce.
When all these calculations are complete, the date of the exodus
according to biblical chronology is set firmly in the year 1496 bce.
It will be recalled that the Bible places Joshua’s conquest of Canaan
exactly 40 years later, thus 1456 bce. These are the firm dates of the
exodus and conquest according to the Bible. However, researchers have
noted problems. Ancient Assyrian inscriptions mention biblical kings
of Israel and Judah from time to time. These inscriptions can be corre-
lated to our calendar, but when this is done, the dates for these kings
do not fit with the chronology established by 1 Kgs 6.1 and 2 Kings 24.
As a result, many researchers have adjusted the biblical dates. These
adjustments vary by a few years, depending upon which researcher is
doing the calculations. According to a common set of adjusted dates,
Solomon became king around 960 bce, not 1020, and so his fourth
year would have been roughly 956 bce. This puts the exodus in 1436
bce and the conquest in 1396 bce. These adjusted dates do not derive
from the Bible, but from a modern reinterpretation of the biblical texts.
Nevertheless, either pair of dates, 1496 and 1456, or 1436 and 1396,
will suffice for the following observations.
The dates provided by the Bible for the exodus and conquest are
impossible. These events could not have happened at that time for at
least two reasons.
First, the exodus and the conquest would have occurred during the
Late Bronze Age (see Figure 5). During that era, the mighty Eighteenth
Egyptian Dynasty was at the height of its power. Under King Thutmoses
III, Egyptian armies pushed northward through Canaan and established
a provincial border region for the Egyptian Empire. In other words,
Joshua’s land of promise, the land flowing with milk and honey, was
part of an Egyptian empire when Joshua was supposed to be conquering
this land. Moses led his people out of Egypt and they wandered for 40
years in a part of Egypt (the Negev and Transjordan Highlands). Then
Joshua brought the Israelites across the Jordan River and right back
into another part of Egypt. This cannot be correct, because not a single
biblical author expresses any awareness that there ever had been an
Egyptian empire in Canaan.
A second difficulty with the biblical dates for the exodus and conquest
is their incompatibility with details in the biblical story about Moses.
Exodus 1.11 tells us that when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, just
prior to the exodus event, they were put to work in the city of Rameses
(and a city called Pithom). Historians know from Egyptian records that
the city of Rameses was built by a Nineteenth-Dynasty king, Ramesses
II, in the first half of the thirteenth century bce. Thus, if the exodus took
place in 1496 or 1436 bce, then Israelite slaves escaped Egypt with
Moses about one and a half to two centuries before those same Israelite
slaves toiled in the Egyptian city of Rameses. The Bible’s internal
chronology is impossible.
One could juggle the dates and details creatively in an attempt to
harmonize the biblical chronology with itself and with all the external
data. In fact, many biblical scholars have toiled for years doing just this,
though none has ever accomplished the goal. One common ‘solution’ is
to assume that the 480 years of 1 Kgs 6.1 is a metaphor for 12 human
generations. (Biblical authors usually reckon a generation to be 40
years, the same cliché encountered earlier.) Because a genuine human
generation is closer to 20 years, these scholars cut the 480 years in half
to correlate with a dozen 20-year generations. That puts the exodus
around 1256 bce (or 1196, when adjusted) and the conquest moves to
about 1216 (or 1156, when adjusted). In this case, the exodus took place
after the city of Rameses was built, and the kings were of the Nineteenth
Dynasty. Unfortunately, this solution stumbles on the first objection.
If anything, Egypt’s rule over Canaan under the Nineteenth Dynasty
(including its twilight years) was more direct, not less so, than it had
been under the Eighteenth Dynasty. Yet no biblical author expresses any
awareness that Egypt had ever ruled Canaan. The dates of the exodus
and conquest remain impossible.
Even if someone were to achieve the impossible by harmonizing the
biblical chronology with actual ancient chronology, the result, while
creative, would be unconvincing. It would constitute little more than
desperation – the desire to create a reliable account of the past from an
ancient folktale. The Greco-Roman authors of historia were eager to do
this kind of thing, but historians today recognize that folklore resists the
simplistic rationalizing techniques commonly employed by a Hecataeus
or a Herodotus. In the absence of external physical data, folktales are

not sources for the construction of sound historical hypotheses.
The folktales of the Bible contain fragments of old tradition, such
as the memory that the city of Hazor had been large and powerful in
the Middle Bronze Age and the city of Dan had been called Laish in
an earlier era (Josh. 11.10; Judg. 18.29). Even the name Moses sounds
authentic. In Egypt, many kings had names with moses in them, such as
Thutmoses III and Ramesses II. The moses or messes element means ‘to
be born’. Thus Thutmoses means ‘the god Thut has been born’. Names
of this type were common in the ancient world. The name is a sentence
with a god as subject noun. Such a name is called a theophoric name.
Biblical Moses is nothing more than an Egyptian theophoric name from
which the divine subject has been removed.
These fragments of ancient tradition in biblical folklore are not
surprising because it is the nature of folklore to preserve such fragments,
quite haphazardly, over many centuries. One researcher has likened
these scattered remains from previous generations of storytelling to the
scattered remains of a supernova.34 For example, Homer’s Iliad contains
personal names, descriptions of clothing, and references to customs that
were authentic to the era in which the Trojan War was supposed to have
taken place, and the Iliad recalls that a place called Pylos had been an
important kingdom at that time, but Homeric poetry dates to a period
many centuries later. Historians of ancient Greece do not conclude that
the Iliad describes a reliable past, even if an actual battle at a place
called Troy stimulated the construction of the folklore (a possibility that
remains debated). Rather, the experts view the Iliad as an entertaining
epic constructed from centuries of oral storytelling, during which
genuine elements from early stages of the storytelling process mixed
freely with elements from later stages of the process, and these mixed
with scribal revisions after the poetry had been committed to writing.
The biblical exodus and conquest stories are not history; these stories
do not attempt to construct a past. As noted earlier, the narratives of the
Bible do not include rhetorical devices designed to convince a reader
that this story is a reliable account of real events. Also, the scribes
treated their chronological system loosely, apparently without much
concern for accuracy or even internal consistency. Does this mean
34 A. Ardener, ‘The Construction of History: “Vestiges of Creation” ’, in E. Tonkin

et al. (eds), History and Ethnicity (London: Routledge: 1989), pp. 22–33 (29).
that the exodus and conquest did not happen? In light of all available
evidence, there is little reason to believe that any of these narratives
describe, or even attempt to describe, real events. However, to the
extent that the Bible constructs a ‘past’ of sorts, the appropriate question
to ask is never, ‘Is the Bible accurate?’ Rather, the pertinent question
should be, ‘Why does the Bible construct this particular version of a
past?’35
Imagine that you live in Canaan during the Iron Age (see Figure 5).
Perhaps your community retains a vague memory of oppression under
the Egyptian imperial provincial governors of previous generations. You
know that Egyptian religion, which is also Egyptian imperial politics,
teaches that Pharaoh is the royal son of an Egyptian god. Pharaoh sits
at the right hand of his divine father in the imperial propaganda. These
are some things that you, as a commoner of the Iron Age, know. What
would you do with your knowledge?
As you toil on the difficult land of the Cisjordan Highlands, it would
not be surprising if you and your community formulate entertaining
poems and stories to fill the evenings after each day’s work is finished
(recall that you are illiterate and there are no radios or televisions in
your world). It would not be surprising if your community prefers tales
in which your people are the chosen ones of your god, who is called
Yahweh or sometimes Yah, a god who fights on your behalf. Such tales
of the gods are common in your Iron Age world. In this context, poems
and stories of liberation from Egypt are bound to emerge:
Let me sing to Yahweh, for he has surely triumphed!
Horse and his rider, he has tossed in the sea!
My strength and might is Yah!
He has been to me military salvation!
This is my god and I will give him residence!
The god of my ancestor, and I will exalt him!
Yahweh is a man of war!
Yahweh is his name! (Exod. 15.1–3)
As this poetry and associated stories filter through the generations,

a grand narrative emerges and is constantly reformulated. In this
narrative, ‘our god’ Yahweh plays cat-and-mouse with Egypt’s divine
35 P. R. Davies, ‘Biblical Texts and the Past’, in K. D. Dobos and M. Köszeghy

(eds), With Wisdom as a Robe: Qumran and Other Jewish Studies in Honour of
Ida Fröhlich (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009), pp. 3–14.
Figure 15. Iron Age Assyrian holding a lion. Like this artwork, ancient narratives
often favored a vocabulary of symbols
king Pharaoh. ‘Our god’ is able to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that

Pharaoh is compelled to disobey, and then ‘our god’ punishes Pharaoh
for his disobedience (Exod. 4.21; 9.12; 10.20, 27; 11.10; 14.4, 8, 17).
Surely this is a proper fate for a man who claims to be the son of god. It
is not long until this folktale has been embellished with mighty miracles
and tangential stories preceding and following the main events.
In short, the entire story from Exodus 1 to Joshua 24 can be explained
as a by-product of creative storytelling over many centuries. In the
absence of physical evidence that two million people entered Canaan
in a single generation, there is no need to hypothesize that the tale is
based on any particular event. In light of the eclectic manner with which
the stories and poetry have been assembled in the Hebrew literary
anthology, there is no need to hypothesize that scribes tried to convince
their readers that these narratives were the truth and not the ‘varied’ and
‘ludicrous’ tales of their culture.
Does that mean the Bible is false? Not at all. These stories are an
authentic record of a community’s construction of its self-identity. It is
true fiction. Perhaps it can be called infallible folklore. But it is not history.

Dalley, Stephanie (ed.), The Legacy of Mesopotamia (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998).
Foster, Benjamin R., Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (2 vols;
Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993).
Glassner, Jean-Jacques, Mesopotamian Chronicles (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2004).
Gmirkin, Russell E., Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories
and the Date of the Pentateuch (London: T&T Clark, 2006).
Grabbe, Lester L. (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in
the Hellenistic Period (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
Grant, Michael, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation
(London: Routledge, 1995).
Halpern, Baruch, André Lemaire, and Matthew J. Adams (eds), The Books of Kings:
Sources, Composition, Historiography, and Reception (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
Marincola, John, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Momigliano, Arnaldo, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (with a
foreword by R. D. Donato; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
Parker, Simon B., Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on
Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
Thompson, Thomas L., The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel
(New York: Basic Books, 1999).
Van Seters, John, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the
Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983).
Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1985).
Veyne, Paul, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive
Imagination (trans. Paula Wissing; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Chapter 4
Prior to the Iron Age
Introduction
Because Charles Darwin knew nothing of DNA, he could not test
his ideas about biological evolution. As a result, Darwin’s thinking,
though brilliant, was inconsistent. He would experiment first with
one idea, then with another. The common element in his thought was
natural selection. It is important to be aware that natural selection – not
biological evolution – is the theoretical portion of Darwin’s theory. With
the scientific discovery of the chemical DNA, the fact of biological
change over time became indisputable. The theory of natural selection
has survived countless attempts to refute it and can be accepted with as
much confidence as the theory of gravity.
Random variation in DNA replication generates a vast number
of differing organisms. Every environment is distinctive and each
organism needs to find a way to survive in its environment at least
long enough to reproduce. In more cases than not, an organism that is
better equipped to survive will survive and reproduce creatures bearing
DNA either identical or nearly identical to its own. Less well-equipped
individuals tend not to survive long enough to reproduce, so their DNA
disappears with them. If, for some reason, organisms become geograph-
ically isolated from their original population, a new species will emerge
gradually as thousands of generations continue to produce significant
DNA variations. Over millions of years, this process has resulted in
many species. During that same period of time, many species have
been crushed by changing natural environments. This natural selection
is why the fossil record contains so many extinct species. There are far
more dead species than living ones.
Darwin’s theory explains how we got here. A relentless process of
unguided change began when our planet was formed about 4.5 billion
years ago. You and I emerged through a series of coincidences that
occurred only yesterday in geological time. The human story begins

only very recently, after millions of species enjoyed their span of life on
this planet and then disappeared.
In the Beginning . . .
The moment of our beginning is difficult to identify, but it took place
roughly 35 million years ago. At that time, a genus that biologists
have labeled Propliopithecus appeared. This tiny animal was the first
creature to resemble the apes. Apes were a latecomer to the planet; the
dinosaurs had lived many millions of years and had died off long before
Propliopithecus emerged. After many more millions of years, a certain
kind of ape, Australopithecus, emerged. This creature was similar to an
archaic chimpanzee. Three and a half million years ago – just a blink of
an eye – some of these creatures developed knees that were bad from
the perspective of a chimpanzee, but good from a modern human’s
perspective. They enabled the australopithecines to walk upright. These
creatures were compelled to seek out living spaces in which their
distinctive knees would not be a hindrance.
About 2.5 million years ago, a series of ice ages began. These
climatic changes made it more difficult for apes to obtain food. Some
australopithecines began using stones to dig and scrape the ground in
search of food and to break animal bones to get to the edible marrow.
Creatures with a proclivity to learn this behavior had a survival
advantage and therefore lived long enough to reproduce more creatures
with a proclivity to learn new behaviors.
The first humans were those apes for whom stone tools no longer
were a convenience but had become a necessity for survival. At that
moment, the genus Homo had emerged. No one knows exactly when
that moment arrived, but it was about two million years ago. Human
speech, perhaps the most distinctive feature of Homo, was an accidental
by-product of two unrelated biological developments: a particular
formation of tongue and laryngeal muscle combined with the abstract
thinking that was required to learn the art of tool making.
The most successful member of the Homo genus has not been Homo
sapiens; it was Homo erectus, who disappeared recently, about two
hundred thousand years ago. So far as is known, these people were the
first to move out of the African continent, and they mastered the use of
fire. They gave birth to our ‘parents’, an archaic form of Homo sapiens.
4. Prior to the Iron Age 107
However, Homo erectus did not become extinct the moment Homo
sapiens arrived. They survived, probably in geographic isolation, for
many centuries while early Homo sapiens multiplied and spread around
the globe. Homo erectus survived for more than a million years, and our
branch of the family has been around for only a fraction of that time.
It remains to be seen whether we will enjoy the longevity of Homo
erectus.
The Lithic Eras (Prior to 3500 bce)

In Palestine, the first evidence of Paleolithic people can be dated
geologically to at least 45,000 years ago. To put this time frame into
perspective, consider the average human generation, about 20 years.
If, for the sake of argument, we assume that the 20-year average has
been a constant, the first humans appeared in Palestine at least 2,250
generations ago. The invention of farming (the start of the Neolithic
era) occurred about 500 generations ago. One of the Bible’s famous
kings, David, would have been active just fewer than 150 generations
ago. Jesus of Nazareth was born about 100 generations ago. Gutenberg
produced the first printed Bible about 28 generations ago. In other
words, the era in which humans were not yet farmers was by far the
longest era in our shared experience on this planet.
Permanent residence was an innovative new idea among humans
who lived about 20,000 years ago, or about 1,000 generations ago. This
innovation is called the Mesolithic era, and the climate of Palestine
was much warmer and wetter then. There were a few lakes in what is
now the Negev desert (see Figure 18). The sea level was lower, so the
Palestinian Coastal Plain was about twice as wide as it is now. Also, the
Jordan River did not exist. Rather, there was a huge saltwater lake in
that region, called by geologists Lake Lisan. It covered the Great Rift
from north of what is now Lake Galilee to south of the modern Dead
Sea. During the Mesolithic era human occupation tended to follow the
receding waters of this gradually diminishing lake down the hills and,
ultimately, into the Jordan Valley as it slowly emerged. That process
was completed about 10,000 years ago.
Archaeologists call the people who built permanent settlements along
the receding coast of Lake Lisan the Natufian culture. They lived in
stone-walled huts, occasionally painted with a hand-crafted red-ochre
pigment. Several burials indicated that they had pets, domesticated
dogs. They hunted gazelles, hares, and birds. Micro-traces of wild grain
on their expertly crafted stone blades indicate that wild wheat was a
primary part of their diet. They did not plant the grain, but built their
villages near sources of both wheat and fresh water. As Mesolithic
culture gave way to the early Neolithic, Palestine’s climate had become
just a little cooler than it is today, but still much wetter.
The next radically new invention was farming, which was introduced
about 10,000 years ago, or 500 generations ago. Farming is called
the Neolithic Revolution, for it changed human life in ways that no
invention since that time has been able to match. The evidence for this
revolution appears in micro-traces of wheat found in the archaeological
record. Domestic wheat differs from wild wheat because the domestic
strains could not reproduce themselves without the assistance of farmers
threshing seed from chaff.
Once farming had become the way of life, food supplies became
more stable and humans could turn their attention to other creative
ideas. Beer was invented, as were a variety of small objects that
appear to have been game boards. Farming permitted time for leisure!
Also, Neolithic people began to make thread from plant fibers. They
braided ropes, baskets, and rugs, which were used in creative ways. For
example, baskets were used for cooking. They would line the basket
with pitch, pour soup into it, then drop rocks that had been heated in fire
into the soup. Linen clothing and sheets were made from the fiber of the
flax plant. Some of these fragile items that survived the centuries in the
very dry climate near the Dead Sea were found by archaeologists.
A significant innovation of the Neolithic era was the manufacture
of plaster from limestone. It is easy to shape, and after it hardens this
plaster is almost as hard as the rock from which it is made, so it is
durable. Neolithic people plastered and painted the walls and floors of
their homes, built plaster hearths for cooking, and made ‘white ware’
bowls and cooking pots. Plaster seems to have played a role in Neolithic
religion as well. At several Neolithic sites, large and exquisitely crafted
plaster statues of humanlike figures were found. These statues have
qualities that remind an art historian of god statues from later eras, so
one popular interpretation of them is that they represented the gods of
Neolithic communities.
One remarkable aspect of the Neolithic societies that used plaster is
their burial custom. Many people were buried under the plaster floors
of homes. Later, when sufficient time had elapsed to transform these
bodies to bones, the plaster was broken, the grave was opened, and the
skull was removed (without disturbing the remainder of the grave). The
skulls were then covered with plaster molded to create the likeness of
human skin. Sometimes seashells were inserted as eyes. Eventually, sets
of several plastered skulls would be reburied in a different location. This
activity did not extend to all the dead. Only some people were buried
under house floors and later decapitated. Some villages preferred males
for this ‘honor’, while others preferred females.
These distinctive burial rites may have been part of ancestor worship.
Worship of selected dead family members was common in later times,
Figure 16. Neolithic plastered skull

so this interpretation of decapitated burials seems reasonable. Ancestor

worship served several functions. Ancestors who have become divine
after death will be biased in favor of their descendants and will bless
the family. Also, an organized religion of ancestors usually signifies
property ownership, especially in an illiterate society where no deeds of
ownership exist.
Farming also enabled communities to grow larger, producing early
cities such as Jericho, just north of the Dead Sea (see Figure 18). A
wall and tower were built at Jericho in about 8000 bce, the first such
structure known. Most Neolithic communities were integrated into
a long-distance network of trade. Villages in Palestine, for example,
possessed obsidian (volcanic glass) from central Anatolia (see Figure
17). Inland villages frequently made use of seashells, often brought
from many miles away. Moreover, most of these communities display a
similar pattern of material objects, which implies that the communities
were not isolated from one another, but traded with or imitated each
other.
If the early Neolithic era was known for farming and plaster, the
later Neolithic saw the invention of animal herding and ceramic
pottery. When Neolithic people discovered that clay was an excellent
substitute for plaster, they began making smaller, more portable objects.
Archaeologists discern the emergence of domesticated animals in
several ways. Certain building structures might indicate stables or
pastures. The remains of an older animal with bone features that would
have made it easy prey in the wild might indicate that it was protected.
One important clue is a village trash dump with a disproportionately
high number of butchered young male animals. A few males would be
kept for stud and most of the females for milk and breeding, leaving a
surplus of young males for meat. These clues indicate that the animals
were no longer hunted, but raised.
Not long after the domestication of animals, a new type emerged in
human society: the shepherd. Shepherds usually move as small family
or clan units from place to place, seeking grazing land for the flock.
Often in winter they settle in one place. They do some farming but rely
on herding for their livelihood. Shepherds always live on the fringes of
farming communities so they can trade with farmers for the goods they
do not raise themselves. The farmers benefit from the relationship as
well, obtaining wool, milk, manure, meat, leather, bone, and horns from
the flocks.
The final stage of the Lithic eras has been called Chalcolithic. It is
defined as an age in which metalworking had been invented but writing
had not. The exploited metal was copper. Because it was relatively soft,
it was more useful for ritual and ceremonial objects than for everyday
tools, although many farm implements and weapons were made from it
as well. It should be emphasized, however, that while copper was known
in the Chalcolithic era, it was not common. Many people continued to
live without the new metalworking technology.
The primary effect of copper on human society was the stimulation of
more complex societies. Copper mines were rare and usually a consid-
erable distance from major settlements. That made demand high and
availability low. A sophisticated network of trade routes developed that
were governed by a professional class of warriors who could protect the
trade routes as well as benefit from them. In other words, copper was a
prestige item, and it was at least partially responsible for the emergence
of a more highly stratified society, with ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.
When plotted on a map, the sites where Chalcolithic-era pottery has
been found reveal a distinct pattern: a large, centrally located village
surrounded by a cluster of smaller villages. When archaeologists
compare this pattern and other aspects of Chalcolithic material culture
with living traditional societies, they recognize that the people of
Chalcolithic Palestine lived in chiefdoms. A chiefdom is a loosely
structured hierarchy governed by a leader who enjoys special authority
for several reasons. Primarily, he is a warrior who is able to muster and
lead able-bodied males when military action is required. Usually, his
leadership status is reinforced by a religious structure that sanctions
his office as divinely revealed or authorized. His place of residence
becomes the center of the community, a fledgling capital city. His
authority is transmitted to his offspring in a dynastic succession. In
short, a chief is a little like a king, but he rules over a far less complex
society. Unlike a kingdom, a chiefdom has a small population, no
bureaucracy, no standing army, no written records or law codes, and,
apart from the specially trained warrior class surrounding the chief, no
significant social hierarchy.
Chalcolithic Palestine’s chiefdoms dotted the landscape, but clustered
to a greater degree in the valleys and coastal regions, since they were
better agricultural lands than the highlands. The average person in this
society followed a lifestyle that was identical to the Neolithic farming
village, a lifestyle that would continue through most of Palestine’s
experience until recently. Bread made from wheat and barley was the
staple of the diet, supplemented by beans and vegetables, a few fruits,
and a very small amount of meat. Animals were not killed for everyday
meals because they were precious commodities. Later, in the Bronze
and Iron Ages, meat was eaten more often than not during agricultural
festivals or on special occasions. Presumably that was the case in these
earlier times as well. Sheep and goats remained the most common
sources of meat. Cattle were eaten sometimes. Pigs were never very
popular in Palestine. In Chalcolithic archaeology, pig bones represent
about 15 percent of the butchered remains. After the Chalcolithic
era, the percentage of pig consumption fell steadily until it became
negligible.
The chiefdoms of Palestine collapsed and disappeared during the
final generations of the Chalcolithic era. Historians do not know why. It
may have been due to changes in the climate that began about that time.
The level of aridity and the weather patterns known in Palestine today
began to emerge during the gradual transition from the Chalcolithic
to the Bronze Age. Perhaps Chalcolithic communities were unable
or unwilling to adjust to the changes and migrated. Whatever the
cause, archaeologists discern a clear break between the close of the
Chalcolithic and the first stages of the Bronze Age.
Each topic discussed so far in this chapter has illustrated a theme
of this book: how do we know what we think we know? Prior to the
invention of writing, we work with physical remains only. You may
have noted a variety of creative ways in which researchers evaluate
those remains and construct knowledge about the past. Evidence for
patterns of human behavior can be found in, for example, the strains of
wheat (wild or domestic) associated with ancient tools, the layouts of
domestic dwellings, the locations of those dwellings, the distribution of
objects not native to the places in which they were found, the sequence
of newly invented technologies such as ceramics and metals, whether
animals were buried in human settings, and even what types of animals
survived to maturity or were butchered while young. Inferences are
drawn as well by comparison of ancient physical remains with similar
physical patterns among contemporary traditional cultures. At every
step, the advances in the natural sciences assist an archaeologist or
historian to establish relative chronologies and reasonably accurate
dates. In the next section, all these methods continue to be employed,
but the researcher discovers an additional tool for analysis.
Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Bronze Age

The Bronze Age gets its name from metal production, but its most
significant invention was the art of writing. This innovation emerged in
two places, Mesopotamia and Egypt, at roughly the same time. In both
cases, the reason for its invention was quite mundane. Both regions
were dry and hostile environments. If humans wished to build a society
and live in these regions, they needed to work together, form a large,
integrated society, and pool their labor to build irrigation canals and
other aids for raising food. Large-scale cooperative effort had to be
coordinated by a cadre of overseers. In other words, there needed to be
a social hierarchy, with leaders and bureaucrats who would organize
the workers. Writing was invented by these early bureaucrats to keep
records. For centuries, this was the primary purpose for writing. Only
much later did people develop literature.
Mesopotamian and Egyptian writings took different forms. In
Egypt, the scribes wrote with pictures, which we call hieroglyphs. In
Mesopotamia, they developed a system of wedge-shaped symbols, called
cuneiform, to express words in syllables. Neither of the original writing
systems was similar to the alphabetic system you are reading now. Our
alphabet consists of twenty-six individual signs, each representing a short
sound, not a full syllable or word. (The invention of the first alphabet
occurred in Canaan, and it will be discussed later in this chapter.)
The land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates was home to a long
sequence of cultures and empires during the Early, Middle, and Late
Bronze Ages. The earliest of these were people who spoke a language
called Sumerian and lived in a series of independent cities along the
rivers of southern Mesopotamia from well before the Bronze Age until
about 2400 bce. By the 2300s, speakers of the Akkadian language
constructed Mesopotamia’s first unified empire under King Sargon from
a city called Agade. After several centuries, the Sargonic Empire gave
way to a rival empire ruled from the old Sumerian city of Ur, south
of Babylon. This empire is called the Third Dynasty of Ur, or Ur III.
The kings of Ur III attempted, with partial success, to revive the older
Sumerian culture and language, but the empire survived for only about
100 years. Its collapse around 2000 bce marks the close of the Early
Bronze Age and the rise of the Middle Bronze.
During the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 bce), the cities of
Babylon and Ashur became major political forces, competing with one
another for control over the land between the rivers (see Figure 17). The
most famous king of Ashur during these centuries was Shamshi-Adad
I (1813–1781 bce). Babylon boasted King Hammurabi (1792–1750
bce), who published a law code that is often compared to aspects of the
biblical legal tradition. Another significant Mesopotamian city, though
less powerful than Ashur and Babylon, was Mari. Archaeologists have
recovered a collection of palace archives from the Middle Bronze
stratum of Mari’s ruins. These archives shed much light on the daily life
of ancient Mesopotamia.
During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce), Babylon and Ashur
had little contact with, or influence on, the land of Canaan because a
Hurrian empire called Mitanni occupied northern Mesopotamia (see
Figure 17). Nevertheless, Late Bronze Mesopotamia was home to a
vibrant culture. This was an era sometimes called the Kassite period,
when kings of Babylon presided over a period of cultural sophistication
30°
Figure 17. The Near East during the Bronze Age

the like of which the region had never before seen. Scholars in Babylon
began to gather the literature of previous generations back to Sumerian
times, giving birth to a kind of renaissance enjoyed by the elite classes
of Kassite society. Some of the best-known Mesopotamian literature
was preserved and codified in this era, such as the most common
version of the heroic epic Gilgamesh. Between Babylon in the south and
Mitanni in the north, Ashur competed for power and territory, gradually
expanding to become the Assyrian Empire.
In ancient Egypt, life depended upon the Nile River. Every summer
(until the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1970) the Nile flooded
its banks when it swelled with the waters of the monsoons and melting
snow from Ethiopia and Sudan, where the Nile originates from two
rivers called the Blue and White Niles. A complex system of irrigation
used the annual flood to water crops to feed the masses of people who
lived along the more than 500 miles of riverbanks meandering from
Elephantine (modern Aswan) north to the Mediterranean Sea. A few
oases in the desert near the Nile were also inhabited, but the bulk of
Egypt’s ancient population lived close to the river.
To harness and fully exploit the Nile, political unification came early
in the Bronze Age. The precise time and circumstances of unification
are not entirely certain because they are shrouded in the pre-literate era
and further confused by conflicting later traditions. When Greek historia
began to influence Egyptian elite classes during the Greco-Roman
period (see Figure 5), an Egyptian priest named Manetho attempted
to compile a complete list of Egypt’s kings. His effort produced an
imperfect, but somewhat useful, list of royal dynasties, each assigned
a number in what Manetho had thought was the correct chronological
succession. We now know that some of these dynasties ruled portions
of Egypt concurrently, not sequentially; others were not dynasties at
all, just local governorships at best. Nevertheless, Manetho’s dynastic
numbers have become the conventional way of labeling ancient Egypt’s
political powers.
Most history books divide ancient Egypt into a series of time periods
corresponding to the relative strength or weakness of the ruling dynasts
of the period. Four of these groupings – the Pre-Dynastic Era, the Early
Dynastic Era (Dynasties 1 and 2), the Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3–6),
and the First Intermediate (Dynasties 7–11) – correspond roughly to
the Early Bronze Age (3500–2000 bce). Two periods – the Middle
Kingdom (late Dynasty 11 and Dynasty 12) and the Second Intermediate
(Dynasties 13–17) – represent the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550

bce). Each of the periods labeled ‘intermediate’ was a time in which
central authority had become weakened and several political entities
(dynasties) competed with one another.
Egypt’s Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3–6) was an insulated society. The
vast deserts that border the Nile Valley served as an effective buffer
against military invasion. Therefore, Egypt lived in peace. Egyptians
were confidently self-satisfied, attributing their good fortune to the
superiority of their culture. Outsiders, people who lived in any land
other than Egypt, were regarded as inferiors. All other lands were
called, collectively, the Nine Bows – regions where barbarian culture
suffered for lack of Egyptian civilization.
The Middle Kingdom began to expand beyond the limits of Egypt.
The Twelfth Dynasty discovered that Nubia (modern Sudan), to the
south, was rich in copper and gold, cattle and sub-Saharan trade items,
and people who could be enslaved if defeated in battle. The first
attempts at Egyptian conquest and empire began at this time, though
they were not altogether successful; Nubian resistance was strong.
Egyptian kings also campaigned from time to time in Canaan, where
the massive cedar trees of Lebanon, as well as incense, oil, and wine,
were valuable commodities. Not all contact with the outside world was
hostile. The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, like many kings of previous
dynasties, sent envoys to establish diplomatic and trade relations with a
number of Canaanite cities, especially Byblos on the coast.
During the years spanned by Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period,
people from Canaan began migrating and settling in the Delta. Eventually
these Canaanites developed into a potent military force that conquered
Lower Egypt to a point just south of Memphis. Egyptians called these
new kings heqaw khasut, ‘foreign rulers’. Those words became, in the
Greek language, Hyksos, and the Fifteenth Dynasty remains the Hyksos
Dynasty for modern historians.
The Hyksos were ambitious commercial entrepreneurs who engaged
in trade with Canaan, Cyprus, and Greece. They appear to have had
direct cultural contacts with the Minoan society of Crete, in the Aegean
Sea. There is even evidence to suggest that the Hyksos dominated
southern Canaan, perhaps ruling over that region directly. They ruled
for about 100 years, from roughly 1650 to 1550 bce. Their territory
encompassed only Lower Egypt and Memphis, and did not include
Upper Egypt. The Hyksos capital was established in the Delta at Avaris
(see Figure 17). Eventually, the Hyksos were defeated in battle by a

Seventeenth-Dynasty king of Thebes. The first king of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, also from Thebes, drove the Hyksos out of Egypt entirely, and
reunified Upper and Lower Egypt.
The Hyksos phenomenon – which was marked by Canaanites ruling
Egypt, then being driven out – has reminded not a few people of the
biblical story of Joseph, Moses, and the exodus. Even a Jewish historian
of Greco-Roman times, Josephus, who was active in the second half
of the first century ce, tried to equate the Hyksos with the Hebrew
Israelites. While there are countless difficulties with such a hypothesis,
this romantic idea remains popular in some circles. At best, the biblical
story could be no more than a metaphorical impression of the Hyksos
era, not a reliable account of it, since the details of the two are so
radically different. It is more likely that the Hyksos memory does not
stand behind the biblical tale at all.
Canaan in the Bronze Age (3500–1550 bce)

The two massive societies that emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt
were divided from each other by the less densely populated strip of
land called Canaan. The people who lived on this land bridge were
profoundly affected by their neighbors on either side. As a matter of
fact, one might say that geography was destiny for Canaan. Beginning
with the Bronze Age, the ancient experience of this region was frequent
dominance by and response to Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Anatolia
and Mesopotamia.
Canaan’s Bronze Age was a clear break with its Chalcolithic past.
Palestine had been unoccupied for a number of generations after
the collapse of the Chalcolithic chiefdoms, and the new Bronze Age
population seems to have migrated from the north. Having arrived,
however, these newcomers went their own way culturally. Increasingly,
the northern half of Canaan, called Syria, emerged as a vibrant cultural
community, which was influenced primarily by Mesopotamia and had
some economic contacts with Egypt. The southern half of Canaan,
Palestine, remained a cultural backwater, sparsely populated, and
engaged in mostly local trade. Its limited contact with the outside world
was with Egypt.
Many of the urban centers in Syria grew into models of Mesopotamian
cities. One of the most important among them was Byblos on the coast
(see Figure 17). Byblos supplied Egypt with massive cedar logs, a
precious commodity for Egypt, which had little wood of its own. Also,
Byblos traded with the Mesopotamian powers, obtaining metals and
other goods from regions around the Mediterranean, and supplying
these commodities to the far-off lands between the rivers Tigris and
Euphrates. The fortunes of Syria rose and fell with the fluctuations
taking place in Mesopotamia throughout the Bronze Age.
As was mentioned earlier in this chapter, the alphabet was invented
in Canaan, the economic link between Mesopotamia and Egypt. The
bureaucrats of such cities as Byblos kept records of exchanges with
all their trading partners. For centuries they kept these records in
the languages of the lands with which they were trading. Thus, the
scribes of Canaan were compelled to learn Egyptian hieroglyphs and
Mesopotamian cuneiform, two highly complex systems of commu-
nication. Eventually, it became apparent that a much simpler process
would be to borrow some of the most common signs and create a single
system for articulating the various one-syllable sounds made by any
language. The alphabet was the product of an effort to simplify commu-
nication among groups who did not speak or read the same languages. It
is one of humanity’s greatest cultural achievements, and it was invented
in Syria around 1600 bce.
During the Early Bronze Age (3500–2000 bce), a period of about
75 human generations, Palestine consisted of a few small cities that
traded with Egypt. Unlike the massive cities of Mesopotamia and
Syria, Palestine’s cities were small, with only a few numbering more
than 2,000 people. Their social structures appear to have been far less
complex than the cities to the north and east. Among the most signif-
icant of the Palestinian cities were Laish (which was later called Dan),
Megiddo, Ai, and Arad (see Figure 18).
The commodities that Egypt sought from Palestine’s cities were
their most lucrative crops: olive oil and wine. The oil, which was the
more expensive, could be made into soap, burned in lamps, used as a
liniment, and, of course, served as a dressing for food. Wine was, in the
ancient world, the most common drink.
When the Egyptian Old Kingdom collapsed in the twenty-third
century bce, Palestine’s cities went into rapid decline, eventually
being abandoned almost completely. For the final centuries of the Early
Bronze Age, Palestine’s meager population consisted of not much more
than a few villages and some shepherds.
Figure 18. Palestine during the Bronze Age

During the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 bce), Palestine was

home once more to a series of urban centers, each of which ruled over
its immediate rural surroundings. Significant cities included Laish
(Dan), Hazor, Megiddo, Beth-shean, Dor, and Ashkelon (see Figure
18). One archaeologist has described this era as a period of social and
political complexity never before seen in the land of Canaan.1 This may
have been due to the influence of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (Dynasty
12) and intermediate Hyksos Kingdom (Dynasty 15). It was also the
result of the influence of the Phoenician cities on the Syrian coast, such
as Byblos.
A significant proportion of Palestine’s Middle Bronze population
lived in one of the fortified cities, but the majority lived in small agricul-
tural villages. The people of these cities and their surrounding villages
were ruled by an aristocratic elite class, with a king in ultimate control.
The highly stratified society included an educated and wealthy elite who
numbered fewer than 5 percent of the population, the wholly illiterate
commoners (about 85 to 90 percent), and others, such as merchants and
slaves, most of whom were also illiterate.
Each small city was relatively self-sufficient, growing its own food
and producing its own crafts and tools. But each of them also engaged
in trade with near neighbors or, if the city could manage, with distant
trade partners in Egypt and Syria. Predictably, most trade was local.
Local commodities included food, textiles, and everyday tools, such
as common household pottery. Long-distance trade was the exclusive
domain of the aristocratic elite class (and the merchants and slaves who
served them). Trade at this level specialized in luxury goods, such as
finely crafted garments and pottery, as well as metal. Metals (copper,
tin, silver, and gold) could be traded in worked or raw form.
Money was not in common circulation, so trade made little use of it.
Commoners never had money, and all local trade was bartered. At the
elite level, much of the exchange was ‘gift exchange’. One nobleman
would send valuable gifts to another, expecting gifts in return. The
process forged social alliances – and in that society, social alliances
were political alliances. Elite exchange that was not governed by the
social etiquette of gift exchange was paid for by weighing out silver or
1 D. Ilan, ‘The Dawn of Internationalism – The Middle Bronze Age’, in T. E. Levy

(ed.), The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (Leicester: Leicester University
Press, 1998), pp. 297–319 (305).
gold. Money as you and I know it – silver and gold coins stamped with
a design – was invented relatively late, in about the sixth century bce in
the Aegean region. It did not become common until the Greco-Roman
era (see Figure 5).
During the peak of the Middle Bronze Age, Canaan was home to
about 140,000 people. Most lived on the Coastal Plain, in the Jezreel
Valley, and in the upper half of the Jordan Valley (the lower half
becomes increasingly arid as it descends toward Jericho). The Cisjordan
Highlands were populated, but sparsely so, except in those areas where
they merge into the lowlands, such as at Hazor in the Galilee (see Figure
18). One moderately sizeable city of the Cisjordan Highlands was
Shechem. Also, the first known settlement at Jerusalem emerged during
the Middle Bronze. It was defended by a massive city wall, but it was
not a large settlement, and Jerusalem remained sparsely populated until
late in the Iron Age II (see Figure 5).
Hazor was a dominant city in Middle Bronze Canaan. It was small
compared to the cities of Egypt or Mesopotamia, but colossal compared
to other cities of Palestine. As many as 20,000 people lived in Hazor
during these centuries. A city of 2,000 is unusually large for Palestine
in any period prior to Greco-Roman times. According to archaeological
evidence and ancient Mesopotamian records, Hazor dominated trade
in the northern half of Canaan. Given Hazor’s location, in the fertile
regions near Huleh Lake, and on the trading crossroads of the ancient
world, this is not surprising. Canaan’s southern half was economically
controlled by the Delta region of Egypt, where the Hyksos capital at
Avaris served as a commercial hub. It remains uncertain whether the
Hyksos ruled southern Palestine or simply dominated economically,
but their presence is evident in the large number of Hyksos royal
scarabs found in Palestine. Thus, the cultural and economic influence in
northern Palestine came from the Syrian coastal plain as well as from
Mesopotamia, and the cultural and economic influence in southern
Palestine came from Egypt.
Middle Bronze Palestine’s society was volatile. The elite classes
were trained warriors, and commoners could be conscripted for the
army in times of crisis. New war technologies were invented during
these centuries, including the composite bow, the military chariot (but
not cavalry, which was invented during the Iron Age II), and several
kinds of siege engine (including the battering ram and the siege tower).
To counter these siege engines, a typical Canaanite city developed into
a heavily fortified citadel atop a high hill. The city wall was doubly
protected by a long, massive earthen rampart, often plastered, to
protect against frontal attack. As a result, most of these fortified cities
survived unmolested for the first 400 years of the Middle Bronze period.
Invading armies would not hesitate, however, to ravage the countryside
during time of war. Farmers would escape behind city walls when
invading armies were in the vicinity.
Middle Bronze Palestine came to a tragic end. With a few excep-
tions, each of the major cities was destroyed by military assault during a
period of about 100 years, from 1650 to 1550 bce. An earlier generation
of historians sought a single culprit for this wave of destruction. Most
attributed the damage to invading Egyptian armies. (A few fundamen-
talist Christians sought the handiwork of biblical Joshua in these ashes,
in spite of the obvious chronological problems.) It is now generally
recognized that the process of destruction was gradual and is not to be
attributed to any single cause. Southern Canaan suffered destruction at
the hands of the early Eighteenth-Dynasty Egyptians, but other portions
of the land were devastated by a variety of foreign armies from the north
and Palestine’s own cities in competition with one another.
The Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce)

The middle of the sixteenth century bce was a significant turning point
for Canaan. On three sides, Canaan’s neighbors were emerging as
powerful kingdoms (see Figure 17). To the north, Anatolia had become
known as the land of Hatti. In northern Mesopotamia, a coalition of
Hurrian kingdoms was called Mitanni. And in Egypt, the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Dynasties were about to become the two most powerful
royal dynasties of ancient Egypt.
All three of these powers had one thing in common: they coveted
Canaan. Not only did this region offer natural resources of value, such
as Syria’s massive cedar trees, Palestine’s oil and wine, and the Negev’s
copper mines, but Canaan was also the land bridge that stood between
the three powers. Each rival king desired control of that passageway,
strategic both defensively and offensively, and each was willing to fight
for it. Canaan became the battleground for the superpowers of the age.
Imperial policies imposed from outside affected the lives of Canaanite
people in many ways. Taxation skimmed natural resources from the
region, impressment into the armies of these foreigners took place from
time to time, and enslavement, even deportation, was not uncommon.

Thus the three foreign powers were much the same from a local person’s
perspective – foreign domination was domination, no matter which king
claimed divine right to engage in it.
The Egyptian New Kingdom and the Wars of Empire

The Hyksos city of Avaris (Fifteenth Dynasty) in the eastern Delta
was perceived to be a foreign occupation by the Egyptian Seventeenth
Dynasty that ruled in Thebes to the south. Rivalry between these two
centers of power eventually erupted into warfare. The Theban army
attacked the Delta, and the attack was continued by the founder of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, who was also from Thebes. The Egyptians drove
the Hyksos out of Egypt and into southern Canaan, where the war
continued until the Hyksos were destroyed.
For Palestine, the end of the Hyksos marks the beginning of the Late
Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce). For Egypt, their expulsion marks the
start of the New Kingdom. During the New Kingdom, Egyptian kings
became known by the title pharaoh, which meant ‘the Great House’.
The New Kingdom was, in fact, three great houses in succession,
known as the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties.
From a Canaanite’s perspective, the New Kingdom represents a single
period of uninterrupted Egyptian imperial presence and dominance in
Canaan. The Eighteenth Dynasty came to an end not because Egypt
weakened, but because male heirs died out, leaving power in the
hands of leading generals and paving the way for transition to a new
royal family, the Nineteenth Dynasty, close to 1300 bce. Although
some historians hypothesize that the Nineteenth Dynasty’s hold on
Palestine weakened as the dynasty went into decline, evidence suggests
otherwise. Palestine remained in the firm grasp of Egyptian authority
as the Nineteenth Dynasty made its transition to the early Twentieth
Dynasty shortly after 1200 bce. The last known Egyptian emperor to
rule Palestine died in the 1130s bce. After that, the Twentieth Dynasty
began a gradual decline, and it came to an end in the early eleventh
century bce.
Two imperial powers emerged to the north of Canaan during the Late
Bronze Age. The Hurrians were located in northern Mesopotamia and
gradually spread westward into northern Syria. They are identified by
their language, which is not related to the Semitic languages common
The Egyptian New Kingdom

Dynasty Approx. Dates Significant Kings Significant Events
18th Dynasty Late 16th to 14th Thutmoses III Hurrian Wars
centuries Akhenaten Peace of Egypt
19th Dynasty 13th century Ramesses II Hittite Wars
Merneptah Libyan Wars
20th Dynasty 12th century Ramesses III ‘Sea People’ War
Figure 19. The Egyptian New Kingdom
to the region. Culturally, however, they seem to have differed little from
the other Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia and Canaan. The Hurrians
seem to have been responsible for some of the military destruction
that marks the close of Palestine’s Middle Bronze Age. Two of the
most significant Hurrian centers were the city of Kadesh on the middle
Orontes River and the larger, more powerful region of Mitanni in
northern Mesopotamia (see Figure 17). Archaeologists have not yet
located the capital city of Mitanni.
A second imperial power emerged in Anatolia and was known as
Hatti-land. The people called Hittites are identified by their distinct
language and several cultural differences with the peoples to their
south. During the Late Bronze Age, Hatti’s power gradually increased
so that, by the mid-fourteenth century, a Hittite king was able to attack
and dismantle much of Mitanni. From that time, Hatti became Egypt’s
primary rival in Canaan. The Hittites remained a major political force
in the ancient Near East until about 1200 bce.
Egypt’s interest in Canaan was one of its two vital concerns. The late
sixteenth century saw a great deal of Egyptian military activity to the
south in Nubia (modern Sudan). Nubia had much to offer an ambitious
Egyptian monarch, and the early Eighteenth-Dynasty kings were eager
to seize the region. Not only did Nubia possess cattle and humans that
the Egyptians wanted to exploit, but also its land was rich in copper and
gold. In addition, Nubia was the land bridge to trade with sub-Saharan
Africa, which offered exotic animals and animal skins, ivory, and other
luxury goods. Each of the early Eighteenth-Dynasty kings campaigned
in Nubia. By the time that a woman named Queen Hatshepsut ruled as
regent for the child-king Thutmoses III, Egypt was gaining control over
most of it.
Although the New Kingdom’s early focus was on Nubia, Canaan was
not ignored. A few of the earliest Eighteenth-Dynasty monarchs made
expeditions there as well. As a matter of fact, Thutmoses I, father of

Queen Hatshepsut, had pushed his army all the way to the banks of the
Euphrates River. These were, however, military raids, not conquests.
Egyptian interest in the region as a possession evolved only after
significant portions of Nubia had been ‘pacified’ (to use the rhetoric of
the Egyptian kings).
Thutmoses III, who became sole ruler very early in the fifteenth
century after the death of Queen Hatshepsut, began the conquest of
Canaan in earnest (see Figure 19). His opponents were the Hurrians
who were dominating Syria and northern Palestine at that time.
Thutmoses III sought to push Egypt’s border beyond the Euphrates
River. His motivation was the growing presence and power of Hurrians
on the border of Egypt, which no doubt raised the spectre of an eventual
invasion of the Delta. To prevent that possibility, Thutmoses III struck
first.
In all, Thutmoses III campaigned 17 times during the Hurrian Wars,
and he reappeared regularly in Canaan to collect taxes. A crucial battle
was the 7-month siege and conquest of Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley.
The conquest of that strategically located city brought under Egyptian
control the primary traveler’s route through Canaan (northward up
the coast, across the Mount Carmel foothills, through the Jezreel, and
on toward either Damascus or Kadesh). This rendered the politically
fragmented region of Canaan unable to resist Egypt, and drove the
Hurrians north, back toward their center of power in Syria. Thutmoses
III pressed on, taking the coastal regions and then moving on the city
of Kadesh, which he captured (see Figure 17). He soon found himself
facing the larger and more formidable Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia.
Thutmoses III was never able to defeat Mitanni fully, but he pushed
well into Mitannian territory, reaching the banks of the Euphrates River
near Carchemish. Unlike his grandfather, Thutmoses III intended to make
Egyptian dominance over northern Syria permanent. Mitanni thought
otherwise, and the war continued into the reign of the next Egyptian king,
Amenophis II. Gradually a stalemate began to emerge, and both sides
were willing to begin negotiating a peace. The marriage of a princess
from Mitanni to the Egyptian heir Thutmoses IV sealed the treaty of
friendship between these two powers. The border between Egypt and
Mitanni was drawn roughly from a city called Ugarit on the northern
Syrian coast southeast toward the city of Damascus (see Figure 17).
Northeast of this line was Hurrian domain, southwest of it was Egyptian.
The hundred or so years that followed the Hurrian Wars are sometimes
called the Peace of Egypt (see Figure 19). From Egypt’s point of view,
it was just that, a peaceful era in which Canaan was a rich source of
tax revenue. From the perspective of a Canaanite, however, the period
was not very peaceful at all. For one thing, any hint of revolt in Canaan
was crushed ruthlessly. Also, Egypt required slaves, and several kings
deported a significant percentage of the Palestinian population for that
purpose. By the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten (mid-fourteenth century
bce), Canaan had been transformed radically by Egyptian imperial rule.
In light of Egyptian imperial policies, it is not surprising that archae-
ologists have noted a marked population decrease in Palestine during
this era. The Cisjordan Highlands were all but abandoned, and most
lowland communities were much smaller than they had been previously.
In some cases, the Egyptians seem to have relocated communities to
serve Egyptian strategic interests.2 In other cases, entire communities
simply disappeared. Middle Bronze Palestine had once been home to
some 140,000 people, but that number decreased to fewer than 70,000
by the middle of the Late Bronze Age.
Canaanites were not the only ones who found the Peace of Egypt less
than peaceful; this was not a time of peace for Mitanni either. Thutmoses
III’s military success was only part of the reason why Mitanni had
made peace with Egypt. The other reason was Hatti. Mitanni had been
fighting two wars, against Hatti as well as Egypt. As any military strat-
egist knows, a two-front war is a formula for failure. Mitanni chose to
make peace and cede land to the more distant enemy, Egypt, in the hope
of concentrating all its effort to defeat the near neighbor, Hatti. The
hope was not realized. By the mid-fourteenth century bce, a Hittite king
had invaded and dismantled Mitanni.
With the collapse of Mitanni by the mid-fourteenth century, there
were but two major powers, one holding Canaan as a series of Egyptian
provinces, the other coveting that land from the vantage of its northern
border. Through a series of complex diplomatic and military maneuvers,
Hatti brought significant portions of northern Syria under its power. As
Egyptian provinces in this region entered treaty alliances with Hatti,
Egypt reacted. A treaty of this kind required the province in question to
renounce its fealty to Egypt and pledge allegiance to Hatti instead. For
2 A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000–330 BC (Vol. 1; London: Routledge,

1995), p. 196.
the Egyptian kings of the late Eighteenth Dynasty, that meant war. The
war outlasted the dynasty, however. There came a point when male heirs
were no longer available, and the surviving queen considered several
options, including a peace treaty with Hatti that might have placed a
Hittite on Egypt’s throne. This did not materialize; instead a series of
generals served as interim kings of Egypt, and a transition was made to
the Nineteenth Dynasty.
The kings of the early Nineteenth Dynasty opposed Hatti vigorously,
and this era marks the peak of the Hittite Wars (see Figure 19). This
did not mean that military campaigns were conducted year on year. In
fact, there were sporadic and sometimes extensive periods of quiet. But
Egypt never accepted the loss of northern Syria and continued to attack
Hittite vassal states in that area. These wars came to both a climax and
a resolution during the more than half-century reign of Ramesses II in
the thirteenth century bce.
A particularly significant battle took place when Ramesses II attempted
to capture Kadesh, which was by then a Hittite enclave. His army was
lured into a trap and severely beaten by a clever Hittite king. Historians
sometimes represent this battle as a stalemate in which neither side won
or lost. However, the battle was a disaster for Ramesses II, who can
certainly be described as the loser. The Egyptian king never reached the
walls of Kadesh, lost half his army, and faced, as a result of this defeat,
sporadic rebellion throughout southern Syria and Palestine. Returning
to Egypt, Ramesses II created monuments to himself in which he
presented his loss as a great victory. Then he quickly and ruthlessly
quelled the unrest in Canaan.
It was during this period that Ramesses II built a city near the ruin
of a previously robust city in the Egyptian Delta, Avaris, and named it
Per-Ramesses, ‘the City of Ramesses’ (see Figure 17). This gave the
kings of Egypt a nearby center from which to oversee their holdings in
Canaan. Per-Ramesses remained the prominent northern center of New
Kingdom power to the end of the Twentieth Dynasty.
Although Hatti had the military advantage after the Battle of Kadesh,
internal strife weakened the regime. Moreover, Hatti was now facing
a two-front war. The Assyrians had begun to fill the vacuum left
by the demise of Mitanni and were threatening Hatti from northern
Mesopotamia. For these reasons, a Hittite king offered to make peace
with Ramesses II, who accepted due to other military pressures. In
Egypt, the western border was beginning to experience pressure from
Figure 20. Pharaoh Ramesses II, Nineteenth Dynasty (thirteenth century bce)
Libyans. The Libyan problem and the unrest in Canaan were sufficient
challenges, so Ramesses II wanted to avoid more warfare with Hatti.
The two kingdoms buried their differences, entered into a deep bond of
friendship, and became trade partners. Most of southern Syria and all of
Palestine remained, by this agreement, part of imperial Egypt.
Pressure from the Libyans only increased as the long reign of
Ramesses II came to an end. For his successor, Merneptah, the Libyan
War became the most pressing issue (see Figure 19). Merneptah was
able to stem the tide of incoming Libyans during his lifetime (late
thirteenth century bce). But over the next several centuries, that influx
would continue to such an extent that Libyans even became kings of
Egypt by the tenth century bce (the Twenty-second and Twenty-third
Dynasties).
During Merneptah’s reign other foreign groups made their way
into Egypt and served as mercenary soldiers in both the Libyan and
Egyptian armies. Historians call them ‘Sea Peoples’, but this was not
the name they gave themselves. They were a mix of groups with names
like Sheklesh and Sherden. They came from various places, mostly
from the Aegean area (Greece, western Anatolia, Crete, Cyprus). Within
a generation or two of Merneptah these groups would include a people
called Peleset. In Hebrew, that group was called Philistine. They were to
become a central player in the sweeping changes that mark the opening
years of the Iron Age I (1150–950 bce), to be discussed in the next
chapter.
Canaan saw almost continual warfare during the Late Bronze Age.
The three major foreign powers met and fought one another there.
Egyptian troops marched through and despoiled the region regularly,
putting down rebellion and collecting taxes. Much of Palestine was
depopulated, the people carried away to serve as slaves in various
Egyptian cities. Seen through the eyes of a Canaanite in this period, the
world was harsh and often unkind.
Daily Canaanite Life in the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce)

Two primary sources give us clear insights into daily life during the
Late Bronze Age. First, archaeological research reveals a great deal
about the homes, villages, and cities of Palestine. An archaeologist
surveying settlement patterns is struck by the impact that Egypt had
on Palestine. Generally, this was a period of impoverishment, no doubt
due to Egyptian taxation. The small amount of wealth was clustered in

the larger urban centers, where Egypt’s local governors and their troops
resided. The governors lived well, since the appearance of splendor
was an essential ingredient in the regime’s control of the Canaanite
population. Conspicuous wealth creates prestige and sets the leadership
apart from the commoners. Depending upon the period, there were
about 15 to 20 major Canaanite cities under Egyptian control during
these centuries. Each ruled its immediate environs on behalf of Egypt.
A second primary source from this period is an Egyptian royal archive
that has been remarkably well preserved. The Eighteenth Dynasty’s King
Akhenaten was a religious maverick who built a new capital city with a
name, Akhetaten, that sounds quite similar to the king’s name. His city
survived only as long as he did. After his death, Akhetaten was abandoned
by Akhenaten’s successors. The royal archive was abandoned as well,
and it remained, untouched, in the desert sands until it was discovered in
modern times. As a result, we can read Akhenaten’s mail. He received
diplomatic and administrative epistles from Canaan, Hatti, Mitanni,
Assyria, and Babylon. These writings shed a great deal of light on
daily life in this era. Usually, they are called the Amarna archives, since
Amarna is the modern name of the ancient city Akhetaten (see Figure 17).
Pharaoh Akhenaten has been the focus of attention for many people
because of his religious innovations. To some extent, this attention
has distorted the significance of this king’s ideas. Nevertheless, he
was a remarkable man. He began life as Amenophis IV, but chose to
abandon the god Amun, after whom he had been named. Instead, he
worshiped the sun disk, called the Aten. That is why he changed his
name to Akhenaten, which means ‘the one who is effective on behalf of
the Aten’. This is another example of a theophoric name, a name that
includes a divine being, as discussed in Chapter 3.
The Aten was the only god that Akhenaten acknowledged. All other
Egyptian gods were shunted aside. This manifestation of monotheism
has led some historians (and a great many non-historians) to the
erroneous conclusion that Israelite monotheism was influenced by
Akhenaten. Although there is some evidence to suggest that Egyptian
piety had a minimal impact on the Bible (especially in Psalm 104
and Proverbs 22–4), there is no justification for making a direct link
between Akhenaten’s religion and biblical religion. Akhenaten and his
religion died centuries before the first words of the Bible were written.
At best, the religion of Akhenaten continued to influence the cultural
milieu that later gave rise to the Bible. The Bible manifests a religious
sensibility that it shares with Akhenaten and many others (an issue that
will be discussed in Chapter 6).
For Akhenaten the sun disk was the exclusive source of all light and
goodness. Although this idea can be considered monotheistic, it was not
an entirely pure monotheism. Akhenaten was himself the incarnation of
the Aten’s light and goodness, the one who was effective on behalf of
the Aten. Deity was not as singular as it seems at first glance, since it was
shared with the human king. In this sense, the seemingly unconventional
religious belief of Akhenaten was not very new at all. As in traditional
Egyptian religion, the king of Egypt remained a god. The outward form
of the religion was new, but its inner logic had not changed.
Some historians believe that most Egyptians hated the new religion,
despised Akhenaten, and were eager to repudiate and bury his religion
the moment he died. This is possible. However, another hypothesis is just
as likely. From the evidence, it would seem that no one protested against
the religious innovations of this king. The construction of his new city,
which was huge, required a massive cooperative effort, and that effort
seems to have gone smoothly. The temples of Egypt did not close, they
simply directed their activities toward a new manifestation of the divine.
However, there is evidence to suggest that plague struck the ancient world
at this time. Akhenaten’s own family seems to have suffered high death
rates, and plague may have killed the king himself. After the king’s death,
therefore, it is possible that the plague was interpreted to be a result of
divine displeasure at the religious changes. For this reason, Egypt’s subse-
quent kings reverted to the more traditional version of the Nile’s religious
culture.3 Whatever the reason for the abandonment of the short-lived
religion, the simultaneous abandonment of the new capital city has resulted
in a perfect time capsule just waiting for the modern archaeologist’s spade.
While the sun disk Aten shone over Amarna, Pharaoh’s subjects in
Canaan bowed before the king of Egypt with these words: ‘I prostrate
myself at the feet of the king, my lord, my god, my sun, the sun from
the sky, seven times and seven times, on the back and on the stomach’.4
3 Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, p. 202.

4 For a useful discussion of this rhetoric, see E. F. Morris, ‘Bowing and Scraping
in the Ancient Near East: An Investigation into Obsequiousness in the Amarna
Tablets’, JNES 65 (2006), pp. 179–95. For the texts, see W. L. Moran, The Amarna
Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
This courtly language was typical not only when the Aten was the god
of Egypt, but before and after Akhenaten’s reign as well. Canaan was
very much a part of the Egyptian domain, and Pharaoh was Palestine’s
ultimate god and king. On a more local level, there was a much more
mundane governmental bureaucracy, a very human one.
Each Canaanite city was governed by a Canaanite mayor who had
been selected by Pharaoh.5 This mayor had been raised and educated
at Pharaoh’s court in Egypt, so that he was thoroughly Egyptianized
and loyal to his lord. In turn, the mayor sent his sons to Egypt for their
education, and the sons’ residency with Pharaoh also served to keep the
mayor in line, lest anything unpleasant happen to his children.
The mayor ruled with his own local militia and sought royal Egyptian
troops as need arose. The local militia was a kind of feudal aristocracy,
possessing estates associated with the city, and supplying military duty
in return. The population of Palestine was not large, as we have seen,
so the warriors were not many. Since they were well trained, it was
not difficult to keep the commoners in line. When a mayor requested
additional troops from Pharaoh, he usually wanted 100 men or fewer.
Most of these cities were in the lowlands of Canaan, along the coast
and in the Jezreel and Jordan valleys. The Cisjordan Highlands were
very sparsely populated, and few lived in Transjordan. This is not
surprising since the population of Palestine was meager and the best
agricultural land was in the valleys and foothills. What little population
had been living in the highlands during the Middle Bronze Age had
disappeared, probably absorbed into the valleys as Middle Bronze
society collapsed. The Egyptian government maintained two cities in
the Cisjordan Highlands, at Shechem and Jerusalem, the latter of which
appears to have been quite small at this time. These seats of Egyptian
presence governed the very small number of people who lived in the
tiny highland villages, but primarily they were there so that the hills
would not be overrun with bandits or other undesirables. Likewise,
Hazor maintained control over Galilee (until it was destroyed, appar-
ently by Ramesses II, for rebellion).
A Canaanite mayor was expected to serve Pharaoh in three ways: with
troops, taxes, and hospitality. His troops were at the command of the
5 For this discussion of life in Late Bronze Age Canaan, see D. B. Redford, Egypt,
Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1992), pp. 192–213; Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, pp. 317–29.
Egyptian army and could be called up for royal service. A considerable

part of his city’s surplus produce, such as grain, oil, and wine, was sent
to Egypt as tax payments. The mayor also paid taxes in other goods.
For example, Palestine was a land bridge for merchants, and many of
the imported goods were sent directly to Egypt. These might include
glass, silver, gemstones, copper, timber, and incense. The Canaanite
mayor was expected, above all, to provide hospitality to any Egyptian
dignitaries or troops sent by Pharaoh, such as tax collectors or military
police sent on general or specific missions. Feeding and sheltering them
was a crucial part of the mayor’s duty.
Generally speaking, the mayors of the cities did not like each other.
As a matter of fact, they competed with each other, often to the point
of military action. One mayor would try to annex the land of another,
invade his city, or even kill him. The Amarna archive is full of letters
sent by a mayor complaining, often bitterly, about the mistreatment he
has suffered at the hand of a neighbor. In some cases, the competition
seems to have devolved into temporary chaos and murder. Pharaoh
rarely got excited by such conflicts. So long as taxes were paid and
Egypt’s peace maintained, the lives of a few Canaanites were not much
concern to him. The constant squabbling among these mayors was,
from Pharaoh’s perspective, a good thing. While the mayors were at one
another’s throats, they were not likely to organize into an anti-Egyptian
coalition. When matters got out of hand, Pharaoh would send troops and
restore order. Often, however, he permitted the locals to fight it out and
settle the matter for themselves.
The Canaanite mayors walked a tightrope between two constitu-
encies. On the one hand, if they seemed too subservient to the Egyptian
pharaoh, they risked losing the confidence of the people they governed.
Taxes were high and the Egyptians unpopular. The local mayor needed
to distance himself from the source of that resentment. On the other
hand, the mayor could not afford to cross the Egyptian administration.
His life depended upon subservience to Pharaoh. This give and take was
part of a mayor’s everyday reality. Some might play the game success-
fully, but others might die at the hands of a violent mob or get dragged
off to face charges of disloyalty in Egypt.
This policy of indirect rule maintained by the Eighteenth Dynasty
changed somewhat under the Nineteenth Dynasty. As Hatti strengthened
its hold over northern Syria, the Egyptians, in self-defense, decided to
become more directly involved in their imperial domains. Egyptian
garrisons were enlarged and new ones created. More direct governance
of the population resulted. Taxes increased as well. On occasion, a
pharaoh was required to put down the uprisings that this policy fostered.
He exercised his duty brutally. The land and people of Canaan were,
from his perspective, a resource to be exploited and a military buffer
against Hatti, nothing more.
This description has concentrated on the aristocracy of Canaan,
but aristocrats comprised perhaps only 5 percent of the population.
Unfortunately, it is only the upper class that we are able to know
intimately through the writings that have survived, since only the upper
class was engaged with writing. We do get a few glimpses of commoners
in the texts and in the material culture recovered archaeologically.
Below the aristocracy, there were two classes of Canaanite commoners,
artisans and farmers. The artisans were skilled laborers who created
all manner of crafts, including pottery, textiles, and metal objects.
Distribution of these goods was overseen by the elite class. Beside the
artisans were the farmers, by far the largest element of the population.
They did not own their land during the Late Bronze Age, but were, in
essence, serfs who were required to work the land on behalf of the upper
classes, keeping some of the produce as payment. The entire economic
structure of the provincial cities was in the hands of the elite class.
Just beyond the edge of polite society were two other groups, the
shasu and the ‘apiru. The shasu, a term meaning ‘foot wanderers’, were
shepherds. As always, shepherds lived in close relation to the farmers,
providing and receiving goods as part of an economic symbiosis. In the
Egyptian texts of the New Kingdom era, these shasu can turn up in any
number of locations, from Syria to the Negev. Sometimes they were
hostile and required Egyptian ‘pacification’. In time (unless it is only an
accident of documentation), the shasu seem to have become associated
primarily with the southern fringe of Palestine, particularly the area the
Bible would later call Edom, southeast of the Dead Sea. The later New
Kingdom documents usually place the shasu exclusively in that region.
One group of shasu has intrigued historians who seek connections to
the Jewish Bible. During the fifteenth century bce, a place in Edom was
called Yahu in the land of shasu. Yahu is a shortened form of the divine
name Yahweh, a kind of nickname. Yahweh is the most common divine
name in the Jewish Bible. Each time an English translation of the Bible
mentions ‘the Lord’, with capital letters, the Hebrew original reads
‘Yahweh’. This is why historians are intrigued by the region called Yahu
in the land of shasu. It was not uncommon for places to be named after
the god worshiped in the area. In this case, a regional god appears to
have the same name as the biblical god.
Apparently, there were some Yahweh worshipers living on the
southern edges of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age, which has generated
much speculation. The Bible places the wandering Israelites in southern
Edom as part of the exodus story. Perhaps the Bible has preserved the
memory of an actual group of Israelites wandering on the edges of
the promised land. This is indeed possible, though the image of these
people should not be romanticized. For one thing, the shasu did not
originate in Egypt, so they could not have been escaping slaves, as
in the biblical story. Moreover, the Bible tells of 600,000 able-bodied
men, not to mention women and children, marching through the desert
(see Exod. 12.37–8 and Numbers 1), but there were fewer than 70,000
people living in all of Palestine at this time, and the shasu were but
a few shepherds living on the fringe of that society. Therefore, if
the Bible has preserved an accurate memory of the earliest known
Israelites, it has also ‘improved’ the narrative about them by placing
these people into the ancient equivalent of a modern action-adventure
story.
The Yahweh-worshiping shasu might not be connected to the Bible at
all, because the earliest Israelites probably did not worship a god called
Yahweh. The Bible preserves a tradition in which the people of Israel
had not always worshiped their god by that name. Exodus 6.2–3 states
that the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been El Shaddai (which
is often translated ‘God Almighty’ in English versions). According
to this biblical text, El Shaddai has revealed a new name to Moses:
Yahweh (‘the Lord’). Abraham and Moses are fictitious characters and
the narrative setting of Exod. 6.2–3 is unrealistic, but the information
in this passage about divine names remains instructive. A story of this
kind is common among religious groups that have combined two or
more gods into a single entity: the names of each original god become
the multiple names of the one god. In this case, Exod. 6.2–3 demon-
strates that biblical writers were aware of a combination of gods in
their community’s past, and that the Yahweh element in this deity was a
latecomer to the Israelite religion.
The word Israel is a theophoric name, yisra-’el, and as such it
demonstrates that the earliest Israelites did not worship Yahweh.
Scholars disagree on the original meaning of this archaic sentence,
which could be rendered ‘El strives’ or ‘El is a just one’.6 In any case,
the divine element in the name Israel is El, not Yahu or Yahweh. If the
name had been Yahwistic rather than Elistic, it would have been written
yisra-yahu, and in English, Israiah. So the Bible preserves an accurate
memory that Israel’s god was originally El Shaddai (literally ‘El of the
mountain’ or perhaps ‘El of the fields’). This evidence compels us to
conclude that the shasu of the land of Yahu might or might not have
been related to early Israel, who, as a people, may or may not have been
worshiping a god called Yahweh or Yahu during the Late Bronze Age.
In all likelihood, Israelite worship of Yahweh did not emerge until well
into the Iron Age, after the shasu had disappeared from the scene.
Nevertheless, most historians believe there might be a connection,
however slight, between the shasu of Yahu and the biblical Yahweh.
The Bible preserves a tradition that Yahweh used to live in the south,
in the land of Edom, sometimes called Seir or Teman. Apparently, in
a tradition much older than the Exodus story, the mountain of god,
which was called Mount Sinai (or sometimes Mount Paran, but not yet
Horeb), would have been in Edom or farther south, in what is now Saudi
Arabia. Certain passages of poetry describe Yahweh marching from this
southern home into Canaan. Thus, Judg. 5.4–5 reads:
O Yahweh, when you came forth from Seir,
When you marched from the fields of Edom,
The land trembled,
Indeed, the sky poured down;
Yes, the clouds poured out their water;
The mountains melted before Yahweh,
The One of Sinai;
From before Yahweh, the god of Israel.
Other examples of this tradition can be seen in Hab. 3.3 and Deut. 33.2.
With these passages in mind, many historians believe that the Yahwistic
portion of the Israelite religious tradition had its origins in Edom.
Opinions are divided as to how that tradition made its way north into
the writings of the scribes who lived in Jerusalem.
In addition to shasu, there were ‘apiru in Late Bronze Canaan. (The
word is sometimes written habiru. This is because certain ancient letters
6 Much depends on vocalization, and especially on the nature of the sibilant, which
is uncertain. See E. A. Knauf, ‘War “Biblisch-Hebräisch” eine Sprache?’ ZAH 3
(1990), pp. 11–23 (17–18).
have no precise equivalent in English letters, so they can be rendered in

several ways, each of which is accurate.) The word ‘apiru designated
any person who lived beyond the edge of society. In many cases, ‘apiru
were unskilled laborers who had come to a given place as refugees and
had been put to work at jobs no one else wanted to do. Also, anyone
deemed to be outside the law was labeled an ‘apiru. Frequently, a
Canaanite city mayor would accuse a neighboring mayor of rebelling
against Pharaoh and of conspiring with the ‘apiru. In this situation, the
term seems to have been nothing more than slander, not a designation
of a specific social group.
Like the shasu of Yahu, the word ‘apiru has intrigued many histo-
rians because of a possible connection to the Bible. Linguistically, it
is possible to connect this Bronze Age word with the later Iron Age
Hebrew word ‘ibri, meaning ‘Hebrew’. Thus, for a time, some scholars
had thought that the Late Bronze Age ‘apiru were none other than the
early biblical Hebrews, or Israelites. If there is a connection, however,
it is indirect at best. It is now known that ‘apiru was a common
derogatory term that had no ethnic connotations. If the early Israelites
were called ‘apiru by others, they were not the only ones called that,
nor would they have called themselves ‘apiru. Thus, if the biblical
documents mentioning ‘ibri are connected in some way to Bronze Age
‘apiru, it would represent an instance in which an originally non-ethnic
slang term has been assimilated at a later date by a group who have
come to see in it an ethnic self-designation. (Such situations are known
from anthropological research.)
If these possible connections to an ancient people called Israel are
disappointing, there remains one other document from the Late Bronze
Age that gives us a glimpse, however fleeting, of the earliest known
Israelites. That is the famous Merneptah Stela.
‘Israel’ on the Merneptah Stela

In a temple at Thebes dedicated to Pharaoh Merneptah (whose name is
sometimes written Merenptah), a huge stone monument was discovered
that recounts the glorious deeds of this Egyptian king. The Merneptah
Stela deals primarily with the king’s war against the Libyans toward
the end of the thirteenth century bce. However, an appendix to the
main narrative recounts a military campaign that Merneptah claims to
have conducted in Canaan. That brief passage has become famous, for
it is the only time an Egyptian king claims to have fought a battle with
Israel.7 Merneptah’s boast reads:
The princes are prostrate, saying, ‘Mercy!’
Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified;
Plundered is Canaan with every evil;
Carried off is Ashkelon;
Seized upon is Gezer;
Yanoam is made as that which does not exist;
Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;
Hurru has become a widow for Egypt!
All lands together, they are pacified;
Everyone who was restless, he has been bound. . . .8
The rhetoric of this inscription is the usual boastfulness that one expects
from a proud king of mighty Egypt. In fact, it is the language of cliché.
Nine Bows is Egyptian slang for ‘all the enemies everywhere’. Not
surprisingly, the poem summarizes all the northern lands to which this
Pharaoh claimed imperial jurisdiction. In addition to Hatti in Anatolia,
the poem claims Tehenu, which was the ancient name of modern Libya.
Canaan is mentioned twice since Hurru is an alternate name for the
same territory. These two references to Canaan function as brackets
around a list of four specific Canaanite enemies: Ashkelon, Gezer,
Yanoam, and Israel. (Some translators interpret the first reference to
Canaan as a designation for a prominent city, Gaza on the southern
coast of Palestine. In that case, Merneptah has listed five specific
Canaanite enemies.)
Merneptah is claiming to have subdued all the enemies to the west
and the northeast of Egypt’s Delta region: Libya, Anatolia, Canaan. In
other words, the poem consists of sweeping generalizations typical of
7 A recent reinterpretation of a previously known inscription suggests that Israel was

mentioned by an earlier Egyptian king, but the experts remain divided over this
hypothesis. See P. van der Veen, C. Theis, and M. Görg, ‘Israel in Canaan (Long)
Before Pharaoh Merenptah? A Fresh Look at Berlin Statue Pedestal Relief 21687’,
Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 2 (2010), pp. 15–25.
8 Modified slightly (for easier reading) from J. A. Wilson, ‘Egyptian Hymns and
Prayers’, in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955, 2nd edn; 1955),
pp. 365–81 (378).
pharaonic bluster, the kind of text that makes it all but impossible to
determine what events gave rise to the hyperbole.
If this poem is a construction of the past, and not just a symbolic
piece of rhetoric, the plausible elements are found in the list of specific
Canaanite enemies. The Nineteenth Dynasty pursued a policy of direct
intervention in Canaanite affairs, and this poem might summarize one
stage of that policy’s implementation. First is the city of Ashkelon on
the southern coast (see Figure 18). A few generations after Merneptah,
Ashkelon would become a Philistine city, but during his lifetime (just
prior to 1200 bce), Philistines had not yet arrived. Gezer is not far
from Ashkelon, on the edge of the Shephelah (the foothills between the
Coastal Plain and the Cisjordan Highlands). Yanoam is a city near the
Galilee Lake whose precise location is disputed. All three of these place
names have been written by the ancient Egyptian scribe with a particle
(a part of Egyptian hieroglyphic grammar) that identifies them as cities.
The fourth enemy in this list is not designated a city, but carries the
particle designating a people or ethnic group. The group is called Israel.
This people apparently lived in the vicinity of Ashkelon, Gezer, and
Yanoam, thus perhaps in the Cisjordan Highlands or the Jezreel Valley.
The latter seems more likely since, from archaeological surveys, it would
seem that very few people were living in the hills of Canaan. It is not
impossible that Merneptah did battle with a handful of highlanders. It
would have been a short and one-sided battle! However, the more likely
possibility is that Merneptah engaged Israel in the lowlands, particularly
if an Egyptian relief sculpture depicts the Israelites, as some researchers
have suggested.9 The stone monument, badly preserved, appears to
depict the Israelites as a people who wear typical Canaanite clothing.
In this sculpture, the Israelites drive at least one chariot, a military
technology suited to warfare in the lowlands and not the rugged terrain
of the Cisjordan Highlands. This image suggests that Merneptah’s Israel
defended a lowland region, but identification of this relief sculpture
with Israel is disputed by some researchers. In any case, the location of
Merneptah’s Israel is impossible to determine with certainty.
Two additional points are raised by this enigmatic mention of a
people called Israel. First, Merneptah claims to have utterly annihilated
9 F. Yurco, ‘Merenptah’s Canaanite Campaign and Israel’s Origins’, in E. S. Frerichs

and L. H. Lesko (eds), Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence (Winona Lake, IN:
these people. Their seed is no more, an ancient cliché. Did he really

wipe out Israel? In the ancient world, a king often claimed to have
annihilated an enemy, yet the enemy in question curiously appears again
in later inscriptions! It was a boast, but not necessarily a reality. In this
instance, if Merneptah really did annihilate his enemy, this Israel could
have had nothing to do with biblical Israel, since biblical Israel appears
only after the time of Merneptah. On the other hand, since the boast of
annihilation is probably just a boast and nothing more, there is every
reason to believe that the Israel mentioned by Merneptah is related in
some way to the biblical Israel. Merneptah defeated them in battle,
perhaps killing a great many, but Israel survived.
This thought leads to a second interesting point: biblical writers never
mention Merneptah or a battle with an Egyptian king. As a matter of
fact, biblical writers appear to have been utterly ignorant of the fact that
an Egyptian empire ever existed in Palestine. There is no hint of such
an empire in any of the stories that, according to biblical chronology,
would have taken place during the Bronze Age (all the narratives from
the middle of Genesis to the early chapters of Judges).
Several conclusions can be drawn from these two observations. First,
even the oldest portions of the Bible were composed long after the Late
Bronze Age. Every document now included in the Bible was composed
long enough after that time for Hebrew scribes to have forgotten that
Egypt once ruled their land. In Chapter 2, it was noted that researchers
arrived at the same conclusion using the tools of historical linguistics:
the entire Bible was composed no earlier than the Iron Age II, and the
bulk of it was composed during the Neo-Babylonian, the Persian, and
the Greco-Roman periods (see Figure 5). The linguistic observations are
compatible with the Bible’s content. The Bible is younger than the Late
Bronze Age.
A second conclusion follows logically from the first: the people of
Israel had existed in Palestine for centuries before they constructed
the religious traditions, poetry, and narratives that the Bible contains.
Although the Bible implies that the god Yahweh chose Abraham in the
period we would call the Middle Bronze Age (Genesis 12), the reality is
that a folktale about a man named Abraham was committed to writing
for the first time only during the Iron Age II (or later). This explains the
many anachronisms in these biblical stories. In Genesis 26, for example,
Abraham’s son Isaac interacts with Philistines (who did not arrive in
Canaan until the Iron Age) and inhabits the city of Beer-sheba (which
did not exist until the Iron Age). Like the book of Genesis, the books
of Exodus to Joshua are fictions riddled with anachronistic details.
Biblical Israelites spent a great deal of their 40 years in the wilderness
at a place called Kadesh-Barnea (Num. 13.26; 20.1, 22; 32.8; Deut.
2.14). Archaeology reveals that this desert oasis was uninhabited in the
Late Bronze Age and, in fact, would not be inhabited until the Iron Age
II. Also, fortified cities did not exist in the Late Bronze Age at several
locations the Israelites were supposed to have conquered. Excavations
suggest little or no inhabitants, and certainly no kings who might have
resisted Israelite warriors, at sites such as Arad (Num. 21.1–3; Josh.
12.14), Heshbon (Num. 21.21–30; Josh. 12.2), Jericho (Josh. 5.13–6.27;
12.9), Ai (Josh. 8.1–29; 12.9), Hebron (Josh. 10.5, 36–37; 12.10), and
Jarmuth (Josh. 10.5; 12.11), to name a few.
As we have seen in Chapter 3, the writers of the Bible were aware
that many of their sources were folktales, and they created an artificial
chronology with which to link those folk traditions sequentially.
Although it is unlikely that these ancient scribes would have composed
something like ancient Greek historia even if they had been aware of
the genre, we can now see why it was not possible for them to construct
an accurate account of the past even if they had desired to do so. The
Bible was assembled by scribes who had no access to sources for the
earliest centuries of their own people’s past. They certainly did not have
access to sources about a battle with Merneptah.
It need not surprise us that Israel’s biblical authors lacked accurate
memories of, or concern about, their own people’s past. Social anthro-
pologists have noted that events of the past, even major events, tend to
be forgotten unless they serve a useful social function in the commu-
nity’s storytelling process. For example, you probably know next to
nothing about the lives of your great-grandparents. Since life expec-
tancy in our time is much longer than in ancient times, it is possible that
you met members of that generation. Also, since modern Westerners
take a greater interest in the past than did the majority of ancient
people, you might have access to an unusually comprehensive store of
information about your great-grandparents’ lives. Yet, if you are typical
of our culture, what little you do know of that generation represents
isolated fragments, some very accurate, a few confused or even wholly
spurious. The sum of those fragments, unless verified or falsified by
careful research of documents, will not provide the necessary ingre-
dients for an accurate construction of the past. Compound this problem
when thinking of an ancient, predominantly illiterate, culture that had

no previous tradition of history writing, and the nature of the Bible’s
literature becomes clear.
A war with King Merneptah may have been a traumatic and devas-
tating event. But, after four or five generations of oral transmission,
the memory of that event would have slipped silently away from the
collective consciousness of those who descended from its survivors.
Such is the nature of oral traditions about a past. It is the best expla-
nation for the otherwise inexplicable failure of the Bible to reflect, in
some manner, Merneptah’s version of Israel’s past. Ironically, the only
surviving Egyptian text that mentions an ‘Israel’ permits no other choice
than to dismiss as unrealistic virtually all ancient biblical accounts of
earliest Israel.

Ahlström, Gösta W., The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to
Alexander’s Conquest (ed. D. V. Edelman; JSOTSup, 146; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1993).
Banning, E. B., ‘The Neolithic Period: Triumphs of Architecture, Agriculture and Art’,
NEA 61.4 (1998), pp. 188–237.
Deacon, Terrence W., The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the
Brain (New York: Norton, 1997).
Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Frerichs, Ernest S., and Leonard H. Lesko (eds), Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997).
Kuhrt, Amélie, The Ancient Near East, c. 3000–330 bc (Vol. 1; London: Routledge,
1995).
Lemche, Niels Peter, Prelude to Israel’s Past: Background and Beginnings of Israelite
History and Identity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998).
Levy, Thomas E. (ed.), The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (with a new intro-
duction by Kent Flannery; Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1998).
Mayr, Ernst, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
Moran, William L., The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1992).
Na’aman, Nadav, Canaan in the Second Millennium B.C.E. (Collected Essays, vol. 2;
Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005).
Redford, Donald B., Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1992).
Rollefson, Gary O., ‘Prehistoric Time’, in Gösta W. Ahlström, The History of
Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (ed.
D. V. Edelman; JSOTSup, 146; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), pp. 72–111.
Chapter 5
The Iron Age I
Introduction
The Iron Age I (1150–950 bce) was a time of transition. During the first
decades of this era, Egypt remained in control of its Canaanite province.
The Nineteenth Dynasty’s Pharaoh Merneptah died shortly before 1200
bce and power transitioned to the Twentieth Dynasty, which began as
a strong imperial power but gradually weakened and, by the end of the
1130s bce, no longer maintained a presence in Canaan. (Egypt’s control
of Nubia slipped away gradually as well, so that Nubia was independent
by about 1100 bce.) Meanwhile, Hatti collapsed around 1200 bce,
liberating northern Syria from Hittite imperial rule. As a result, there
were no large political powers governing Canaan during the Iron Age I.
Why did this radical political transformation occur in the decades
either side of 1150 bce? The massive changes resulted from a combi-
nation of factors. The Iron Age I witnessed a series of ecological,
economic, and social upheavals that, together, resulted in different
political circumstances.
Ecologically, the ancient world from Asia to Africa experienced
one of its regularly recurring shifts in weather patterns at the close
of the Late Bronze Age. Abnormally dry weather resulted in famines
throughout Greece, Anatolia, and Canaan. Even Egypt experienced
lower levels of Nile flooding and increased hunger. These problems
are documented in texts found throughout the ancient Near East, from
Mesopotamia to Egypt.
A famine of a few years was not uncommon to these regions in any
era, but greater aridity with resulting hunger over a period of several
human generations strikes the Near East only once every few millennia.
This period of aridity must have seemed relentless to those living
through it, and it motivated many groups (who could not have known
how geographically widespread the effects of the climatic changes
were) to migrate in search of better land. Social and economic conse-

quences were bound to follow these migrations.
Apparently some of the groups who migrated in search of a better
life were hostile toward those they encountered along the way.
Archaeologists have found evidence from Greece to Palestine for
military destruction of many major cities during the final decades of
the Late Bronze Age and early decades of the Iron Age I. Ugaritic texts
mention hostile people in ships who were attacking its coast. Egyptian
texts also speak of wars with groups attempting to enter the Delta. It
is possible that the folk memory of these times gave rise to some of
the world’s greatest literature, stories composed during the Iron Age II
(900–586 bce) and later eras, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (twin
tales of military action and migration) and the Bible’s books of Exodus
and Joshua (in which these two themes appear in reverse order). As we
have seen, these stories were not designed to be read as historia, but the
inspiration for telling tales of great warriors might have come from the
vague memory of actual warfare.
Sporadic warfare began to alter the political map while cultural
exchange altered the social context. When groups immigrate in small
numbers, they tend to be absorbed into the new environment without
leaving much of a mark on it. But when larger groups migrate, they
have an impact, much like a very small meteorite on a land’s surface.
The host culture is not entirely transformed, but dramatic changes
occur. In this case, a large number (no one knows how many) of
people from the regions now called Greece and Anatolia made
their way west and south, leaving their mark on the places where
they settled. Those moving west landed in places such as Sardinia
and Sicily. In fact, those islands got their names from the Aegean
immigrants, the people called Sherden (Sardinians) and Sheklesh
(Sicilians).
Aegeans moving south landed on the island of Cyprus as well as
the coast of Canaan, and historians usually call them the Sea Peoples.
Apparently wherever these Sea Peoples landed they did not constitute
the majority of the population, but they were numerous enough to have
a visible impact on the material culture and lifestyle of those who had
been living in the area before the immigrants arrived.
The most famous group of Sea People was the Peleset – the Bible
calls them Philistines. A ruler in northern Syria during the Iron Age
I gave himself the title ‘hero and king of the land of Palastin’, clear
5. The Iron Age I 145
evidence of the Peleset’s impact on Canaan.1 Other ethnic groups

mentioned in the Bible were part of this early Iron Age I immigration.
For example, Gen. 15.19–21 mentions, among others, the Girgashites,
whose name can be traced to western Anatolia, and the Hittites, who
were migrants to Palestine from Hatti as it collapsed around 1200 bce.
In a few cases, biblical authors were aware, vaguely, of migrations that
had occurred generations before. See, for example, Amos 9.7, which
mentions the non-Palestinian origin of the Philistines.2 But the biblical
authors lived at a time when all memory of origins had been forgotten
for some of these groups. The Hittites and the Girgashites of Gen.
15.19–21 are mentioned as though they had been in Canaan all along,
grouped with people who were either non-existent (the legendary race
of giants called Rephaim) or by definition autochthonous (which means
‘native to the land’), such as the Canaanites.
With a significant minority of the population on the move in early
Iron Age I, and with an economy already strained by poor crops and
widespread famine, other aspects of the economy suffered as well.
International trade of luxury goods decreased conspicuously because
trade routes were increasingly vulnerable to attack. The resulting
scarcity of copper and tin motivated a new interest in iron ore, which
was frequently locally available but difficult to work. Not surprisingly,
decreased international trade was matched by decreased diplomatic
relations between major states. The resulting decrease in ‘cash flow’
reduced the relative strength of centralized governments with their
equally centralized economies. The loyalty of commoners to kings or
lords was bound to decrease as well, since these governments could not
be counted upon to protect hunger-stricken areas through redistribution
of grain collected as taxes from better-off portions of the kingdom.
These internally weakened kingdoms were therefore vulnerable to
attack by aggressive migrant groups, a situation that explains the
widespread destruction of cities noted by archaeologists.
1 K. Kohlmeyer, ‘The Temple of the Storm God in Aleppo during the Late Bronze
and Early Iron Ages’, NEA 72.4 (2009), pp. 190–202 (197–200).
2 Almost every sentence of the book you are reading is disputed by someone,
and this is a good example. S. Sherratt suggests that the biblical group called
Philistines did not migrate to Canaan and that Amos 9.7 is misleading, as is Jer.
47.4. See Sherratt, ‘High Precision Dating and Archaeological Chronologies’,
in T. E. Levy and T. Higham (eds), The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating:
Archaeology, Text and Science (London: Equinox, 2005), pp. 114–25.
After the decline of Hatti and the Twentieth Egyptian Dynasty, there
was no centralized political structure in Canaan. As a result, the cities,
which had been under the imperial thumb of either Hatti or Egypt,
became independent, much as they had been during the Middle Bronze
Age, centuries earlier. From 1150 bce to well beyond 950 bce, most
regions of Canaan were home to cities that ruled over their surrounding
rural villages and agricultural lands, each competing with its neighbors
politically and economically. (Some researchers call these independent
cities city-states.)
Four clusters of independent cities (or city-states) emerged gradually
during the Iron Age I.
Northern Syria, which had been under Hittite imperial rule, fragmented
into a series of small kingdoms. One of the most prominent of these was
the city of Carchemish.
Phoenicia became once again a series of autonomous cities, the most
significant of which were Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre. Although these
cities had been a part of the region’s trade economy for centuries, it was
during the Iron Age I that they began to dominate Mediterranean trade,
an international status they would maintain for centuries.
In southern Syria and the northern portion of Palestine, small
Aramean kingdoms emerged, two of which were the cities of Hamath
and Damascus.
Along the southern coast, a series of newly independent cities, such as
Gaza, Gezer, Gath, and Ekron, became prominent. Several of these cities
were home to immigrant Philistines as well as the native Canaanites.
This chapter will focus on the decline of the Egyptian Empire, the
rise of several new groups, and the resulting changes in the land of
Canaan. In the history textbooks published prior to the late 1990s (and
a few more recent ones), the Iron Age I was usually labeled the ‘period
of the Judges’. That label derives from the biblical book of the same
name, but it is a misnomer since the biblical judges were heroes of folk
legends, not leaders of actual political units in this era. Even if a few of
the biblical stories about the judges are based loosely on real persons
and events, it would be useless to speculate about them in the absence
of external evidence. Moreover, to concentrate on these tales to the
exclusion of the larger context in which such tales played only a minor
role would distort one’s comprehension of this era. Nevertheless, the
concept of Israelite judges, derived as it is from Israelite folk memory,
raises an important question for the historian.
Where was Israel during the Iron Age I? If Israel was in Canaan at
that time, how would we know? The theme of this book is the question
how do we know what we think we know? In this case, what evidence is
available to answer our question? And what method of evaluation will
provide a sound hypothesis? A reasonable place to begin is with simple
logic.
Pharaoh Merneptah was kind enough to let us know that a group
called Israel was living somewhere in Palestine during the final decades
of the Late Bronze Age (see the previous chapter). Logically, we can
conclude that this Israelite group was still there in the following genera-
tions, since ancient documents also speak of an ‘Israel’ in the later Iron
Age II (to be discussed in Chapters 7 and 8). Therefore, it is reasonable
to believe that Israelites inhabited Canaan during the Iron Age I, after
the Late Bronze and prior to Iron Age II. But is it possible to find these
people?
Unfortunately, the Israelites are invisible for two reasons. First, Iron
Age I Canaan was an illiterate society. There is very little evidence
for writing during this period. The few individuals who were writing
appear to have been living in areas where there were no Israelites, so
far as anyone can tell. Second, the Israelites are invisible because the
objects they made, the houses in which they lived, and the tools they
used appear to have been identical to the objects, houses, and tools used
by all other Canaanites in this period.
How does one find an ethnic group in these material remains
when there is nothing distinctive about the artifacts that are buried in
Palestine’s soil? The first step toward answering that question is to try
to define, as carefully as possible, the term ethnic group. We cannot find
an ethnic group if we do not know what we seek.
What Is an Ancient Ethnic Group and How Is It to Be Found?

An ethnic group is any large or small cluster of people who identify
with one another and engage in a continuous, and usually informal,
public conversation about who they are. That is to say, an ethnic group
is a group who negotiate with one another about what it means to be
one group of people rather than many unrelated individuals. On most
occasions, the two topics of discussion are shared stories about the past
and shared values in the present. Not all members will agree on the
details of these shared stories and values. Indeed, on most occasions
there will be strong dissent in some factions of the group. One subgroup
might, for example, protest that another subgroup has violated the moral
code of the ethnic community. Or one subgroup might disagree with
another on the significance of a famous event or person of the past.
Nevertheless (and this is a key point), the fact that these subgroups care
enough about one another to bother arguing is evidence that they are
part of a single ethnic group. If they did not identify with one another
at some fundamental level, they would not have this kind of conver-
sation. An ethnic group is any community of people who identify with
one another to such a degree that they implicitly recognize one another
as members of something they call ‘us’ – the ambiguous and often
ill-defined essence that is presumed to stand at the center of the group’s
identity.
From this definition we can see that ethnic groups come in many
shapes and sizes. Essentially, an ethnic group is any clustering of
people who take an interest in one another and perceive themselves
to be a people. The group’s self-definition might reside in a religion,
such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam. It might reside in the perception
of biological descent, such as African Americans, European Americans,
Aboriginal Americans. The affiliation might be relatively weak, based
on nothing more than the perception of a shared community past or
shared language and geography. Or the affiliation could be a strong one
that traces a demonstrable continuity over many centuries and conti-
nents. In all cases, the key element is the group’s interest in its own
members and the dialogue that takes place among them.
As an example of an ethnic group’s public negotiation of its own
corporate identity, consider a 1996 Hollywood film directed by the African
American filmmaker Spike Lee, Get on the Bus. This movie tells a fictional
story based on a real event, a rally in Washington, D.C., in which thousands
of African American men participated. In the film, a group of men rent a
bus to drive across the United States so that they can take part in the rally.
As the men begin to talk along the way, they discover the many differences
among them, differences of cultural background and of worldviews. Long
philosophical discussions take place, arguments break out, tempers flare,
and at times the situation degenerates into fistfights. Nevertheless, their
journey to Washington gives each man ample opportunity to explore what
it means to try to live with dignity as an African American in a society that
could not yet imagine a day when Barack Obama would become the first
African American president of the United States.
In this film, all the men agree on one issue, even without discussing it:
they agree that they are one people. The agreement is based on percep-
tions of biological descent. Each man on the bus was born to parents
whose ancestors came from the continent of Africa. However, they
discover, sometimes to their dismay, that they do not share identical
visions about the significance of that fact. One man uses the derogatory
N word frequently – so frequently, in fact, that the other men kick him
off the bus. Another man is scornful of homosexuals, then discovers that
two gay men are on the bus. Many other examples could be mentioned,
but these illustrate the recurring topics of conversation within an ethnic
group. On the one hand, the community discusses the significance of the
past, such as the way insulting slang terms from that past continue to be
directed against African Americans. On the other hand, they negotiate
issues of morality, such as sexual orientation. The entire process is
more or less unconscious. That is to say, the men on the bus are aware
of their differences and eager to promote their individual solutions to
those differences, but they remain unconscious of their shared presup-
position. The shared presupposition is that they are one group, one
people, and therefore these conversations, arguments, and fights are
absolutely necessary – indeed, radically significant to their own sense of
self-identity. Spike Lee’s film presents in microcosm what every ethnic
group is and does in all places around the world, in all times, past and
present.
Get on the Bus illustrates four aspects of ethnicity that must be kept
in mind if a historian hopes to identify an ethnic group, such as Israel,
in the material record of the ancient past. First, a sense of ethnicity
usually has much to do with perceived biological descent and nothing
to do with actual biological descent. In most cases, ethnicity appears
to be an issue of biology – some would call it race – because most
people unconsciously identify with the group into which they were
born. However, there are many instances in which a person born in one
community moves to another and adopts it so completely that she or
he rejects any former sense of identity. These individuals demonstrate
that race is not the substance of ethnic identity. As a matter of fact, the
concept of race has no genuine content.3 Biologically, all humans are
3 For a discussion of the irrelevance (and non-existence) of race, see R. Just,

‘Triumph of the Ethnos’, in E. Tonkin et al. (eds), History and Ethnicity (London:
Routledge, 1989), pp. 71–88.
one race, descendants of a particular evolutionary branch in the genus

Homo. In the film, all the men on the bus could be, at least in theory,
biological descendants of one couple, but that hypothetical couple
lived so many thousands of years ago that no one on the bus can hope
to recover their names or when they lived, nor do they even discuss
that possibility. Ethnic identity, therefore, must be negotiated through
public conversations of the type that take place on the bus. ‘If we are
one people, then what makes us us? Is it acceptable to hurl ugly slang
terms at members of us?’ In the film, the questions go on and on. In real
life, each generation of a group will renegotiate the answers to such
questions.
Since there is no stable biological element in ethnic identity, a second
aspect of ethnicity is emphasized by many of the anthropologists who
work with ethnic identities: ethnicity is never static and unchanging.4
Ethnic identity is subject to constant revision over the generations.
This process of change is inevitable, and it is necessary for the ethnic
community’s health. It gives each generation a stake in the process
of maintaining the ethnic group’s sense of corporate identity. For
example, over the centuries Christians have renegotiated their values
with respect to slavery. When Christianity was born, all Christians
believed that human slavery was a divinely ordained station in life.
(The Jewish scriptures that Christians adopted as their own presup-
posed a slave economy – see Exodus 21; Deuteronomy 15.) There is no
record that Jesus challenged the institution of slavery. Even the apostle
Paul, whose rhetoric implied that slavery was no more (Gal. 3.28),
failed to challenge actual structures of slavery in his world. He even
participated in them (Philemon; contrast Deut. 23.15–16; see also 1 Cor.
7.21–2; 1 Tim. 6.1–2).5 As recently as 150 years ago, some Christians
in America fought to preserve the institution of slavery, calling their
war a holy cause. Today, very few Christians believe slavery is moral.
The community renegotiated its values with respect to that issue. Some
communities change more rapidly than in this example, but the process
goes on in every community. If the group fails to update its beliefs on
4 See, for example, R. Handler, ‘Is “Identity” a Useful Cross-Cultural Concept?’ in

J. R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 27–40.
5 For entry into early Christian attitudes about slavery, see J. A. Glancy, Slavery in
Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
a regular basis, members of the group have ceased to care enough to

negotiate those updates, which is another way of saying that the ethnic
group no longer exists. An ethnic group that does not engage in such
debate dissolves into the larger cultural fabric around it, a process called
assimilation.
Constant change in ethnic identity requires historians to consider
a third aspect of the issue: when searching for an ethnic group in the
past, one cannot assume the stories and values that define that group in
the present also prevailed in the past. Since groups change over time,
their distinguishing characteristics change as well. For example, in the
second century ce, many Christians were Gnostics. Gnosticism taught
that a divine revealer (Jesus) showed the way to knowledge, and it
was the knowledge – not the divine revealer – that rewarded a person
with eternal life. A modern Christian theologian has the luxury of
looking back at the second century and declaring the Gnostics heretics,
false Christians. A historian cannot do that. In the second century,
Gnosticism was Christianity for many people, and historians today
(at least, humanists and positivists) accord these people the dignity
of viewing them as they viewed themselves, as full members of the
Christian community. The example illustrates the problem: if historians
want to find an ancient ethnic group in the material remains of the past,
they must be careful not to impose later conceptions of that group’s
identity onto the evidence. Therefore, analysis of the material remains
is complicated by the uncertainty of what a historian expects to find in
those remains.
A fourth and final observation about ethnic groups is equally
essential: ethnicity is not identical to culture. In popular usage, these
two terms often become synonyms, but in academic study they are
not. A person’s ethnic identity might shift regularly, even though that
person remains in one unchanging culture. How is that possible? It is
possible because ethnic identity is ideological, but culture is not. An
individual might identify with several ideologies, that is to say, with
several ethnic groups. For example, a woman might perceive herself
to be an American and not an Israeli in one social context, Jewish and
not Gentile (non-Jewish) in another context, Reconstructionist and
not Modern Orthodox in a third context. Each of these groups with
which she identifies expresses an ideology to distinguish itself from
other groups. At the same time, the woman might be living in a single
location. Perhaps she is in Tel Aviv on an extended visit with close
relatives who are Modern Orthodox Israeli citizens living in a neigh-

borhood where Jews interact with Gentiles regularly. From day to day,
this woman’s culture does not change even as her identity shifts with
each interaction.
In contrast to ethnicity, culture is the sum of all routine aspects of
a community. The routine values, activities, and objects all around
you are the culture in which you are immersed. These are routine in
the sense that everyone, or almost everyone, takes them for granted.
Certain behaviors are deemed appropriate, yet people rarely discuss
why. Certain activities are considered normal, but no one questions their
normality. Certain objects are abundant, and no one is surprised to see
them. These three categories of routineness are, collectively, the culture
of a particular place. Within your culture, there are ethnic groups, each
of which more or less accepts the routine aspects of the prevailing
culture. Almost everyone, regardless of ethnic background, routinely
uses a cell phone, speaks politely when using it, and places the phone on
a tabletop, in a pocket, or in a backpack when finished with the conver-
sation. Most will never question the normality of those objects and that
behavior.
This does not mean that all aspects of the culture are shared by every
ethnic group, only that most aspects are shared. Each ethnic group
might dissent from, not participate in, or even protest against one or
two aspects of the prevailing culture. But unless the ethnic group utterly
rejects all aspects of the routine, it will remain within the culture. If an
ethnic group dissents radically from the culture, it isolates itself from
the culture. For example, the Amish in many parts of North America
shun most modern conveniences, such as cell phones, automobiles, and
electricity.
This last observation can be useful to the historian who seeks ancient
Israel in the material culture of Iron Age I Palestine. If an archae-
ologist who is familiar with the normal pattern of material culture finds
some minor, but consistent, difference in that pattern at one location
or one region, and if it can be shown that this difference reflects the
community’s shared values, it might be an indication of ethnic identity.
However, it is exceedingly difficult, in the absence of primary texts
from the excavation, to demonstrate that the artifacts in use at that site
were designed, or functioned, to reinforce the identity of the people
using them. With respect to the search for earliest Israel, no archae-
ologist has yet been able to do this without appealing to biblical texts
that might not be relevant because they were composed at much later
dates.6
Not surprisingly, some researchers have made a reasonable case that
ethnicity should be abandoned as a category for historical explanation.
These historians assert, correctly, that ethnic identity changes quickly
and unpredictably, is almost never to be correlated to material culture,
and rarely serves as an individual’s primary center of self-identity.
(More local sources of identity, such as the small village or the family,
often figure more heavily in an individual’s life.) Therefore, these
historians insist, determination of ethnic identity is either impossible,
or possible but useless.7 Their insights on this issue are flawless, but
not every historian agrees with their skeptical conclusion, which is why
the search for ancient ethnic groups in the material culture of Iron Age
I continues.
With these observations in mind, and given that Palestine during
the Iron Age I has left us almost no writings and a relatively uniform
material culture, with only minor variations from place to place, the
challenge of finding one ethnic group, the Israelites, is daunting. Even
if one were to find artifacts that differ drastically from those elsewhere,
some evidence and reasoning would be required to demonstrate that
those artifacts belonged to people who thought of themselves as
Israelite. Not surprisingly, there have been many approaches to the
problem, heated debates about the merits of each approach, and a
general lack of consensus about the success or failure of each effort.
A sample quest will illustrate some of these issues. We begin with
these questions: Can the ancient people called Peleset be located in Iron
Age I Canaan? If so, where were these Philistines? After evaluating this
6 For example, a book by A. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction,

Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006), describes itself as a purely
archaeological approach that does not appeal to biblical literature (p. 5), but Faust
permits his own assumptions derived from the Bible to creep into the analysis.
To cite four examples, Faust assumes the existence of Israelite purity customs
(p. 80), assumes the custom of circumcision (pp. 85–91), assumes the existence
of an Israelite tribe called Reuben in the Transjordan Highlands (p. 183), and
assumes the existence of a Davidic monarchy ruling all of Palestine in the tenth
century (pp. 230–1). These and other details derive exclusively from the Bible.
7 J. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in
Equatorial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 19–20.
example, we can apply similar methods to the question of earliest Israel

in Iron Age I Canaan.
Seeking the Philistines in Canaan’s Material Culture

Archaeologists and historians would not bother to seek the Peleset (or
Philistines) if ancient documents had not mentioned them. But this
group is attested in ancient writings from Egypt and Mesopotamia and
in the Bible. As just discussed, it does not follow that a group mentioned
in ancient texts can be found in ancient artifacts and city ruins. Only
through careful research can an assemblage of artifacts be corre-
lated with a textual reference. In the case of the Philistines, Pharaoh
Ramesses III of the Twentieth Egyptian Dynasty (early twelfth century
bce) offers a place to begin.
In a funeral temple dedicated to the splendor of the god Ramesses
III, the king boasts of great victories over Nubia, the ‘Asiatics’ (people
to the east of Egypt), and the invading Sea Peoples. On a variety of
grounds, many historians discount much of this boast. Ramesses III
did not, so far as can be determined, fight Nubians or Asiatics. His
battle with the peoples of the sea is expressed in flamboyant language,
the usual bluster so frequently used by pharaohs eager to impress their
readers – the gods of Egypt, particularly – with their deeds. For a king
of ancient Egypt, history was not what happened but what ought to have
happened, given that this king is such a great warrior, a representative
of the gods. Accordingly, the gods are flattered by receiving a tale of
success far greater than mundane realities.
Ramesses III describes the Sea Peoples as a coalition of armies
invading by both land and sea, a conspiracy of chaotic forces that could
be stopped only by the great Pharaoh. These mighty hordes devastated
Hatti, Ugarit, Carchemish, and many other places. But Ramesses III
was able to annihilate them. In his narrative of the battle, the usual
cliché occurs: ‘Their seed is not’. In another document, Ramesses III
claims to have incorporated the remnant of enemy survivors into his
own empire, settling them in various regions.
Part of this description is false and portions are certainly accurate.
Carchemish, for example, did not suffer military destruction at this time.
However, as observed above, many cities of Canaan did, and the empire
of Hatti crumbled as well. Groups from the Aegean certainly were on
the move, and some of them had even become mercenary soldiers in
the employ of Egyptian kings prior to Ramesses III’s reign. However,

the destruction that Ramesses III attributes to one great horde is to be
attributed to many more local disruptions caused by the widespread insta-
bility of the times, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Ramesses
III preferred to depict the events as the product of one great conspiracy
so that his own military accomplishment would seem astounding. (In a
sense, one might call Ramesses III the first of the conspiracy theorists,
whose pseudohistorical hypotheses are still common.) In other words,
in light of external evidence, the propaganda of Ramesses III seems
excessive, but a few of the details fit nicely with the era in which he lived.
Historians disagree on what took place during the Sea People battles
with Ramesses III. Some believe that two battles occurred, one on land
at the northern border of the Egyptian Empire (roughly in the region of
modern Lebanon) and another at sea in the Egyptian Delta. Others are
convinced that the only battle was in the Delta. In any case, the war
was short, and the mighty hordes were, in actuality, not that numerous.
Historians agree that at least one battle, however minimal it may have
been, took place, and that some Sea Peoples settled in Egyptian-held
lands as a result. Those lands might have been in Egypt or in Canaan.
This battle (or these two battles) took place in the 1170s bce.
Figure 21. Artistic styles on this Philistine bichrome vessel, from the Iron Age I,
differ sharply from the Bronze Age styles shown in Figure 9
Given that the Sea People were from the Aegean, a search for Sea
People settlements in Canaan logically would look for material culture
in Palestine that reflects the Aegean homeland. Probably not by coinci-
dence, the twelfth-century strata of Palestinian coastal sites reveal
widespread influence from the Aegean. A new kind of pottery is found
in these strata. These pots are decorated with painted designs identical
to pots found in Greece and associated with the Mycenaean society in
Greece. A few of these Mycenaean-style pots were imported, but neutron
activation analysis found that others were made from local Canaanite
clay; in fact, the bulk of these pots were not imported but made by
someone in Canaan who was familiar with Greek culture. Also, some
of the building structures (such as a particular use of hearths) reflect
floor plans similar to those uncovered by archaeologists in Greece.
New religious artifacts, including depictions of a goddess, are similar to
Mycenaean religious artifacts. And, surprisingly, the people using these
Greek-style pots and living in these Greek-style buildings ate quite a
bit of pork, meat from an animal that was almost never eaten by most
Canaanites. It would seem that a Mycenaean population had settled the
Palestinian coast south of Mount Carmel in the twelfth century bce.
The pattern of artifacts on Canaan’s coast underwent rapid change
after the generations that brought Aegean material culture. Within two
or three generations, the pottery style had begun to change markedly.
The newer pots retained elements of Mycenaean artistic style, but
they incorporated elements of the local Canaanite style as well.
Archaeologists call the purely Mycenaean pots of the first generation
Philistine monochrome because they are painted with one color (black).
The newer pots are called Philistine bichrome because they use two
colors (black and red). A third stage of the pottery style is even more
like Canaanite style and less like Mycenaean, and soon after that, one no
longer finds any artifacts that retain the explicit features of Mycenaean
influence.
This pattern of change is precisely what an anthropologist might
expect to find. It seems to follow the usual pattern for an immigrant
group. At first, the new settlers retain much of their way of life from
the homeland. They use tools similar to their traditional tools, speak the
language of the homeland, worship the gods of the homeland, and so
on. The next several generations usually begin to assimilate to the new
culture. They tend to be bilingual, speaking their parents’ language in
the home and the local language on the street. They incorporate artistic
styles and tools common to the new land. By the fourth and fifth genera-
tions, almost total assimilation has occurred. These younger generations
preserve prized aspects of the family tradition, usually carefully selected
aspects that are valued as part of ethnic identity, and maybe a few words
or phrases from the old language. But they will have become ‘native’ in
most other respects. Therefore, although they might retain an ideology
of ethnic difference from other people in their new land, little or nothing
in the material culture would reflect that ethnic difference.
The Philistines represent a model of what one might expect when
seeking an ethnic group in ancient artifacts. Like a small meteorite, they
landed on the coast of Canaan and effected a discernible change in the
terrain. But over the years, the terrain adjusted to their presence, and
they adjusted to it.
Only a few historians dispute the evidence and conclusions discussed
so far, but that does not mean that all questions about the Philistines
have been resolved. Two crucial questions remain: When did the
Philistines arrive in Canaan? And how did they arrive?
When Did the Philistines Arrive in Canaan?

Everyone agrees that the Philistines arrived in the twelfth century, after
a battle between Sea Peoples and Ramesses III; thus they settled during
or after the 1170s bce. However, there is great disagreement as to how
soon after Ramesses III’s battle the new settlements began. Did the
soldiers who battled Ramesses III settle with their families immediately,
or did a few decades pass before Sea Peoples began to populate the
Canaanite coast? A gap of a few decades is a distinct possibility. More
than one wave of Aegean peoples made their way into Canaan during
the twelfth century bce, and the battle with Ramesses III was only the
early stage of this process. Which wave do the Philistine monochrome
pots represent?
To pursue this question, a point of method should be emphasized. The
link between Philistine monochrome and the battle of Ramesses III is
not a direct link. We do not know if monochrome-style pottery makers
were among the soldiers who opposed the pharaoh. Rather, the earliest
possible date for Philistine monochrome is determined by comparison
of archaeological digs throughout Canaan and the method called
pottery typology (as discussed in Chapter 2). For example, Philistine
monochrome style must date to a time after the destruction of a Syrian
city called Ugarit, because a style of pottery that is its typological parent
was in use at Ugarit when the city was destroyed. That was in the 1180s
bce and, at that time, the new ‘offspring’ style, Philistine monochrome,
was not yet in use. Likewise, evidence from Deir Allah in the Jordan
Valley again places the typological parent of Philistine monochrome
in the 1180s, suggesting that the Philistine monochrome style began
no earlier than the 1170s, and possibly later. So the 1170s – the same
decade as the battle of Ramesses III – is the terminus post quem for
Philistine monochrome, which means the earliest possible date. What
is not yet certain is the terminus ante quem, the latest possible date at
which the first Philistine monochrome pots were made.
In the face of this uncertainty, two hypotheses have emerged for the
date of the Philistines’ arrival in Canaan. Both hypotheses emphasize
the same important aspects of the data, but they arrive at opposite
conclusions. The pertinent data are
● Many of the cities on Palestine’s coast were destroyed and the
Philistine monochrome pots appear in the next stratum (for example,
Ekron, Ashkelon, and Ashdod).
● In these cities, Philistine monochrome represents a percentage of the
pottery, but local Canaanite pottery styles are abundant as well.
● Some cities in the same region at about the same time display
evidence of an Egyptian military presence (for example, Lachish
and Gezer). The sites with Egyptian presence have Canaanite pottery
similar to Philistine sites but do not have Philistine monochrome.
Given these data, a key problem has emerged. Since pottery typology
only brings us to within about 50 to 100 years, it is not certain whether
the sites with Egyptian presence were contemporary with the Philistine
monochrome or prior to it. (All agree that they cannot be later than the
Philistine monochrome.)
The first hypothesis, which can be labeled Proposal 1, concludes
from this evidence that the Philistines attacked some cities of Canaan
in a first phase just after the battle with Ramesses III, in the 1170s bce.
Ramesses III lost the battle (though he claimed victory, as boastful
pharaohs always do), and as a result lost a portion of the Canaanite
coast to these Sea People invaders. The Egyptians reacted by setting
up garrisons all around the new Philistine cities, thus containing the
Philistines within the area of their initial conquest. But after several
generations, as Egyptian power weakened (the 1130s), the Philistines
expanded, taking almost all the Palestinian coast south of Mount Carmel
and much of the Shephelah near the Judean Hills in a second phase of
military activity. Thus, in Proposal 1, Philistine monochrome is equated
with the first phase (1170s–1140s) and Philistine bichrome equates
with the second phase (after the 1140s) of Philistine occupation. Most
importantly, the Egyptian sites are contemporary with the Philistine
monochrome sites, the first phase. During the bichrome second phase,
the Egyptians were gone.8
One objection to Proposal 1 can lead to an alternative idea that
I call Proposal 2. In Proposal 1, the Philistine monochrome is an
ethnic identifier. Philistine monochrome pottery equals ethnic Philistine
occupation, and the absence of that pottery marks the Egyptian border
region, pinning down the Philistines in a military containment policy.
This hypothesis is not consistent with usual anthropological considera-
tions, which hesitate to equate ethnicity with culture (see the discussion
above). Pottery was a commodity, a product made of clay created by
people in the business of making and trading pottery for other goods.
Without doubt, the original makers of the Aegean-style pottery were
newly arrived Aegeans, but were the users of Philistine monochrome
always Philistines? The Philistine monochrome wares were highly
artistic items. There is evidence that the later Philistine bichrome pots
were traded and distributed into Canaanite cities, and this could be
the case with the earlier monochrome pots as well, depending on how
the pattern of finds is interpreted. Items such as pottery tend to make
their way to neighboring cities even when the cities are not entirely
friendly with one another, and there is every reason to believe that,
if the Egyptian sites were contemporary with Philistine monochrome
production, at least a few of these beautiful pots would have crossed the
border into the hands of the Canaanites who also lived in the Egyptian-
occupied cities. For example, the Egyptian fortification at Lachish
enjoyed a rich variety of luxury goods, including Nile River perch
at mealtimes, served in pottery imported from as far away as Egypt,
8 Proposal 1 is the hypothesis advanced by L. E. Stager, ‘Forging an Identity:

The Emergence of Ancient Israel’, in M. D. Coogan (ed.), The Oxford History
of the Biblical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 123–75; see
also L. E. Stager, ‘The Impact of the Sea Peoples in Canaan (1185–1050 BCE)’,
in T. E. Levy (ed.), The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (Leicester:
Leicester University Press, 1998), pp. 332–48.
Crete, and Cyprus. Yet Lachish contains no Philistine monochrome

ware from just a few miles away. Therefore, it is difficult to believe that
the Egyptian sites were contemporary with the Philistine monochrome
sites. If they were not, the evidence would demand that they were prior
to the Philistine monochrome sites.
Therefore, Proposal 2 suggests that since the battle of Ramesses III took
place in the Delta (and perhaps far to the north of Mount Carmel), it had
nothing to do with the presence of Philistine monochrome in Palestine.
The military destruction of sites on Palestine’s pre-Philistine-monochrome
coast could reflect Merneptah’s wars a generation earlier. The Peleset did
not enter this region in the 1170s. However, archaeologists agree that the
Egyptian Twentieth Dynasty lost control of Canaan in the 1130s bce.
By that later date, evidence for Egyptian imperial presence in Canaan
vanishes. According to Proposal 2, this later date is when Philistine
monochrome appears on the Canaanite coast. The Philistines drove the
Egyptians out of the Coastal Plain during the 1130s in a battle that no
pharaoh felt worthy of a report on a temple wall. (What Egyptian king
wants to brag about the utter and permanent loss of the Egyptian empire
in Canaan?) This explains why there were no Philistine monochrome pots
in the Egyptian garrison locations. Philistine potters did not begin making
those wares until after the Egyptians were gone. Thus, in Proposal 2, the
first phase with Philistine monochrome pottery began in the 1130s, and the
second-phase bichrome is dated to the next century, the 11th century bce.9
Archaeologists continue to debate these two proposals. To the unini-
tiated, it may seem to be much ado about nothing, a debate about a mere
9 Proposal 2 was advanced by I. Finkelstein, ‘The Date of the Settlement of the

Philistines in Canaan’, Tel Aviv 22 (1995), pp. 213–39; see also, I. Finkelstein,
‘Philistine Chronology: High, Middle or Low?’ in S. Gitin, A. Mazar, and
E. Stern (eds), Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth
Centuries BCE (Festschrift Trude Dothan; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,
1998), pp. 140–7. Recent contributions to this proposal include D. Ussishkin,
‘Archaeology of the Biblical Period: On Some Questions of Methodology and
Chronology of the Iron Age’, in H. G. M. Williamson (ed.), Understanding the
History of Ancient Israel (PBA, 143; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
pp. 132–41; A. Killebrew, ‘Aegean-Style Pottery and Associated Assemblages
in the Southern Levant: Chronological Implications Regarding the Transition
from the Late Bronze II to the Iron I and the Appearance of the Philistines’,
in L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIA
(c. 1250–850 B.C.E.), Vol. 1, The Archaeology (LHB/OTS, 491; New York:
T&T Clark International, 2008), pp. 54–71.
half-century or so. But it demonstrates the limitations of the methods by

which historians narrate a past. These limitations become all the more
frustrating when seeking ethnic Israel in the material culture, as we will
see momentarily. As for the Philistines, the precise date of their arrival
in Canaan cannot be narrowed beyond the final two-thirds of the twelfth
century bce. But another aspect of the issue further complicates any
attempt to write a history of the early Philistines.
How Did the Philistines Arrive in Canaan?

Another objection to Proposal 1 has to do with how the Philistines arrived
in Canaan. Proposal 1 suggests that, after the battle with Ramesses
III in the Delta region, the Philistines captured part of Palestine’s
coast, destroyed the cities, and occupied them. Archaeological data
suggest that the number of people living in all the cities where
Philistine monochrome was found totaled about 25,000. That is an
enormous number for a migrating group. Proposal 1 accounts for that
mass by suggesting that boatload after boatload of Aegeans arrived
and overwhelmed the Coastal Plain, an idea that has not been well
received by many archaeologists. Though it is not entirely out of the
question, migration in the ancient world rarely occurred on that scale.
Moreover, these Sea People would have massacred a huge population
of Canaanites when they set fire to the Canaanite cities, and then would
have somehow managed to begin producing new Canaanite-style pottery
identical to the kind produced by the people they had just annihilated (in
addition to the Philistine monochrome they also manufactured). Even
if they found prototypes of the Canaanite-style pottery in the city ruins,
what would be the motivation for emulating this style of pottery rather
than just creating their own ‘native’ monochrome styles? Moreover, the
pattern of gradual assimilation in later generations of Philistine material
culture (such as Philistine bichrome pottery) suggests that these people
were not living in isolation from Canaanites, but rubbing shoulders with
them every day. Not only is the date for Proposal 1 problematic, but its
description of events is less than convincing.
Thus it is reasonable to suggest, as Proposal 3, that some Sea
Peoples – including monochrome-pottery makers – arrived, that they
did extensive military damage to the coast, killing some Canaanites,
and that they settled among those they had not killed but had conquered.
Well-trained warriors need not be a majority to conquer a region, since
Figure 22. An assortment of Philistine bichrome pottery, Iron Age I, suggests

gradual assimilation of Philistine immigrants to local Canaanite culture
the population would be mostly farmers with no military training. In

this proposal, a Philistine city included ethnic Philistines and ethnic
Canaanites as one community, the rulers and the ruled. Gradually,
the ruled exerted cultural influence over the rulers, and the process of
assimilation noted by archaeologists occurred.10
In sum, the archaeological data, though they are clear, permit
multiple constructions of the past, that is to say, multiple histories.
The scholarship on early Philistines builds on all three of the proposals
discussed here, both in their pure forms and in combinations that
include yet other proposals. This is not surprising. When one seeks an
ethnic group in the material remains of the ancient world, one works
with only probabilities, never certainty. Some historians have evaluated
the data even more critically than suggested here and have arrived at
far more skeptical conclusions. Although those who defend Proposals
1–3 may be tempted to dismiss skepticism as a kind of historical agnos-
ticism (a few even hurl the ugly and inappropriate label ‘nihilism’),
10 For this suggestion, see S. Bunimovitz, ‘Sea Peoples in Cyprus and Israel: A
Comparative Study of Immigration Processes’, in Gitin, Mazar, and Stern (eds),
Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, pp. 103–13. Bunimovitz accepts Stager’s
dates and Egyptian containment hypothesis, however.
such dismissal would be as unfair as it would be dangerous. A history

is an interpretation of the past; it is not the past. One must learn to live
with the ambiguity that reality necessitates.
Seeking the Israelites in Canaan’s Material Culture

If the quest for the early Philistines was difficult, the search for early
Israel is more so. To begin, one starts with the textual evidence, as was
the case with the Philistine example. Merneptah’s royal monument
represents one textual source, albeit a brief and ambiguous one (see
Chapter 4). The Bible represents another source, though we have seen
that its memory of the Late Bronze and Iron Age I is, at best, almost
hopelessly confused. One popular interpretation of the biblical story
(popular especially with a generation of historians active during the
middle decades of the twentieth century ce) is that the early Iron Age
Israelites arrived in Canaan after an exodus from Egypt under Pharaoh
Ramesses II (a suggestion based on Exod. 1.11, which mentions the
city built by Ramesses II). According to that hypothesis, the Israel of
Merneptah had just arrived in Canaan, and one should expect to find
Israelite settlement immediately after Merneptah’s battle (assuming, of
course, that Merneptah did not annihilate the Israel he fought). We have
noted in Chapters 3 and 4 that a hypothesis of this kind is quite hopeless
because biblical texts betray no awareness of the Egyptian imperial
presence at that time; nevertheless, one could, for sake of argument,
adopt this hypothesis and seek Israel just after 1200 bce.
Given that the Bible’s Israel had just come from a 400-year sojourn
in Egypt, it seems logical to seek material culture in Canaan that reflects
the Egyptian homeland. There certainly is some evidence of Egyptian
material culture just after 1200 bce, in the form of Egyptian imperial
presence. But that is not what we seek in this situation. That evidence
is part of a continuum from the Late Bronze Age, and it suggests that
the Egyptian empire in Palestine continued into the Iron Age I until
about the 1130s bce. What we seek is evidence that a group of people
who had lived (as slaves?) in Egypt were now living (as farmers?) in
Palestine. Moreover, the Egyptian presence is located primarily in the
lowlands, the coast, and the Jezreel and Jordan valleys. The Bible asserts
that Israel was not able to live in those places because of Canaanite (not
Egyptian) military strength, especially Canaanite chariots (Judg. 1.19;
see also 1.21, 27–36; one might also note 1.18, which, in the better
ancient manuscripts, reads ‘did not capture’). The Bible consistently

places the early Israelites in the Cisjordan Highlands, and, to a lesser
extent, in the Transjordan Highlands as well.
A search for evidence of this massive influx of Egyptian material
culture ends with disappointment. There is no evidence. Unlike the
evidence for Aegean infiltration on the Palestinian coast, there are no
new pottery styles, no new religious artifacts, no building styles – in fact,
absolutely nothing – to suggest the migration of people formerly living
in Egypt. Also, the term Israelite does not seem to have been associated
with any land other than Canaan in any ancient written source, so we
cannot trace an Israelite migration in the way that was done above for
the Girgashites and Hittites. The ancient evidence refutes the hypothesis
that Israel migrated in substantial numbers from Egypt. This does not
rule out the possibility of a small group of migrants who would have left
no discernible trace in the data, but to posit such a group in the absence
of any evidence is needless speculation.
However, there are data from the highlands of Canaan that have
caught the attention of historians who are eager to find Israel in the Iron
Age I. A sudden and dramatic increase in small, unfortified settlements
has generated much discussion, even controversy, and to that topic we
now turn.
The Highlands of Palestine during the Iron Age I

During the final years of the Egyptian Empire, a radical increase in
population appears in the archaeological record for the Cisjordan
Highlands, from northern Galilee to just north of Jerusalem. A less
dramatic, but equally interesting, increase of population can be
discerned in portions of the northern Transjordan Highlands and the
Cisjordan Highlands south of Jerusalem. This change in the highlands
is unusual given the pattern of population fluctuation for all of Canaan
during these centuries. Late Bronze Age Palestine’s population had
dipped to fewer than 70,000 people. Then, at about 1150 bce, the
population began to increase gradually, so that by the close of Iron
I, the total population of all Palestine had risen to more than 100,000
people. Compared to these general numbers, the Iron Age I increase in
the Cisjordan Highlands north of Jerusalem occurred more quickly and
dramatically than in Palestine as a whole. At their peak, these Iron Age
I settlements numbered at least 25,000 people, perhaps more, which
is staggering when contrasted to any previous era of occupation in the

Cisjordan Highlands.
The density of village settlements fluctuated with the passing genera-
tions and varied considerably from subregion to subregion. Between
the Jezreel Valley and Jerusalem, which was home to a handful of
villages during the Late Bronze Age, about 300 small villages appeared
at various times over the centuries of the Iron Age I (see Figure 23).
Half of these were clustered in the northern half of that subregion,
the portion the Bible calls Manasseh (from the Jezreel Valley to about
Shechem). The area from Bethel to Jerusalem, which the Bible calls
the land of Benjamin, was unoccupied in the Late Bronze, but was
home to as many as 50 sites in the Iron Age I. Between Manasseh to
the north and Benjamin to the south, the region of biblical Ephraim was
almost unoccupied in the Late Bronze Age as well, and it saw a startling
increase during Iron Age I, to about 100 villages. New settlements
appeared in other highland regions, but these regions were less densely
populated. Judah became the location for more than a dozen villages
during Iron Age I, though it too had been all but unoccupied during the
Late Bronze Age. Likewise, the northern Transjordan Highlands had
almost no Late Bronze Age population, but roughly 100 small villages
in the Iron Age I. The Galilee was home to more than 50 new commu-
nities in the Iron Age I.
Just as the number of villages differed from subregion to subregion,
the population density and the relationship of each village to its
surroundings differed as well. For example, in Manasseh the villages
clustered along roads that connected these villagers to the economy
of the cities in the Jezreel Valley and Coastal Plains. By contrast, the
villages of Lower Galilee, just to the north of the Jezreel Valley, were
isolated from the lowland urban centers. Population density varied
considerably. The Cisjordan Highlands north of Jerusalem accounted
for most of the new people in these villages, while the population
of Judah, to the south of Jerusalem, peaked at a few thousand, and
the density of population in the northern Transjordan Highlands was
equally thin. All these new highland villages were rural agricultural
communities. No urban centers appeared among them, although Late
Bronze urban centers continued to exist during Iron Age I, particularly
in the lowlands.
The new village settlements of the Iron Age I are an unresolved enigma.
Of course, they were not entirely unprecedented. Throughout ancient times,
Figure 23. Palestine during the Iron Age I

a few people had lived in the highlands of Canaan. In the Middle Bronze
Age, a pattern of highland villages similar to the Iron Age I existed, albeit
with considerably fewer people. Just before Egyptian imperial control of
Canaan, as Egyptian armies, Hurrian armies, and probably Canaanite armies
were bringing the Middle Bronze Age cities to a fiery end over a period of
one hundred or more years, the highland villages were deserted gradually.
No one knows why they were abandoned, though it is possible that the
highlanders migrated into the Canaanite lowlands as better land became
available. Throughout Late-Bronze Egyptian dominance of Canaan, the
highlands were sparsely populated. Thus, the Iron Age I marks a return to
the population pattern of the Middle Bronze, but with a larger population.
It is difficult to explain why these villages emerged at this moment, during
the final century or so of the Egyptian empire in Canaan. No consensus
on this issue has emerged, but many historians believe that, after Hittite
interference in the north, the Egyptians began to take a more direct role
in the governance of southern Canaan. The highland villages might have
been a direct result of Egyptian policy if the Egyptians forced Canaanites
to settle unsettled regions in order to work more land and provide greater
tax revenue for the Egyptian lords. Conversely, the highland villages might
have been an indirect result if increased Egyptian taxation of lowlanders
compelled two simultaneous and spontaneous reactions. On the one hand,
some lowlanders may have escaped higher taxation by moving to the
peripheral highlands and, on the other hand, shepherds settled down to
raise the food that was no longer available because the lowlanders upon
whom they had previously depended for trade were now forced to pay
higher taxes to Egypt. In either case, the hypothesis suggests that, once
the villages were established by Egyptian interference, they continued to
thrive during the generations after the collapse of the Egyptian Empire.
On the strength of Pharaoh Merneptah’s stone monument claiming
to have annihilated Israel, almost all researchers are eager to equate
the highland villages with earliest Israel. This is another instance in
which we are obligated to ask how we know what we think we know,
because the equation of the highland villages with Israel has become
routine in the scholarship. Some researchers even suggest that this
equation should be treated as self-evident. For example, one archae-
ologist asserted, ‘Anyone who wishes to disconnect the Iron I highland
settlers and Merneptah’s Israel carries the burden of proof.’11 This
11 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, p. 228.

statement is unreasonable because the equation is not self-evident. The

fact that Merneptah claims to have achieved genocide (rendering a
search for Israel moot) is not even the most difficult problem. Given that
Merneptah’s other enemies dwelled in lowland cities, and given that
the number of highlanders in Merneptah’s day was tiny (the primary
increase in highland settlements began after his time), it is reasonable
to conclude that Merneptah’s Israel was in the lowlands, perhaps the
Jezreel Valley. One might suggest that the highlanders were a remnant
of dispersed lowlanders who survived the war with Merneptah and took
to the hills to escape Egyptian oppression, but even this is purely specu-
lative. A connection needs to be demonstrated, not assumed.
A second reason for this eagerness to equate the highland villages
with Israel derives from the Bible. As noted earlier, the Bible claims
that Israel conquered the Cisjordan Highlands but was not able to
conquer most of the lowlands. As a result, historians seeking the early
Israelites had focused on the Canaanite highlands even before archaeo-
logical surveys began to reveal a new Iron Age I village lifestyle there.
Prior to those surveys, three hypotheses for the origins of Israel in
Canaan were debated among historians. First, some suggested that the
book of Joshua’s narrative of conquest is basically reliable.12 Second,
others argued that groups such as the shasu (discussed in Chapter 4)
gradually infiltrated the highlands and settled down peacefully.13 Third,
a few advanced the hypothesis that the highlands were occupied by
12 Three people closely associated with the Conquest Model are W. F. Albright and
his two star students, G. E. Wright and J. Bright. These three, with several genera-
tions of their students, are known as the Albright School. See G. E. Wright, Biblical
Archaeology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, abr. edn, 1960), pp. 34–52; J. Bright,
A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1st edn, 1959), pp. 110–27. (In
revisions of Bright’s volume, his thesis was modified very slightly in the direction
of G. E. Mendenhall’s Peasant Revolt hypothesis; see the third edition [Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1981], pp. 120–43.)
13 The Gradual Infiltration Model was introduced by A. Alt, was supported by Alt’s
student M. Noth, and has been embraced in variant forms by many scholars since.
Publications include A. Alt, Essays in Old Testament History and Religion (trans.
from the 1925 original by R. A. Wilson; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966),
pp. 135–69; M. Noth, The History of Israel (trans. S. Godman; London: A&C
Black, 1958), pp. 68–84; I. Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988); D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan,
and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992),
pp. 257–80.
slaves who rebelled against their lords in the lowland cities, then took
to the hills, where they built an alternative society.14 All three models
have been abandoned by the majority of historians in the wake of the
archaeological surveys and excavations.15 The first and third, especially,
are bankrupt in light of the lack of archaeological support for significant
warfare in the pertinent locations. However, the second hypothesis, in
which gradual infiltration through a peaceful process took place during
the two centuries or so of the Iron Age I, has been resurrected and refor-
mulated in recent research.
Because the Bible places Israel in the highlands of Canaan, the
scholarly focus on the Iron Age I highland settlements is reasonable,
provided a cautious hypothesis can be constructed. Today, most
researchers advocate a kind of ‘symbiosis’ hypothesis (a modification
of the gradual infiltration thesis), though not all researchers are happy
with that label.16 Simply defined, the symbiosis thesis suggests that
14 The Peasant Revolt Model was advanced by G. E. Mendenhall and refined

by N. K. Gottwald. See G. E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The
Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1973); N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of
Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979); also,
M. L. Chaney, ‘Ancient Palestinian Peasant Movements and the Formation
of Premonarchic Israel’, in D. N. Freedman and D. F. Graf (eds), Palestine
in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel (The Social World of Biblical
Antiquity, 2; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983), pp. 39–90.
15 The three major hypotheses (Conquest, Gradual Infiltration, and Peasant Revolt)
have been summarized and evaluated in many publications. See R. K. Gnuse,
No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel (JSOTSup, 241; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 23–61; F. S. Frick, A Journey through
the Hebrew Scriptures (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1995), pp. 258–75; Stager,
‘Forging an Identity’, pp. 128–41; Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite
Settlement, pp. 295–314; W. G. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and
Biblical Research (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 37–56.
16 The Symbiosis Model might be said to include at least the following, though
some might reject the label: Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis; Dever, Recent
Archaeological Discoveries; A. E. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity:
An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel,
1300–1100 B.C.E. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005); E. J. van der
Steen, Tribes and Territories in Transition: The Central East Jordan Valley
in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages; A Study of the Sources (Leuven:
Peeters, 2004); I. Finkelstein, ‘The Emergence of Israel: A Phase in the Cyclic
History of Canaan in the Third and Second Millennia BCE’, in I. Finkelstein
Israel was an ethnic identity that emerged gradually as various groups,

both local and immigrant, lived together in these agriculturally marginal
highland regions. Over the generations, local cooperation and inter-
marriage, plus an occasional need for mutual defense against hostile
outsiders, forged a single identity. The name for that identity was a
good Canaanite name, yisra’el, ‘El strives’. Because this new identity
is constructed on the name of the Canaanite high god El, the name of
Israel hints at the evolutionary process by which the earliest Israelites
gradually differentiated themselves from the other Canaanites.17
In sum, the new symbiosis hypothesis suggests that the highland
settlements began first, and the identity of the people emerged later.
In some versions, the highlanders were a mix of Canaanites from the
lowlands plus fringe shepherds, such as shasu. Other versions of the
hypothesis opt for only one of these two groups as the original nucleus
of earliest Israel. In all cases, this thesis stresses that the desire to differ-
entiate Israelite identity from all other Canaanites emerged relatively
late in the process, and perhaps only among some elites who contributed
to the texts now contained in the Bible (for example, the book of
Deuteronomy). This is a general summary of the symbiosis hypothesis,
but each researcher advocates a distinctive approach.
I must emphasize (because most researchers fail to do so) that, if the
symbiosis approach has any merit, it implies that the name Israel (and a
people who called themselves Israel) existed before the highland settle-
ments began to emerge, and the highland symbiosis represented a new
stage, a transformation that took place after the war with Merneptah. This
transformation apparently erased from folk memory most aspects of Israel’s
and N. Na’aman (eds), From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and

Historical Aspects of Early Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994),
pp. 150–78; S. Bunimovitz, ‘Socio-Political Transformations in the Central
Hill Country in the Late Bronze–Iron I Transition’, in Finkelstein and Na’aman
(eds), From Nomadism to Monarchy, pp. 179–202; N. P. Lemche, Early Israel:
Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the
Monarchy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985); N. P. Lemche, ‘On Doing Sociology with
“Solomon” ’, in L. K. Handy (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn
of the Millennium (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), pp. 312–35.
17 For example, M. S. Smith argues that the original tradition about an exodus
from Egypt involved the god El, not Yahweh, in Smith, The Origins of Biblical
Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 146–8.
pre-Merneptah identity. This erasure is what made space for the new and
almost entirely fictional tales of origin that one now encounters in books
such as Genesis, Exodus, and Joshua (as discussed in previous chapters).
The weakness in any equation of highland settlements with earliest
Israel is the inability to identify artifacts that suggest a distinctive ethnic
identity. The question remains: what makes these villages Israelite and
not simply Canaanite in the sense that all cities and villages of Canaan
were Canaanite? Over the decades, archaeologists have tried to answer
this question in creative ways. Unfortunately, most of these suggestions
committed the fallacy of equating ethnic identity with physical cultural
artifacts. For example, for several decades a debate raged over a particular
large storage jar (called a collar-rim jar). This huge clay pot with a thick
rim at its top and a tapered point at the bottom was ideal for the storage
of grain or liquids. The collar-rim jar could be propped against a wall
and tilted forward to pour its contents when needed. For a while, some
researchers believed this jar was used exclusively by Israelites, but most
archaeologists today believe that the use of these jars is better explained
by the practical needs of storage and distribution in an agrarian society.
To avoid the fallacy in which material culture is simplistically equated
with ethnicity, recent studies have tried to locate patterns of conver-
gence between artifacts in Iron Age I and similar artifacts among the
kingdoms of Israel and Judah from the later Iron Age II. For example,
one researcher has noted that the Iron Age I settlements never contain
decorated pottery and constructs an interesting comparison with the Iron
Age II, when many sites in the political kingdom of Israel continued to
use undecorated pottery. The researcher suggests that an original egali-
tarianism deriving from poverty gradually evolved into an ideology of
egalitarianism among Israelite people.18 Unfortunately, the data are not
wholly compatible with this thesis. The kingdom of Israel in Iron Age
II is evident in a mixture of sites, including some in which decorated
Canaanite pottery, as well as foreign-import pottery, has been found.19
18 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, pp. 41–64.

19 A. Mazar, ‘The Spade and the Text: The Interaction between Archaeology and
Israelite History Relating to the Tenth-Ninth Centuries BCE’, in Williamson
(ed.), Understanding the History of Ancient Israel, pp. 143–71 (160); A. Mazar et
al., ‘Ladder of Time at Tel Rehov: Stratigraphy, Archaeological Context, Pottery
and Radiocarbon Dates’, in Levy and Higham (eds), Bible and Radiocarbon
Dating, pp. 193–255.
Therefore, the pattern of pottery distribution might have an economic,

not an ideological, explanation, in both the Iron Age I and II – some
were richer and some were poorer.
Other markers of ethnicity have been suggested for the Iron Age I
highland settlements but have not been received with much enthusiasm.
For example, numerous researchers remark on the absence of butchered
pig bones in trash heaps at these sites, suggesting that the earliest
Israelites refrained from eating pork (see Deut. 14.8). Other researchers
are unimpressed with this hypothesis. Except for Philistine sites, most
Bronze and Iron Age Canaanite excavations lack butchered pig bones. It
is reasonable to suggest that the biblical prohibition of pork was nothing
more than a religious rationalization for what all Canaanites had been
doing for centuries before this text was written.20 Also, a few have
suggested that the earliest Israelites practiced circumcision as an ethnic
marker, but the thesis is a nonstarter. Artifacts do not tell us whether their
owners practiced circumcision, and a variety of ancient Near Eastern
texts tell us that many non-Israelite people practiced circumcision. If
Israelites of this era circumcised their male children, it would not qualify
as a distinctive mark of ethnic identity. On occasion, researchers suggest
that circumcision was an early ethnic marker because biblical texts
describe their neighbors, the Philistines, as uncircumcised (for example,
1 Sam. 18.25–7). Unfortunately, one cannot know from what period of
time these texts derive (they could be anachronistic references added to
the biblical stories at much later dates), and the archaeological data do
not suggest any competition between Philistine lowland cities and the
highland settlements during the Iron Age I.21
One of the enduring arguments favoring an identification of highland
villages with early Israel is the so-called Four-Room House. The name
20 For a general discussion of the problems with using pig bones to identify
ethnicity, see B. Hesse and P. Wapnish, ‘Can Pig Remains Be Used for Ethnic
Diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?’ in N. A. Silberman and D. Small (eds),
The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present
(JSOTSup, 237; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 238–70.
21 In favor of circumcision as an anti-Philistine marker of identity is Faust,
Israel’s Ethnogenesis, pp. 85–91. Finkelstein protests against Faust’s portrayal
of Philistine and Israelite competition during the Iron Age I, noting correctly
that Faust’s hypothesis derives from biblical interpretation, not archaeological
data. See I. Finkelstein, ‘[De]Formation of the Israelite State: A Rejoinder on
Methodology’, NEA 68 (2005), pp. 202–8.
of these houses is misleading, because many of them have three rooms

(or sometimes more than four), but Four-Room House identifies a
style of construction that all researchers consider distinctive. The basic
structure of a Four-Room House is a single long, narrow room with two
or more rooms attached to one side (see Figure 24). These houses first
appeared during the Iron Age I, continued to be built through the Iron
Age II and Neo-Babylonian periods, but ceased to be used during the
Persian era.22 Most archaeologists believe this house’s floor plan was
chosen because it is so versatile and ideal for the distinctive needs of a
predominantly subsistence agrarian economy.
One researcher recently revived an older hypothesis that the
Four-Room House was an exclusively Israelite style of architecture.
This researcher acknowledges that the house was designed to address
practical necessities faced by farmers in the highlands, but he suggests
that the continued use of this house through later centuries, as a more
urban environment gradually emerged, can be attributed to an ethnic
commitment to this floor plan and the special uses to which it was
put.23 While this suggestion is interesting, it is not compelling. Even the
‘urban’ inhabitants of Palestine were, for the most part, farmers whose
needs did not differ substantially from those of smaller villages. More
significantly, during the Iron Age II, when the kingdom of Israel existed,
the Four-Room House was used at a variety of cities that were not
Israelite. These houses can be found, for example, at Philistine Ekron,
but they are missing from some cities located in the geographic center of
the Israelite kingdom, such as a city called Rehov in the Jezreel Valley.24
22 D. S. Vanderhooft, ‘The Israelite mišpāhâ, the Priestly Writings, and Changing

Valences in Israel’s Kinship Terminology’, in J. D. Schloen (ed.), Exploring the
Longue Durée: Essays in Honour of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 485–96 (488).
23 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, pp. 71–84. Faust’s case for viewing the floor plan
of a Four-Room House as a reflection of egalitarian values is weak, consisting of
little more than conjecture about how space was used, with no external control.
The strained additional argumentation for this notion of egalitarianism (pp.
92–107) weakens the case further. For example, Faust’s assertion, pp. 94–5,
that no royal inscriptions have been recovered from Iron Age II is false. Small
fragments have been recovered in Samaria and Jerusalem, but Faust discounts
these because the fragments that survive do not mention a king or deity.
24 A. Mazar, ‘The Iron Age Dwellings at Tell Qasile’, in Schloen (ed.), Exploring
the Longue Durée, pp. 319–36 (333).
Figure 24. Reconstructed floor plan of an Iron Age Four-Room House
In sum, a plausible case for equating the highland villages of the

Iron Age I with earliest Israel has not yet been made. From the Bible’s
consistent portrayal of Israel inhabiting the Cisjordan Highlands, it is
reasonable to believe that Israelites lived among these villages, but there
is no reason to assume that all these villages were Israelite. Each region
was settled in its own way, and those differences suggest that each
community was isolated from the communities of other regions. It is
doubtful, for example, that the highland villagers just to the south of the
Jezreel Valley, who seem to have participated in the agricultural market
in the lowlands, had much in common with their northern neighbors
in the Galilee, who lived in relative isolation from that economy.25
Moreover, a slavish equation of the highland settlements with biblical
Israelite ‘tribes’ fails when one notes that entire tribal regions, as defined
25 E. Bloch-Smith and B. A. Nakhai, ‘A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron I

Period’, NEA 62.2 (1999), pp. 69–92, 100–27 (71, 83).
by the Bible, were not yet inhabited during Iron Age I (such as biblical
Issachar and, for the most part, Judah) and other tribes are defined as
regions where no villages of this type appeared during Iron Age I (such
as Asher and Simeon). Even if some element within the highlands
defined itself as Israel, the biblical definition of Palestine as ‘all Israel’
(a common biblical cliché) must be judged entirely artificial.26
The group that Merneptah called Israel was strong enough to resist
(unsuccessfully) a pharaoh, so it should be no surprise that their
descendants would be sufficiently dominant in the region to establish a
kingdom during the Iron Age II. Only then did other ethnic groups, such
as Gad in Transjordan, become incorporated into an entity called Israel,
and the process was politically motivated (as mentioned in Chapter 1).27
In between, during Iron Age I, Israelites lived somewhere in Palestine,
but they remain invisible to us. We see only physical remains, such
as Four-Room Houses and undecorated pottery, but the non-Israelite
neighbors of these early Israelites, who used the same Four-Room
Houses and undecorated pottery, would have known the difference
between one ethnic group and another in ways that are too subtle for our
investigative tools to discern.
Above all, one should keep in mind that the name of an ethnic group,
in this case Israel, can remain constant even as the substance of what
it means to be a member of that group undergoes constant discussion,
debate, and revision. If a royal servant of the Israelite kingdom during
Iron Age II could have time-traveled backward to meet an Israelite
villager of the Iron Age I, it is entirely possible that the two would have
shared little in common. Likewise, if a Jew or Christian today could
time-travel in this way, he or she might be shocked by how entirely
‘foreign’ people of the ancient past can be. This thought raises one final
question that is worthy of discussion: whether Israelite or not, what was
daily life like in a highland village during the Iron Age I?
26 T. L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and
Archaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 313–15.
27 J. L. Wright notes correctly that the real catalyst for the emergence of ideological
allegiances that transcended local identities was the emergence of an Israelite
state in the Iron Age II, in a review of A. E. Killebrew’s Biblical Peoples and
Ethnicity in Journal of the American Oriental Society 127 (2007), pp. 386–8
(388).
Life in Highland Villages of the Iron Age I

We have been discussing small settlements (villages) in the highlands
of Canaan during the Iron Age I. What was life like in those villages?
Is it possible to learn about the individuals who lived more than 3,000
years ago in these rustic communities? Whether the people in these
villages were ethnically Israelite or any of the other Canaanite ethnic
groups, the physical remains recovered by archaeologists can illuminate
many aspects of biblical storytelling. Likewise, the Bible can illuminate
aspects of the physical remains, for both derive from the same Canaanite
cultural context.
The archaeological surveys and excavations suggest that large
villages (or unfortified cities) were clusters of about 20 to 30 houses
with a population of about 200 people (for example, an excavation at
Ai, located near Bethel, a site that dates to the second half of the Iron
Age I).28 Only a handful of the settlements were that large, however.
Most of these villages were extremely small. They included about 4 to
6 houses and about 40 people, sometimes fewer. A few villages were
of an intermediate size, with about a dozen or more houses, usually
numbering about 100 inhabitants.
Based on biblical descriptions and anthropological study of tradi-
tional societies in recent centuries, patterns in the remains of household
architecture can be identified as examples of a biblical beth ’ab, which
means ‘house of the father’ (for example, Judg. 16.31; 1 Sam. 9.20;
17.25; 2 Sam. 3.29; 14.9; 1 Kgs 18.18). A beth ’ab was an extended
family in which the eldest male functioned as the patriarch, or head of
household. His extended household included his wife or wives and his
male children, with their wives and children. A man’s household might
include several wives because, in ancient Canaanite and biblical society,
a man could marry several women if he could afford to feed the mouths
that each marriage would produce. The poor might be monogamous
by necessity, but elites often were not (for example, 2 Sam. 3.2–5). In
the realm of folklore, a man’s wealth was measured by the number of
sexual partners he was able to maintain in his household (1 Kgs 11.3).
28 G. Lehman, ‘Reconstructing the Social Landscape of Early Israel: Rural

Marriage Alliances in the Central Hill Country’, Tel Aviv 31 (2004), pp. 141–93
(152). Much of this section depends on Lehman’s insights, as well as those of
Vanderhooft, ‘Israelite mišpāhâ’. See also L. E. Stager, ‘The Archaeology of the
Family in Ancient Israel’, BASOR 260 (1985), pp. 1–35.
Not infrequently, biblical men have two wives (for example, Genesis
29–30; 1 Samuel 1). Many biblical men have slave-girls or concubines
who provide sexual services, which was considered normal and ethical
(for example, Genesis 16; Deut. 21.10–14; Judg. 5.30).
In the surveys and excavations, a beth ’ab appears to have been
a cluster of houses, usually about four to six in number. Thus, each
smaller village (which, as noted above, consisted of four to six houses)
may have been a single beth ’ab. In the intermediate and larger villages,
houses are often found to be clustered together into units of two or
three, or sometimes four to six. In other words, the intermediate and
larger villages were places in which several of the smaller village-types
had clustered together. Thus, each of these clusters within an interme-
diate or large village has been interpreted as an example of a beth ’ab
as well.
An Iron Age house, such as the common Four-Room House discussed
earlier (see Figure 24), could accommodate a nuclear family: father,
mother(s), and children. In ancient times, the average woman would
bear about six children, and three or four of those children would die
before the age of two. Thus the average family in a Four-Room House
could be as few as four or five people, and as many as ten in rare cases.
Within a cluster of houses constituting a beth ’ab, one house was home
to the patriarch and his wife or wives. A son of the patriarch, along with
his wife and children, lived in each of the other homes. Daughters of the
family lived at home until shortly after puberty, then they were married
away to another family and would no longer live in the beth ’ab where
they were born. In situations where there were multiple wives or too
many adult sons to maintain a single beth ’ab, some of the sons would
move to another location (in the same or another village) to begin a new
beth ’ab.
When archaeologists plot all the village locations on a map, an
interesting pattern emerges. Generally, the villages of intermediate
or large size are spaced about ten kilometers apart. Clustered around
these intermediate and larger villages were a variety of the small
villages. This pattern matches the patterns of traditional societies that
have been studied by anthropologists. A clustering of villages in this
pattern usually indicates an endogamous village structure. The word
endogamous means that parents try to marry their female children to
males in the villages within their geographic cluster. This is not always
possible, of course, and a significant number of the marriages will send
girls much farther from their homes. Nevertheless, the ideal marriage
was a marriage within the endogamous village structure.
Each of these clusters of villages appears to have been what the Bible
describes as a mishpachah, which is usually translated into English
as ‘clan’. The mishpachah owned the land associated with its cluster
of villages, and the patriarch of the clan could distribute that land to
members of the extended family (for example, Judg. 1.12–15). A clan
was not a tribe. Several mishpachôt (the plural form) located in the same
geographic area were called a shebet, which is usually translated ‘tribe’.
As noted in Chapter 1, the Hebrew ‘tribe’ was primarily a geographic
term. According to the Bible, clans of people who lived in the hills just
south of the Jezreel Valley were of the shebet Manasseh. Further south
they were of the shebet Ephraim. If they lived in the northern portion
of Galilee, they were of the shebet Naphtali. As we have seen, the
population in the region south of Jerusalem was tiny, which is why the
shebet just north of Jerusalem was called Benjamin, ‘sons of the south’.
The shebet Judah emerged in the Iron Age II.
The marriage practice of endogamy served a practical function
within the mishpachah. By arranging marriages within the clan, land
ownership was easier to maintain. That is why an ideal marriage was,
quite often, a marriage to a first cousin. In the Bible, the ideal of a first-
cousin marriage is so ingrained that stories are told in which a person
travels great distances to obtain such a marriage (for example, Gen.
28.1–2). Because a man can legally marry more than one woman, that
man’s beth ’ab might include half-brothers and half-sisters, which were
also regarded as ideal marriages. In one biblical story, a young man lusts
for his half-sister and rapes her. Before he has taken her, she protests
that he could, if he chooses, legally marry her (2 Sam. 13.12–13).
A fascinating memoir by a Somali woman named Ayaan Hirsi Ali
can shed light on Iron Age village life because her stories parallel
biblical stories and the description of her world matches the archaeo-
logical evidence from Palestine.29 As a young girl in the 1970s, Ayaan
memorized the names of her male ancestors through 13 generations,
occasionally taking note of exceptional females in the genealogical line
(p. 3). Similarly, biblical figures identify themselves through the names
of ancestors, as in the case of a man named Elkanah son of Jeroham son
29 A. Hirsi Ali, Infidel (New York: Free Press, 2007). Page numbers from Infidel are
in parentheses.
of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph (1 Sam. 1.1). On occasion, a biblical

genealogy contains references to exceptional females in the ancestry
as well (1 Chron. 3.1–9; Mt. 1.2–16). In a tribal society, knowledge of
one’s ancestry is a matter of life and death, as Ayaan finds out when
her life is spared by muggers who discover that she is ‘family’ (p. 135).
As anthropologists frequently note, the distant names in the genea-
logical list sometimes merge with clan or geographic names and can
even be rearranged or rewritten to adapt to changing social relation-
ships, a topic discussed in Chapter 1. In the Somalia that Ayaan Hirsi
Ali experienced as a child, the geography was divided into four major
‘tribes’ and marriages usually took place within the clans inhabiting
these regions, although occasional marriages outside the ideal of
endogamy took place as well (pp. 3–17, 153). Within a society of
this kind, patriarchs maintain their households and, within the clan,
a dominant male maintains authority, though his choice of leadership
style might vary (for example, pp. 61, 92, 121–2). Clan leaders form
councils of elders who make decisions on behalf of the community (pp.
206–9). Under normal circumstances, defiance of a council’s decision
is unthinkable (pp. 210–11). These cultural norms are presupposed in
many biblical stories just as they are in Hirsi Ali’s memoir.
In this type of tribal society, each female is property, a point that Ayaan
Hirsi Ali stresses in her memoir. Prior to marriage, a girl is the property
of her father and, through a transaction that resembles a sale, the father
marries her to her new owner, her husband (for example, Hirsi Ali, pp.
171–4). Marriages are arranged and the young woman is expected to
assent to her father’s decision (pp. 77–8, 90–1, 112–13). Usually, the
husband pays the father a ‘bride price’ for his new possession.
These cultural assumptions about female status are presupposed
throughout the Bible, and a reader who is unfamiliar with them
frequently fails to understand the Bible’s treatment of women. For
example, if an unmarried girl has been raped, the rapist must pay the
bride price and marry his victim, and the couple can never get divorced
(Deut. 22.28–9). Biblical authors assume that this is a righteous
solution, since rape is violation of a male’s property. Because females
hold an inferior social and legal status, a woman’s status can rise if she
gives birth to males (note, for example, the competition for many male
children in Genesis 29–30; compare the story in which Ayaan Hirsi
Ali’s grandmother was treated with disdain when she gave birth to twin
girls in Hirsi Ali, p. 8). Because girls are married soon after puberty, the
husband is usually much older than his wife. As a result, women usually
outlive their husbands. This is why the Bible frequently emphasizes
protecting widows and orphans, as well as making legal provisions for
inheritance in the absence of male heirs (for example, Numbers 36).
Also, if a man dies childless (that is, without a male heir), the man’s
brother is expected to marry the widow and raise an heir on his dead
brother’s behalf, a custom also known to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s tribal culture
(Deut. 25.5–10; Hirsi Ali, p. 7; the biblical custom is called levirate
marriage).
Because a woman’s status is so much lower than the status of a male,
the Bible seems to insult women even when a biblical author is trying
to praise them. One of the most famous biblical poems celebrating
womanhood is found in the book of Proverbs. This ‘Praise of the Good
Wife’ (Prov. 31.10–31) defines a woman’s every virtue by demonstrating
how it supports her husband and enhances his status in the community.
The poem was composed by a wealthy male, so the female is described
as having charge of a wealthy beth ’ab. Because of her wealth, she is
not typical of women in her ancient culture. But her status as part of
an elite household does not make her independently significant. While
her husband is away in the city gate, taking his place among the male
council of elders (31.23), his wife is to be given a share in the fruit of
her own labors (31.31). In other words, the author assumes that the fruit
of a woman’s labors belongs to the husband, who can graciously share
a portion of it with her! In this way, her works earn her a few words of
praise among the males in the city gates (31.31).
The archaeological evidence also provides insights into the agricul-
tural foundation of daily life. To ensure the survival of the community,
the risk involved in farming was spread out over several activities. If
one activity failed during its season, the others could provide for the
lack. Thus, each village planted and reaped in several crop seasons each
calendar year and raised animals. The winter (rainy) months were a
time for growing legumes (chickpeas, lentils); spring and early summer
produced the most significant staples, the grains (barley, wheat); later
summer and early autumn was the time of the fruit harvests (grapes,
olives, figs, dates). The community raised sheep and goats and a
few cattle. These provided milk, wool, manure and, only on special
occasions, meat.
The religious calendar reflects this agricultural pattern (see, for
example, Leviticus 23). The biblical holidays Rosh Hashanah (a new
year’s celebration), the Day of Atonement for sin against Yahweh (Yom
Kippur), and the Feast of Booths (Sukkoth) collectively correspond to
the fruit harvests of late summer and early autumn. The festival of the
barley harvest is known in the Bible as Unleavened Bread and First
Fruits, a holiday that follows immediately after the celebration of the
spring birthing of livestock, Passover. The celebration of early summer’s
wheat harvest is called the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), because it falls
roughly seven weeks after Unleavened Bread and First Fruits. In the
Bible, all these holidays were given a role in the grand narrative of
Moses and the exodus from Egypt, but the festivals themselves were as
old as Palestinian agriculture.

Bloch-Smith, Elizabeth, and Beth Alpert Nakhai, ‘A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron
I Period’, NEA 62.2 (1999), pp. 62–92, 100–27.
Dutcher-Walls, Patricia (ed.), The Family in Life and Death: The Family in Ancient
Israel; Sociological and Archaeological Perspectives (London: T&T Clark, 2009).
Faust, Avraham, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion, and
Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006).
Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, 1988).
Finkelstein, Israel, and Nadav Na’aman (eds), From Nomadism to Monarchy:
Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel (Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, 1994).
Gitin, Seymour, Amihai Mazar, and Ephraim Stern (eds), Mediterranean Peoples in
Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE (Festschrift Trude Dothan;
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998).
Hutchinson, J., and A. D. Smith (eds), Ethnicity (Oxford Readers; Oxford: Oxford
Killebrew, Ann E., Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of
Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300–1100 B.C.E. (Atlanta:
McNutt, Paula M., Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox, 1999).
Olyan, Saul M., Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical
Differences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Pfoh, Emanuel, The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and
Anthropological Perspectives (London: Equinox, 2009).
Sollors, Werner (ed.), Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader (New York: New York
Sparks, Kenton L., Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 1998).
Chapter 6
The Patron God in the Ancient Near East
Introduction
The biological evolution of the human species produced a distinctive
brain, one that seeks agency everywhere and at all times.1 We see faces
in the clouds, we personify inanimate objects such as computers or cars,
and we imagine ghosts that haunt our houses. All animals are alert to
the presence of an agent in specific situations, but humans construct
ideas about agents in more complex ways. For example, a gazelle seeks
agency when it hears a sudden noise or catches a scent on the breeze,
instantly alerted to the possibility of a dangerous predator nearby. But
the gazelle displays no pattern of behavior to suggest that it formu-
lates and retains concepts of agency in the absence of such evidence.
Humans, by contrast, imagine what might be even when no evidence
suggests such a possibility. Unlike a gazelle, we might fear a purely
hypothetical predator.
This creative aspect of our brains enabled our species to survive.
Our Paleolithic ancestors could not outrun a cheetah, but they could
outsmart it by planning ahead, imagining all possible situations in
which a cheetah might be present. This human capacity to imagine what
is not real also enables children to invent imaginary friends, storytellers
to construct tales about miracle workers and supermen, and artists to
depict creatures, continents, or planets that do not exist.
The distinctive human brain enables us to imagine a god or gods
who will listen to our prayers and respond to them. From this biological
perspective, a god cannot be part of our lives except as an idea that
1 For a discussion of this issue and the research on which the thesis rests, see K. L.
Noll, ‘Did “Scripturalization” Take Place in Second Temple Judaism?’ SJOT 25
(2011), pp. 201–16; idem, ‘Was There Doctrinal Dissemination in Early Yahweh
Religion?’ BibInt 16 (2008), pp. 395–427.
6. The Patron God in the Ancient Near East 183
the brain has constructed. Because all human brains are similar, the
kind of god we invent displays recurring characteristics. In almost all
cases, a god is an invisible supernatural agent who possesses a human
type of mind and is deeply concerned about the very things that deeply
concern us.2 Rarely do we conceptualize a god who possesses the mind
of a snail, or a god that is indifferent to our needs. Likewise, believers
usually take for granted that any visual image of their god is a symbol
of the god’s invisible presence and not what the god ‘really’ looks like.3
The many differences in religious doctrine about the gods derive from
our capacity to imagine such beings in every possible way. For example,
the Jewish god is singular (Deut. 6.4) but the Christian god is triune
(Mt. 28.19). This difference does not overcome the shared character-
istic: both gods have minds that think the way we think (not as a snail
thinks) and are invisibly present among, and take a personal interest in,
worshipers (Lev. 26.11–12; Mt. 18.20).
Because it is a by-product of the human brain, a god-concept always
reflects its social, natural, economic, and political environment. For
example, in Western Europe and North America today, many people
believe their god guarantees human equality and freedom of conscience.
Also, people today take for granted that their god knows about the
natural universe, such as how galaxies were formed, what atomic
energy is, and how planet Earth orbits the sun. Many people presume as
self-evident that their god approves of a capitalist economic system and
a political democracy. Only a few centuries ago, nobody believed in a
god with those characteristics. People in medieval Europe believed that
their god ordained rigidly defined social stations, including aristocracy,
commoners, and slaves. Also, their god knew that planet Earth rested
at the center of the universe and the sun orbited Earth. This god
guaranteed the right of kings, not the right of people to vote for a
2 The research that supports this definition of a god has been presented in acces-
sible form by P. Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of
Religious Thought (New York: Basic, 2001). For bibliography of this research,
see Noll, ‘Did “Scripturalization” Take Place?’
3 For a balanced assessment of ancient Near Eastern divine symbols and their
relationship to the gods, see T. Ornan, ‘In the Likeness of Man: Reflections on the
Anthropocentric Perception of the Divine in Mesopotamian Art’, in B. N. Porter
(ed.), What is a God? Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects
of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp.
93–151.
leader, and outlawed the lending of money at interest, the backbone

of capitalism. Today, professional theologians interpret the Bible so
that the Bible affirms their modern values just as medieval theologians
interpreted the Bible so that the Bible affirmed their medieval values.
Theological interpretation of the Bible is the art of compelling the Bible
to stay current with changing beliefs, values, and knowledge.
With these observations as a foundation, it is easy to see why it is
necessary to erase from our minds any assumptions that we might have
about a god today and any modern religious community’s theological
interpretation of the Bible, for otherwise it is impossible to understand
what a god was in the ancient Near East. Even familiar biblical passages
are, in reality, unfamiliar territory, for the ancients who wrote, read, or
heard those passages presupposed a network of beliefs that our culture
does not share. Genesis 1.6–8 tells us that the god of that story created
a solid dome (a ‘firmament’) to hold back waters, and this god called
the dome ‘sky’. The ancient author believed that the blue sky above us
is solid and that waters beyond that dome could come crashing in on
us if a god so wills. This is precisely what happens in Gen. 7.11, when
the god of the story opens the windows in the sky so that water can
fall through them. In most English translations of Ps. 29.10, the god
of this poem sits enthroned ‘above the flood’, but the Hebrew original
announces that the god sits enthroned ‘at the waters-beyond-the-sky’
(Hebrew lammabbûl).4
The first step toward understanding ancient god-concepts is to study
the basic political and economic structure in which gods were concep-
tualized. A fundamental part of that social world was a patron–client
relationship.
4 Hebrew mabbûl originally meant the ocean beyond the sky (Gen. 7.7, 10; Ps.
29.10) and was later interpreted to mean the ‘flood’ (Gen. 9.11, 15, 28; 10.1, 32;
11.10; Sir. 44.17). See C. Westermann, Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1994), p. 422. Using the later definition, ‘flood’, some researchers interpret Ps.
29.10 temporally, ‘from [the time of] the flood’, but this use of the preposition
has little parallel and seems forced. See, for example, D. J. A. Clines (ed.),
The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, Vol. 4, Lamed–Yod (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1998), p. 484; B. K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction
to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 206 n. 61.
Patron–Client Relationships in the Ancient Near East

Every government in the ancient Near East was royal. Historians give
these ancient kingdoms a variety of labels. Depending on their size
and other factors, they can be called chiefdoms, city-states, regional
kingdoms, patrimonial states, tribal kingdoms, ethnic states, territorial
states, segmentary states, or imperial kingdoms. Those with smaller
populations often had rudimentary or non-existent bureaucracies, while
large kingdoms sometimes supported bloated and inefficient bureau-
cracies. Many of these ancient governments had ill-defined borders
because the kingdom extended only as far as a king was able to impose
his authority and collect taxes, and that capacity fluctuated through the
centuries or, in some cases, during the course of a single king’s lifetime.
In spite of individually distinct characteristics, all the royal govern-
ments of the ancient Near East shared a basic social and political
structure that can be called a patron–client relationship. This relationship
was made necessary by the predominantly rural, agrarian foundation of
society. The majority of people were farmers and shepherds. Even many
city dwellers were farmers who walked to the fields each day. A few
people were merchants and others learned skilled crafts, such as pottery,
woodworking, metalworking, weaving, and masonry. For everyone, life
was precarious and labor-intensive and provided only a small amount
of leisure time. Therefore, people were vulnerable in two ways. First,
should a group of soldiers or bandits attack a village, the inhabitants did
not have the training or experience to defend themselves adequately.
Second, should famine or drought attack the region, these farmers and
artisans did not have the means to barter for, or even to travel and seek,
food and other resources. A patron–client relationship was a practical
means to protect, to the extent possible, the people living in this harsh
environment.
The patron was the king and the clients were the people he ruled. A
man (never a woman) who initiated a patron–client government did so
by gathering a group of strong men (‘mighty warriors’, as they say in
the folklore) and presenting himself to the community as a savior (for
example, see 1 Sam. 22.1–2; 23.1–5; 30.26–31; 2 Sam. 23.8–39). The
patron promised to defend his clients against military invasion and to
acquire spoils from other regions, especially during times of famine,
by invading and despoiling people who were not his clients. Each new
patron hoped he could establish a royal dynasty, but his dynasty would
last only as long as the royal family was able to produce at least one
competent heir each generation (2 Sam. 7.11–16). In some circum-
stances, a queen mother might function as patron for her son who had
not yet reached maturity (2 Kgs 22.1). In rare circumstances, a shrewd
woman might usurp power for herself (2 Kings 11). Usually, however,
patrons were males and their royal heirs were males.
This patron–client system defined each person’s station in life. Below
the king, his professional warriors were the aristocracy. Together, king
and nobility ruled the populace: farmers, shepherds, artisans, and
slaves. (A slave was a man or woman captured in war, or any child of
slaves.) If you had lived in an ancient patronage society, anyone whose
status was higher than yours was your ‘lord’ or ‘lady’, and you were
expected to present yourself as this person’s ‘slave’ (for example, 2
Sam. 14.4–7). Even a queen addressed her husband, the king, in this
manner (1 Kgs 1.15–21). Because the aristocrats perpetually trained for
warfare, their food and drink came from taxes in kind imposed on the
commoners. Taxes were never collected in money until coins began to
circulate among the general populace, and that was not until the Persian
era (see Figure 5). Even then, coins were not common and many taxes
were collected in kind, as a portion of the crops and manufactured
goods.
Divine Patronage: The Common Religion of the Ancient Near East

The patron–client structure was also the common religion of the
ancient Near East.5 Just as the patron promised to guide and protect his
clients, he claimed to possess the guidance and protection of a god who
had chosen him for this task (for example, 2 Sam. 23.1–7; see also 1
Samuel 16). The patron–client relationship was theoretically a three-tier
hierarchy: the top tier was occupied by the patron god who had chosen
the human patron for the middle tier so that he might rule over the
5 Portions of this discussion are dependent on K. L. Noll, ‘Canaanite Religion’, RC

1 (2007), pp. 61–92. The starting point for my work is the now-classic article by
M. Smith, ‘The Common Theology of the Ancient Near East’, JBL 71 (1952),
pp. 135–47. See also N. P. Lemche, ‘Kings and Clients: On Loyalty between
the Ruler and the Ruled in Ancient “Israel” ’, Semeia 66 (1994), pp. 119–32;
L. K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as
Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994).
human clients in the bottom tier. This kind of religion was sponsored
by the state, enforced by the state, and imposed on all levels of society.
Participation in the patron–client religion was obligatory, even for those
who preferred to worship a god other than the king’s divine patron.
A patron god was not the only god in an ancient Near Eastern religion,
but he held a unique position among the gods. For example, in Babylon
(as described in a famous epic poem called Enuma Elish), the god
Marduk was not the first god to have come into existence, but he was
the god who brought justice to the realm of the gods and then created
the physical world and the human species. (Similarly, the biblical god
brings justice to the council of the gods in Psalm 82, and he creates the
physical world in a manner quite similar to Marduk in passages such as
Ps. 74.12–17.) This combination of moral and physical strength is what
gave a patron god his status as the most powerful and the most just of
the gods, who ruled the divine realm as he ruled the human realm, often
with the approval of a council of divine ‘elders’ who legitimated his
right to rule as patron god (as in the book of Job 1–2).
The divine realm, or pantheon, presupposed by ancient Near Eastern
kings mirrored the hierarchy of the human social and political world.
The patron god was king among the gods, just as the human patron was
king among the people. Other gods were subordinate to, and partners
with, the divine patron, just as the human aristocracy and commoners
were expected to be subordinate to, and supportive of, the human king.
The pantheon was usually quite complex, often including hundreds or
even thousands of gods. Some gods ruled cosmic phenomena, such
as the sun and moon, the weather, or even pestilence. Other gods
oversaw aspects of human life, such as skilled crafts or the protection
of women during childbirth. Many gods were messengers. The role of
divine messenger was essential because ancient patron gods did not
have cell phones or email. In the Greek language, a messenger is called
an angelos, which is translated into English as ‘angel’. Although later
Christian doctrine tried to demote angels from the status of gods by
claiming that angels had been created by the Christian god, in reality an
angel or divine messenger was a common minor god in every ancient
Near Eastern religion, including Judaism and earliest Christianity. Some
early Christians even identified Jesus as an angel of their god.6
6 Angelic Christologies survived among early Christians for centuries, which

is why the New Testament book of Hebrews must dissuade its reader from
When one god possesses much greater power and authority than all
the other gods combined, researchers call the religion a henotheism.
A henotheism stands between polytheism (in which there are many
gods, each with relatively equal power and authority) and monotheism
(in which there is one god and no other supernatural agents of any
kind). In the ancient Near East, every patron god was the divine king
in a henotheism, and all other gods were subordinate to him. In most
henotheisms, humans were permitted to worship many gods, but the
patron remained in charge. This approach offered the human king a
practical advantage. The king could permit the gods of popular piety
a place in the divine realm without taking the risk that one of these
alternate gods might threaten his own religious and political legitimacy.
Henotheism was a religious umbrella under which every god, no matter
how minor, could find a place.
On rare occasions, a so-called intolerant henotheism was imposed.7
In this case, worship of lesser gods was prohibited and the patron god
alone received worship. Some researchers call this intolerant henotheism
a monolatry, which means ‘worship of only one’. Many portions of the
Bible express monolatry. For example, when Yahweh declares that he is
a jealous god who banishes all other gods from his presence, the author
of this commandment does not deny that other gods exist but prohibits
worship of them (Deut. 5.7–10). Likewise, when Micah announces that
other kingdoms will walk ‘each in the name of its god’, but Israel will
walk in the name of Yahweh, Micah does not deny that other gods might
be real (Mic. 4.5). In the New Testament, John of Patmos believes in
the existence of an angel and desires to worship this messenger god, but
identifying Jesus as an angel (Hebrews 1–2). A fourth-century inscription reads,

‘First I shall sing a hymn of praise for God, the one who sees all; second I shall
sing a hymn for the first angel, Jesus Christ’. See S. Mitchell, Anatolia: Land,
Men, and Gods in Asia Minor (Vol. 2; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
p. 46.
7 On distinctions between ‘tolerant’ and ‘intolerant’ heno- or monotheisms, see
T. L. Thompson, ‘The Intellectual Matrix of Early Biblical Narrative: Inclusive
Monotheism in Persian Period Palestine’, in D. V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph
of Elohim: From Yahwism to Judaisms (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), pp.
107–24. A similar model using different terminology and assigning the process to
different periods of time is advanced by M. S. Smith, The Early History of God:
Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2nd edn, 2002).
the angel insists on monolatry (Rev. 19.9–10; 22.8–9). The apostle Paul
presumes that the gods of the Roman people exist, but he judges them
to be evil gods rather than good gods (1 Cor. 10.20–21) and insists that
Christians should affirm monolatry (1 Cor. 8.5–6).
Many Jews and Christians today believe that the Bible expresses
monotheism, but this is not correct unless one defines monotheism to
include any number of minor supernatural agents. Angels, demons, and
minor supernatural beings are abundant in the Bible (Gen. 3.24; Lev.
16.6–10; Judg. 13.3; Isa. 6.2–3; 27.1; Zech. 3.1–5, to name a few).
Genuine monotheism, defined as denial of all supernatural agents but
one, occurs only here and there in a handful of biblical verses (for
example, Deut. 4.35; Isa. 45.5). More commonly, the Bible assumes
that its god is a patron who rules over a pantheon of lesser supernatural
agents (for example, Deut. 10.17; Ps. 29.1). Biblical storytellers who
had no interest in (or perhaps no knowledge of) a monotheistic doctrine
wrote about other gods without embarrassment (for example, Judg.
11.24). This topic will be explored in a later chapter; for now it is suffi-
cient to note that the Jewish Bible offers a representative example of a
conventional ancient Near Eastern patron-god henotheism.
From kingdom to kingdom, the name of the patron god differed.
In southern Mesopotamia he was Marduk of Babylon; in northern
Mesopotamia he was Ashur of Assyria. In the Bronze Age city of Mari
and in some Iron Age Philistine cities, the divine patron was Dagan. In
Damascus and in Dan, the patron god was Hadad, or Adad as he was
called in the north Syrian city of Aleppo. Hadad or Adad was known
by other names, particularly the royal title Baal, which meant ‘Lord’.
In Late Bronze Ugarit, Baal was the patron god, though he might have
co-ruled with either El or Dagan, or both. (Patron-god henotheisms
sometimes placed several patron gods together as co-regents.) In Tyre
the patron god was Melqart, in Sidon he was Eshmun, in Moab he was
Chemosh, and in Edom he was Qos. In Samaria and Jerusalem, the
patron god was Yahweh. In some cases, a king ruled one land under
one patron god, but expanded his rule into another region under the
patronage of another god. For example, King Zakkur ruled Hamath with
the blessing of his god El-Wer, but the god Baal-of-the-Sky appointed
Zakkur king of Hadrach as well. (El-Wer and Baal-of-the-Sky may have
been local manifestations of the god Hadad, or the two gods became
amalgamated into one after Zakkur conquered Hadrach.) On occasion,
a patron god was female, such as the divine Lady of Byblos. In other
cases, a goddess shared in the realm of power emanating from a male

patron god. In Assyria the goddess Ishtar (who had several other names
as well) seems to have held this status in relation to Ashur; and in the
Philistine city of Ekron a goddess with several names seems to have
shared power with Baal.8
Although divine patrons had many names, every patron god displayed
the same personality and characteristics. He (or she) was a mighty
warrior, a righteous judge, and a merciful father (mother) to his (her)
people. This god hated sin and punished the wicked but rewarded the
righteous. In all cases, the patron god was obsessed with receiving proper
worship from human clients and expected to be flattered by soaring
rhetoric extolling the god’s surpassing majesty and many virtues. The
god who ruled the moon and was patron to King Nabonidus of Babylon
received a series of majestic titles from his human patron, such as ‘the
King of the gods, the Lord of lords who dwells in the sky, whose name
surpasses that of all other gods in the sky’.9 Likewise, in the Bible,
Yahweh was ‘God of gods and Lord of lords, the great El, mighty and
awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for
the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them
food and clothing’ (Deut. 10.17–18). A similar text, severely damaged
but preserved in the archives of an Iron Age Assyrian emperor, tells us
that Shamash, the god who rules the sun, has no equal among humans
or the gods, and that Shamash shines his light of judgment into the
world to ensure that no judge accepts a bribe, that no merchant handles
deceptive scales, and that justice is ensured for all.10 This divine person-
ality can be found among the patron gods of many ancient Near Eastern
cities.
8 For Hadad as the patron god of Dan, see K. L. Noll, ‘The God Who Is Among
the Danites’, JSOT 80 (1998), pp. 3–23. For the patron goddess of Ekron and a
possible relationship to Baal, see S. Gitin and T. Dothan, ‘A Royal Dedicatory
Inscription from Ekron’, IEJ 47 (1997), pp. 1–16; and S. Gitin and M. Cogan, ‘A
New Type of Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron’, IEJ 49 (1999), pp. 193–202.
9 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from A. L. Oppenheim,
‘Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts’, in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), The Ancient
Near East: Supplementary Texts and Pictures Relating to the Old Testament
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 556–67 (563).
10 F. J. Stephens, ‘Sumero-Akkadian Hymns and Prayers’, in J. B. Pritchard (ed.),
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2nd edn, 1955), pp. 383–92 (387–9).
Figure 25. The divine king of Ugarit was Baal, who was depicted frequently in
this pose, called ‘the smiting god’ posture
The patron god was actively involved in every aspect of royal

governance. To ensure that the human patron ruled with righteousness,
the god revealed the laws and threatened punishment for those who
transgressed those laws. During war, the patron god marched with the
royal armies. During peace, this god promised to protect society from
pestilence and famine. For his part, the human patron was the divine
presence on Earth, usually because the king was the son of the patron
god. (Gods frequently conceived, or gave birth to, kings in ancient
royal propaganda, although some kings were adopted by their gods
rather than begotten.) The god’s temple was built and maintained by
the human patron, and the temple was the royal tax-collection agency.
Ritual offerings demanded by the patron god were the taxes that fed
the king, his armies, and the royal bureaucracy, who were priests of the
patron god.
Examples of this state-sponsored religion are legion. A famous
example from the Middle Bronze Age is a stone monument erected by
King Hammurabi of Babylon, who boasted that he had been chosen to
be the human king by the same divine council that appointed Marduk
as the divine king. Here are a few excerpts from Hammurabi’s royal
propaganda:
At that time, [the gods] Anum and Enlil named me
to promote the welfare of the people,
me, Hammurabi, the devout, god-fearing prince,
to cause justice to prevail in the land,
to destroy the wicked and the evil,
that the strong might not oppress the weak,
to rise like the sun over the mass of humanity,
and to light up the land. . . .
I, Hammurabi, the perfect king,
was not careless or neglectful of the mass of humanity,
whom [the god] Enlil has presented to me,
whose shepherding [the god] Marduk had committed to me. . . .
I rooted out the enemy above and below,
I made an end of war;
I promoted the welfare of the land;
I made the peoples rest in friendly habitations;
I did not let them have anyone to terrorize them.
The great gods called me,
so I became a beneficent shepherd whose scepter is righteous;
my benign shadow is spread over my city.
In my bosom I carried the peoples of the land of Sumer and Akkad;

they prospered under my protection.
I always governed them in peace;
I sheltered them in my wisdom. . . .
I am the king who is preeminent among kings;
my words are choice, my ability has no equal.
By the order of [the god] Shamash, the great judge of sky and earth,
may my justice prevail in the land;
by the word of [the god] Marduk, my lord,
may my statutes have no one to rescind them.11
In these excerpts, it is clear that Marduk, divine patron of Babylon, ruled

with the cooperation of a densely populated divine realm, a council of
gods who had, as a group, chosen Hammurabi to be the human king.
The sun god, Shamash, shone the light of righteous judgment, and the
‘word’ of Marduk, that is to say, Marduk’s divine revelation, established
the law code that Hammurabi enforced. As a result, Hammurabi had
become a good shepherd who led his flock, the people of Sumer and
Akkad, with peace, justice, wisdom, and righteousness.
Almost every aspect of Hammurabi’s royal propaganda is mirrored
by the royal propaganda from Iron Age Jerusalem. Just as Marduk
reveals a ‘word’ that functions as the legal measure for human behavior,
the biblical god reveals a ‘word’ that is called Torah, which means the
‘teaching’ of Yahweh (Isa. 2.3//Mic. 4.2). Yahweh has chosen a series
of kings, each of whom is an ‘anointed one’ (which is the Hebrew
word ‘messiah’ and is identical to the Greek word ‘Christ’). Just like
Hammurabi, a biblical anointed one is the perfect king who brings light
to a darkened land. An example of this can be found in the enthronement
hymn of Isa. 9.1–6. (Chapter and verse divisions differ slightly from
one English translation of the Bible to another; in this case, Isa. 9.1–6
is numbered Isa. 9.2–7 in some English versions). The biblical king is
the good shepherd over his people, as is Hammurabi (Ezek. 37.24–8).
Like Hammurabi, the Bible’s anointed one abolished war and estab-
lished peace (Isaiah 61). Like Hammurabi, who sheltered his people
with his wisdom, Yahweh’s chosen king surpasses all others in wisdom
11 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from T. J. Meek, ‘The Code
of Hammurabi’, in Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts, pp. 163–80 (164,
177–8).
(Prov. 1.1; 25.1; see also the folktales in 1 Kgs 3.4–28; 5.9–14 [the latter
appears as 1 Kgs 4.29–34 in some English versions]).
The rhetoric of divine and human patronage sounds glorious, but
it masks a brutal reality. Hammurabi’s words of ‘peace’ summarize
what had been a bloody career in which countless people were killed
to consolidate the king’s imperial power. The Bible’s famously soaring
imagery about a glorious anointed one and a restored Jerusalem also
masks real-world brutality. For example, the most frequently quoted
‘messianic’ book of the Bible, Isaiah, describes an unrealistic universal
peace, in which even a leopard can lie down with a lamb (Isa. 11.1–12).
But this passage does not end with this quaint metaphor. The following
verses clarify this peaceful imagery by showing that it expresses a
political hope that involves real swords, real blood, and the deaths of
any soldiers or civilians who stand in the way of political unification
under, and imperial rule by, the patron-god Yahweh (Isa. 11.13–16;
see also Isaiah chapters 15–16, 34, and 60, to name a few examples).
One of the most quoted biblical texts, in which nations will beat their
swords into plowshares, does not advocate pacifism; rather it favors
the imperial rule of a god who issues divinely revealed instruction and
expects the entire world to bow in submission (Isa. 2.1–4//Mic. 4.1–3).
The earthly political power that divine patronage guarantees is the
most significant aspect of this state-sponsored religion; it is the reason
why this form of religion exists. For example, Psalm 89, which is a
lament composed during a time of military defeat, reminds the Bible’s
god that he had promised military victory:
At that time, you spoke in a vision.
To your faithful ones, you said,
‘I have conferred power on a warrior;
I have exalted one chosen from the people.
I found David, my servant;
I anointed him with my holy oil,
the one with whom my hand remains.
Yes, my arm strengthens him.
No enemy can rise against him.
No wicked man can oppress him’.
(Ps. 89.20–23 [89.19–22 in some English versions])
The poet of Psalm 89 is lamenting because the god of the poem has
failed to keep this promise, and the poet expects to see a restoration
of political power soon. Like the god who speaks in Psalm 89, every
patron god in the ancient Near East promised to stand firm with his
chosen king against all enemies. This promise to King Zakkur of
Hamath uses rhetoric that is very similar to Psalm 89:
I lifted my hands to Baal-of-the-Sky.
Baal-of-the-Sky answered me;
Baal-of-the-Sky spoke to me
through prophets and heralds.
Baal-of-the-Sky said,
‘Fear not! I am he who made you king;
I stand with you;
I deliver you from all these kings
who lay siege against you’.12
Later interpreters of the Jewish Bible, such as early Christians, have

tried to transform its soaring imagery about a chosen ‘lord’ sent as
‘savior’ into a promise of an otherworldly ‘spiritual life’ (for example,
Mt. 1.18–25; 3.16–4.11; 21.1–11; Lk. 4.14–30; Acts 2.32–6), but this
is an aggressive misappropriation of the Hebrew literature. The Jewish
Bible uses the word lord to designate political power (such as Psalm
110) and it uses the word salvation to designate military victory (such as
Isaiah 61–62; Zechariah 9). Even a tiny kingdom with no realistic hope
of establishing an imperial rule over the ancient Near East produced
propaganda expressing this gritty hope. The anointed one in Psalm 2 has
not been sent by his god to save human souls for blissful eternal life, but
to end prematurely the lives of any who dare to defy his power:
Why do the countries conspire,
and peoples plot emptiness?
Earthly royalty take their stand,
while princes take counsel against
Yahweh, and against his anointed one!
[They say,] ‘Let us break their cords,
and toss down their ropes’.
Sitting in the sky, laughing!
My Lord is mocking them.
At that moment,
he spoke to them in anger,
terrified them in rage,
12 Author’s translation from the Aramaic text. See J. C. L. Gibson, Textbook

of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, Vol. 2, Aramaic Inscriptions (3 vols; Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971–82).
‘But I –
I have set my king on Zion,
mountain of my holiness!’
Let me tell of Yahweh’s decree:
He said to me, ‘My son are you!
I have this day begotten you.
Ask from me that I might give
peoples as your inheritance –
And your possession, Earth’s foundations.
You may smash them with iron mace.
As potter’s vessels, you may shatter!’
So now, O kings, be wise!
Be warned, O earthly rulers!
Serve Yahweh with fear.
Shriek with trembling.
Kiss this ‘son’ lest he be angry.
Then your path perishes,
when his wrath flares quickly.
Happy are those who take refuge in him.
The last line of this poem might be a later gloss on the text, but if
it is an original part of the royal propaganda, it expresses with bitter
irony the religious message of a patron-god’s doctrine: one must seek
refuge in the king’s divine patron, for failure to do so brings a very
real and very painful this-worldly consequence (compare the brutal
punishments for defection from the patron god in each section of
Deuteronomy 13).
The Ethics of Divine Patronage

A patron god was a righteous god and his chosen human representative
was expected to be righteous as well. The bond between divine and
human kings was defined as a moral bond with moral obligations in
each direction. This morality was defined by the social, political, and
economic conventions of ancient Near Eastern society and extended to
every level of the social structure.
Every patron god’s primary concern was the welfare of his chosen
people, but his commitment to this people presupposed their commitment
to him. The relationship required active participation on both sides. For
example, the god who rules the sun, Shamash, is ‘agreeable to suppli-
cation, ready to listen to vows, [and] to accept prayers’; also this god
‘gives to those who worship him a long-lasting life of happiness’.13

Similarly, those who take delight in the biblical god find that ‘he will
grant your heart’s desires’ (Ps. 37.4) because this is a god who ‘guards
the lives of his loyal ones, [and] from the hand of evil ones he will
rescue them’ (Ps. 97.10). In other words, the ancient Near Eastern
patron god was a conventional supernatural agent, invisible, with a
human type of mind, and deeply concerned with all things that concern
the humans who have conceived of this god.
The divine–human relationship was modeled on the relationship
between the human patron and his human clients. The people pledged
fealty to their king. They were required to ‘love’ their king, which meant
that they must pay their taxes and clamor for the opportunity to serve
their lord. For his part, the king must ‘love’ his people and protect them
from external military threats and internal banditry, as well as provide
food and resources to supplement the economy, especially during times
of want. For example, in southern Anatolia, a king named Azitiwada,
who had been chosen by the patron god Baal, boasted that he became
like a ‘father and mother’ to his people, and brought ‘everything good,
and plenty to eat, and well-being’ to them.14 These boasts were included
in Azitiwada’s description of military triumph and imperial expansion,
suggesting that the resources his people enjoyed had been plundered
from people their king had conquered (compare 1 Sam. 30.26–31).
Although the short passage in 1 Sam. 27.8–12 is part of a complex
story in which the client David deceives his lord Achish, everyone in
this story displays a lack of concern for the fate of the people David has
massacred in cold blood, which is typical of the era and demonstrates
that the moral obligation of a patron was limited to his clients and not
to those outside the patron–client covenant.
These routine assumptions about how patron–client relationships
ought to function lie at the foundation of the Bible’s ‘theology’ of
covenant. Yahweh chose Israel (Deut. 10.15; Hos. 11.1), entered into a
‘covenant’ relationship with Israel (Exod. 24.8), demanded ‘love’ and
‘steadfast loyalty’ from Israel (Deut. 6.4–9; Mic. 6.8), and promised the
same in return (Deut. 7.9–10; Jer. 9.23 [9.24 in some English versions]).
13 Oppenheim, ‘Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts’, in Pritchard (ed.),

Ancient Near East, p. 556.
14 F. Rosenthal, ‘Canaanite and Aramaic Inscriptions’, in Pritchard (ed.), Ancient
Near East, pp. 653–70 (653).
Yahweh showed steadfast loyalty to those who remained loyal to him

and obeyed his teachings concerning public governance of society
(Deut. 5.11–18 [English 5.11–21]; 7.12–15). Those who were disloyal
angered Yahweh, and he vented his anger upon all the land, spitting out
of that land the loyal and the disloyal alike (Ezek. 21.8 [English 21.3];
Deut. 30.15–20). Rarely does Yahweh concern himself with the fate of
the non-chosen, except when contrasting their fate to the undeserved
gifts he has bestowed on his chosen ones (Deut. 6.10–15; 7.1–8) or
promising that, one day, all peoples will either be exterminated or bow
in submission to his imperial rule (Zephaniah 2; Zechariah 14).
It is the righteousness of the patron god that resulted in divinely
revealed instructions for human conduct. The Bible calls this Torah
(‘instruction’); other ancient languages had other words, but the idea
was the same everywhere. Torah was not merely advice for the pious,
it was the code of conduct for society. It was not about inner spiritu-
ality unless that inner conscience manifested itself publicly. Piety was
practical; it was allegiance to the social fabric. In that sense, the later
Christian critique of the biblical Torah, as found in Mt. 5.17–48, is
a misinterpretation of the purpose for which Torah had been formu-
lated. Nevertheless, the biblical Torah (the five books from Genesis
to Deuteronomy) is only the final product of a long process in which
divine instructions were gathered, written, and periodically revised. The
specific rules contained in those five books (which, according to Jewish
tradition, number precisely 613 commandments) are but a digest of
the type of material common to all ancient Near Eastern patron–client
societies.
Throughout the ancient Near East, the patron god recognized that
his chosen king and people were sinners who would not always live up
to the standard of righteousness that he imposed. A patron god always
provided opportunities for the sinners to repent and be forgiven, a topic
to be discussed later in this chapter. However, there was a limit to
the amount of sin the patron god would tolerate. When that limit was
surpassed, the god might punish his people, either by permitting pesti-
lence or drought to overcome them or by sending a foreign invader to
devastate the land (for example, 2 Sam. 24.13; see also Deuteronomy
28).
This religious doctrine can be called ‘blame the victim’, and it was
common throughout the ancient world. In each case, divine anger has
been attributed to the god in an effort to explain misfortunes: crops
have failed, people starved or died from disease, invading armies raped
and pillaged. Why have these things happened? It must have been the
victim’s fault, because a righteous god would not inflict these things
on the innocent. In Moab, the patron god had punished his people by
sending a foreign invader, although he later sent a savior named King
Mesha, who tells about this episode in his people’s past on a royal
monument:
Omri, king of Israel, oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry
with his land. Then his son succeeded him, and said, ‘I will oppress Moab’.
In my days he said this, but I have gloated over him and his house. So
Israel perished, perishing forever.15
The notion that Chemosh, god of Moab, was angry with his land
but later sent a savior to restore the damage is echoed by Yahweh,
god of Israel, many times in the Bible (for example, Judges 2). The
biblical prophets blame the victims of devastation in Israel and Judah
by declaring that their misfortune is a divine punishment for sin (for
example, Hosea 4–5; Amos 3–4; Haggai 1). The wrath of the divine
patron can be directed against an entire people (2 Kgs 17.7–18) or
against a single king, but the punishment will engulf all, righteous and
sinner alike (2 Kgs 23.26–7).
A doctrine that blames the victim is easy to abuse. For example,
many kings who usurped the previous king’s throne used this doctrine
to justify the deed. When a Babylonian usurper named Marduk-apla-
iddina II seized the throne, he announced that Marduk, god of Babylon,
had chosen him to restore righteous rule to the land. Marduk declared
this usurper to be ‘the shepherd who will gather the scattered people’
(compare the rhetoric of Ezekiel 34). But a few years later, when
Assyrian King Sargon II defeated Marduk-apla-iddina, Sargon’s royal
propaganda declared that his predecessor had seized power ‘against the
will of the gods’ and that he, Sargon II, was appointed by Marduk, god
of Babylon, to restore righteous rule to the land of Sumer and Akkad
(compare the stories of 1 Samuel 15–16; 1 Kings 1–2; 2 Kings 9–10).16
15 Author’s translation from the Moabite text. See J. A. Dearman (ed.), Studies in
the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).
16 For an English translation of the Akkadian texts, see A. Kuhrt, ‘Ancient Near
Eastern History: The Case of Cyrus the Great of Persia’, in H. G. M. Williamson
(ed.), Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007), pp. 107–27 (121–2).
Any religion in which humans are viewed as sinners before a righteous

god is a recipe for blaming a victim in just about any situation.
The ethics of an ancient patron god can seem foreign to modern sensi-
bilities because this god’s ethical values were dictated by the prevailing
prejudices of the era. The society itself dictated what the patron god
required, what the patron god defined as just, and whom the patron god
favored. The scribes assure their readers that their god has revealed the
righteous rules but, in reality, the scribes placed words in their god’s mouth.
The ‘blame the victim’ doctrine is one of many examples in which a patron
god has become the puppet who dances to the strings of cultural demand.
An example of a patron god’s ethics is the ancient concept of herem,
which was a ritual slaughter of every man, woman, and child among
the enemies of war. The Moabite savior we encountered a moment
ago, King Mesha, tells us that he subjected his enemies to this kind of
slaughter, and the Bible offers many instances of this as well.17 In some
cases, the Bible defines herem as a punishment for sin that results in
ritual execution of the offender (for example, Exod. 22.19 [Eng. 22.20];
Lev. 27.28–9; compare Isa. 43.28; Jer. 25.9). More often, the military
context of the word is clear and it is the enemy who has been devoted to
the patron god (such as Isa. 34.2, 5; 37.11; Jer. 50.21, 26; 51.3). In the
story of 1 Samuel 15, the god’s prophet commands King Saul to commit
genocide, destroying every person of the people called Amalekites (1
Sam. 15.3). This concept occurs frequently in the folklore about the
Israelite conquest of the promised land (Num. 21.3; Deut. 7.2; 20.17;
Josh. 2.10; 6.21; 8.26; 10.1, 40, and so forth).
Ancient Near Eastern cultures treated women as the property of
men, and it is no surprise that each patron god also treated women
this way. A biblical example illustrates the point. In 2 Samuel 11–12,
King David desires another man’s wife, takes her, and later kills the
husband because the woman has become pregnant. After these unsavory
deeds, David’s divine patron becomes angry. Yahweh sends a human
messenger to denounce David and announce punishment. A portion of
the god’s speech reveals the divine attitude toward women:
Thus says Yahweh, god of Israel:
It was I who anointed you king over Israel.
17 For discussion, see L. A. S. Monroe, ‘Israelite, Moabite, and Sabaean War-herem

Traditions and the Forging of National Identity: Reconsidering the Sabaean Text
RES 3945 in Light of Biblical and Moabite Evidence’, VT 57 (2007), pp. 318–41.
It was I who rescued you from the hand of Saul.

I gave you your masters’ daughters and possession of your masters’
wives.
I gave you the daughters of Israel and of Judah.
If this were not enough, I would give you twice as much. (2 Sam.
12.7b–8)18
In this passage, Yahweh tells his human client that he, Yahweh, has been
a faithful patron. Yahweh emphasizes his own fidelity to the covenant so
that he can stress David’s infidelity.
Yahweh’s mistreatment of women in 2 Samuel 12 is difficult to
ignore. Yahweh asserts that he has delivered into David’s bed the
daughters and the wives of previous patrons, such as King Saul. In
other words, Yahweh has assisted with David’s desire for, and taking
of, women, and Yahweh even declares that he is willing to provide
more. The implication is clear: Yahweh is not angry with his client for
coveting and taking another man’s wife. He is angry with David for
coveting and taking the wrong man’s wife. Earlier in the biblical story,
Yahweh had murdered a man named Nabal so that Nabal’s wife could
become David’s wife (1 Samuel 25). In 2 Samuel 12, Yahweh asserts
that he has done the same with respect to King Saul and his wife. (Is it
coincidence that one of David’s wives in this story has the same name
as Saul’s wife? Compare 1 Sam. 14.50 with 25.43.) Later, Yahweh will
arrange a public rape in which a number of David’s secondary wives
(concubines) will be the victims (2 Sam. 12.11; 16.20–3).
In an ancient patron–client society, the patron’s wives were not
legally people with their own dignity as autonomous individuals.
Rather, the wives were possessions of the patron. If a patron fell from
power, his possessions became the spoil of another man, another patron.
From the perspective of a patron–client worldview, the rape of David’s
wives was thought to be proper punishment because David, not his
wives, had sinned against the patron god, Yahweh. As if all this were
not sufficient, the story’s patron god also killed a baby to punish the
child’s father, another instance in which the story reflects the cultural
assumption that the patron’s possessions include human chattel (2 Sam.
12.14–23).
18 For the variant ‘daughters’ instead of ‘house’ in 2 Sam. 12.8, see P. K. McCarter,
II Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes and Commentary (AB, 9;
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), p. 295.
The Bible is the best-preserved collection of ancient writings giving

voice to conventional divine patronage as it was practiced throughout
the ancient Near East. However, some portions of the Bible express
ambivalence about the prevailing norms. For example, the book of Job
attacks the conventional ‘blame the victim’ doctrine with an elaborate
poetic satire in which an incompetent patron god is duped into making
a foolish bet with a divine underling. Although the tale and its poetic
dialogues are best described as a farce, it has been taken seriously as
a work of sophisticated theology, and perhaps that was the ancient
author’s intention. Likewise, the books of 1–2 Samuel, which provide
many excellent examples of the routine assumptions that ancient
peoples made about patron–client relationships, seem to present a
divine character who ultimately fails to fulfill the expected obliga-
tions of a divine patron and even goes berserk at the close of the story
(2 Samuel 24).19 For the most part, however, biblical authors seem to
accept all aspects of the patron–client ideology. For example, Haggai
presupposes this ideology, as does Deuteronomy. Religious believers,
both Jewish and Christian, have struggled for centuries to find ways of
dealing with the repulsive aspects of divine patronage, often placing as
positive a spin on these texts as a creative imagination can muster. From
a historian’s vantage, the texts provide an invaluable window through
which to glimpse everyday life in a fascinating, but long-dead, ancient
culture.
The Patron God, the Temple, the City, and the Sacrificial System
Like every invisible supernatural agent with a human type of mind
who takes an interest in the affairs of humans, an ancient Near Eastern
patron god promised to be present with his people. It was the human
patron’s responsibility to maintain the god’s place of residence and to
be attentive to the god’s communications. For his part, the divine patron
promised to protect the city in which his temple stood and to make that
city the political center of the world. Consider, for example, this excerpt
19 K. L. Noll, ‘Is There a Text in This Tradition? Readers’ Response and the Taming
of Samuel’s God’, JSOT 83 (1999), 31–51; idem, ‘Is the Scroll of Samuel
Deuteronomistic?’ in C. Edenburg and J. Pakkala (eds), Is Samuel Among the
Deuteronomists? (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, forthcoming).
from an Iron Age Assyrian king, whose capital city was home to this
stone inscription:
Property of Adad-nirari, great king, legitimate king, king of the world,
king of Assyria. [He is] a king whom Ashur, the king of all gods, had
chosen when [Adad-nirari] was a youngster, entrusting him with the
position of a prince without rival. [He is a king] whose shepherding [the
gods] made as agreeable to the people of Assyria as is the Plant of Life,
[a king] whose throne they established firmly. [He is] the holy high priest
and tireless caretaker of the temple called Esarra, who keeps up the rites
of the sanctuary. [Adad-nirari] acts upon the trust-inspiring oracles given
by Ashur, his lord, who has made submit to his feet the princes within the
four rims of the earth.20
In addition to being the good shepherd who has led his people,
Adad-nirari III was the ‘holy high priest’ of the royal temple, a temple
that stood in the heart of the royal city. Although shrines to a god could
appear in any location where some people were motivated to build
one, a royal temple was a distinct and significant building. It was not
the ancient equivalent of a local synagogue or church building where
lay members of a religious community might gather routinely. In fact,
gathering places called synagogues would not be invented until well into
the Greco-Roman era (see Figure 5). As the inscription of Adad-nirari
III implies, the temple was the symbolic center of the patron god’s royal
rule, from which the human patron would launch his campaigns against
other kingdoms to seek their submission.
The patron god promised to protect the walls of his king’s city and to
defeat the gods of his king’s enemies. In gratitude, the king participated
in frequent and complex rituals on behalf of his god and the divine
council. A number of ritual texts discovered at the Late Bronze city of
Ugarit give us a glimpse into a king’s busy ritual schedule as well as
the god’s obligations. One of these documents, for example, lists animal
sacrifices the king was expected to offer and includes a poetic prayer
about the divine patron’s role as city guardian:
When a strong foe attacks your gate,
a warrior your walls,
You shall lift your eyes to [the god] Baal and say:
20 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from A. L. Oppenheim,

‘Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts’, in Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near
Eastern Texts, pp. 265–317 (281).
‘O Baal, if you drive the strong one from our gate,

the warrior from our walls,
a bull, O Baal, we shall sanctify . . .
[an offering], O Baal, we shall offer.
To the sanctuary, O Baal, we shall ascend,
that path, O Baal, we shall take’.
And Baal will hear your prayer.
He will drive the strong foe from your gate,
the warrior from your walls.21
The patron god sometimes had an entourage of lesser gods who stood
guard on the fortification walls to protect the city from harm. The royal
archive at Bronze Age Mari on the Euphrates River provides an inter-
esting example. Apparently a servant of Mari’s king had seen a vision
of the divine council. In this vision, the wise god Ea assembled the
lesser gods and led them in a ceremonial oath of allegiance, in which
they were required to promise to support the god who guards the city’s
‘brickwork’. To take the oath, the gods were required to drink a cup of
water mixed with dirt from the city gate (compare a ritual involving a
private domestic dispute in the Bible, Num. 5.17).22
The biblical book of Psalms, which contains the lyrics from ancient
temple songs, includes a number of poems in which Yahweh and his
council of gods protect Jerusalem. For example, Psalm 24 appears to
have been part of a ritual procession up the hill into the royal temple in
Jerusalem (compare the Ugaritic hymn to Baal quoted above). As part
of this hymn, the singers address the city gates as though they are living
beings who can hear and respond: ‘Lift, O Gates, your heads, and raise
up, O Eternal Doors! So that the King of glory may enter!’ (Ps. 24.7, 9).
This text is not what it seems at first glance, because city gates in the
ancient Near East were not the type that lifted up, like a medieval gate
that was raised or lowered with pulleys. Ancient gates swung open and
shut on hinges, much like an ordinary door in a modern home. Psalm
24’s singers were not addressing inanimate gates and asking them to
open. They were addressing the gods who protected the gates, much
like a poem from ancient Ugarit, in which lesser gods are encouraged
21 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from D. Pardee, Rituals and
Cult at Ugarit (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), pp. 50–3.
22 M. Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (Atlanta: Society
of Biblical Literature, 2003), pp. 42–3.
to lift their heads in the presence of Ugarit’s patron god Baal.23 In Psalm
24, the King of glory is identified as the city patron Yahweh, who is
‘mighty and valiant’ in warfare, and the gods of the gates, called Gates
and Eternal Doors, must lift their heads as this divine king strides past
(Ps. 24.7–10).
Psalm 48 is one of the Bible’s familiar ‘Zion songs’, a series of
poems in which the divine patron has selected the city of Jerusalem,
often called Zion, to be his imperial residence (Psalms 46, 76, 87, and
so forth). Note how the poet rejoices in the sheer strength of Zion’s
fortifications:
Great is Yahweh, and greatly praised,
In the city of our God, the mountain of his holiness!
A beautiful elevation, a joy of all the earth!
Mount Zion, distant part of Zaphon, city of the Great King!
God among [the city’s] citadels is known as a defensive height!
Suddenly, the kings gathered themselves, they advanced together.
They beheld [the city]; they were astounded!
They were terrified; they panicked!
Trembling seized them there; pain like a woman giving birth!
As when an easterly wind smashes a Tarshish fleet!
Just as we have heard, thus we have seen,
in the city of Yahweh of Armies, in the city of our God!
May God establish [the city] for all time!
We contemplate, O God, your steadfast loyalty in the midst of your
temple.
Because your name is ‘God’, therefore your praise reaches the ends of
Earth.
Righteousness has filled your right hand.
May Mount Zion rejoice!
May the daughters of Judah exult!
On account of your judgments.
Walk around Zion, circle around it,
Count all its towers, take note of its ramparts, go through its citadels,
So that you may report to a future generation.
For this is God, our eternal God.
He will lead us against [the god of] Death!
23 F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the
Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 97–9.
In the opening lines of this poem, Jerusalem’s Mount Zion is associated

with a mountain called Zaphon, which was the home of Canaan’s royal
god Baal. In this poem, Yahweh is conceptualized as a warrior-god
who protects the city gates, similar to Baal in the Ugaritic poem quoted
above.
Near the end of Psalm 48, the italicized line equates Zion with the
patron god himself: the towers and ramparts are divine. In the Hebrew,
the word translated ‘god’ can be, depending on grammatical context,
a single god or many gods. In this passage, the word is singular, an
alternate name for Yahweh (which is why it is capitalized in this trans-
lation). However, minor modification to two Hebrew words would
render this use of ‘god’ plural, in which case the towers and ramparts
would be ‘our gods, our eternal gods’, a phrase remarkably similar to
the one we encountered in Psalm 24, ‘O Gates . . . O Eternal Doors’.
Researchers have long noted that this section of the book of Psalms
(Psalms 42–83) had been modified by ancient scribes who altered the
divine name in a variety of places, so the modification of two Hebrew
words here is not impossible.24 Thus, either the text was modified and
originally referred to the minor gods who protect the city walls, or the
poem as we now have it was the original text, and the patron god is
equated with the city’s fortifications. In either case, the poem expresses
a conventional ancient Near Eastern emphasis on the divine patron’s
role in military defense.
Every royal temple, such as the temple of Zion, was a center of
government, and its priests were government bureaucrats. A priest
24 All researchers agree that the so-called Elohistic Psalter (Psalms 42–83) has
been altered. The older view was that the original divine name, Yahweh, has
been replaced in many instances by Elohim (‘God’), but one researcher suggests,
cogently, that the scribes have censored the names of various minor gods from
Yahweh’s original entourage. See Z. Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A
Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 676–8. In
either case, a scribe who was systematically replacing the names of deities in
Psalms 42–83 would have little difficulty adjusting a demonstrative from plural
to singular and, in the next line, replacing a plural pronoun with a singular. As
for the controversial final prepositional phrase in Psalm 48, the common textual
emendations are possible but unnecessary. M. Dahood prefers to read ‘from
Môt’ in Dahood, ‘The Language and Date of Psalm 48 (47)’, Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 16 (1954), pp. 15–19 (18). However, the verb sometimes carries a
military connotation (1 Chron. 20.1; 2 Chron. 25.11), so the common adversative
sense of the preposition is to be preferred.
needed to be an expert on the traditions associated with the gods but

was also a tax collector. The offerings brought to the temple were
the taxes that would be redistributed to all levels of the government’s
infrastructure. Free-will offerings were accepted at temples, but most
offerings were not freely offered. The patron god required these
offerings (the Bible calls them ‘tithes’ and defines them as one-tenth of
each person’s income). For example, at Bronze Age Lachish, inscrip-
tions on bowls designate their contents as ‘harvest tax’. Because taxes
were collected in kind, the priest was also in the agricultural business
and an expert butcher of animals. Analysis of the temple trash at Lachish
and at an Iron Age temple on the slopes of Mount Carmel suggests that,
in many cases, the right foreleg of an animal was the god’s portion of an
animal sacrifice consumed by temple priests, and the remainder of the
carcass was taken away for consumption by other members of the royal
bureaucracy or army (see also Lev. 7.32).25
Large kingdoms had multiple temples. There could be several
temples dedicated to the same god in one or more cities or a series of
temples each dedicated to a significant god of that kingdom’s divine
council. Every major city was home to at least one major temple, often
more than one. Nevertheless, some system of control governed the
network of temples throughout a king’s realm. For example, in the Late
Bronze kingdom of Ugarit, on the northern coast of Syria (see Figure
17), satellite villages had their own temples, but surviving records show
the gods and the priests of those temples were subordinate to Ugarit’s
divine patron and the royal priests in the city.26
As the inscription from Adad-Nirari III illustrates, the king was the
high priest in an ancient temple system. Often there was a designated
high priest among the temple priests as well, but the king’s priestly role
was that of ultimate religious authority.27 Ancient records demonstrate
that the king had the authority to define ‘correct’ worship and ritual as
well as the proper disposal of all temple income (for a biblical example,
25 B. A. Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel (Boston:

American Schools of Oriental Research, 2001), pp. 147, 149, 174.
26 Nakhai, Archaeology and Religions, p. 123.
27 Inscribed ritual tools at Ugarit read rb khnm (‘Chief of the Priests’), and this
appears to have been an office separate from Ugarit’s king. See W. G. E. Watson
and N. Wyatt (eds), Handbook of Ugaritic Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1999), p. 9.
see 2 Kgs 16.10–18).28 This meant that the ‘correct’ worship and ritual,
sometimes even the identity of the ‘correct’ patron god, could change
with each succeeding king. Usually, any religious innovations were
proclaimed as the patron god’s idea. For example, the queen mother of
Babylon’s King Nabonidus tells us that the patron god had appeared to
her during a dream to announce that her son would rebuild one of the
imperial cities and its central temple.29 Similarly, the Bible’s King Josiah
receives divine revelation as he undertakes sweeping religious innova-
tions in Jerusalem, according to 2 Kings 22–3. In addition to being the
king’s royal chapel, the temple stored the king’s wealth and served as
a rudimentary bank, but these aspects of the temple’s functions were
hidden from the view of the common people. Priests, who were royal
bureaucrats, were alone permitted to enter a temple, and the common
folk were expected to remain outside in the courtyard.
The temple was the center of religious pageantry that was, it seems,
available to all levels of society, at least to all those who lived close
enough to the temple to visit it on occasion. The temple’s altar was in
the open-air courtyard (lighting fires inside buildings was ill advised).
In the courtyard, people could witness the altar sacrifices and any other
ceremonies associated with these sacrifices. If hymns were sung as part
of these rituals (as suggested by ancient religious figurines and song
lyrics such as the Bible’s book of Psalms), this music and any proces-
sionals or dances probably took place in the courtyard. Any person
who brought an animal for sacrifice would not participate directly in
the ceremony, but would watch the priests perform the sacrifices and
receive, in the end, some roasted meat.
The sacrifices were taxes at the earthly level of meaning, but they
also possessed a theological value as food or incense for the gods.30 The
Bible refers to the offerings as food for the biblical god (Lev. 3.11) and
often asserts that sacrifices provided a sweet aroma for the god (Lev.
1.9, 13, 17; 2.2, etc.). In some cases, evidence suggests that minor
temple servants, called ‘holy ones’ (a Hebrew word that is sometimes
28 N. Na’aman, ‘The Contribution of the Suhu Inscriptions to the Historical

Research of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah’, JNES 66 (2007), pp. 107–22
(119).
29 Oppenheim, ‘Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts’, in Pritchard (ed.),
Ancient Near East, p. 561.
30 Pardee, Rituals and Cult at Ugarit, p. 226.
Figure 26. Small figurines of temple ‘holy ones’, such as this one from the Negev
near Arad, suggest that music was a vital part of temple worship
incorrectly translated ‘temple prostitutes’31), wove clothing that was

draped over divine images. For example, the Bible narrates the religious
innovations of King Josiah, which included the destruction of ‘the
compartments of the holy ones, which were in the temple of Yahweh,
where the women wove garments for [the goddess] Asherah’ (2 Kgs
23.7).
Sacrifices and rituals were performed explicitly for the gods, but
they actually celebrated, commemorated, or signified vital aspects of
human relationships. This can be seen especially by analyzing which
among the many meat sacrifices were most common. For example,
at the Late Bronze city of Ugarit, two types of sacrifices were more
common than all others combined. Of these two, one accounted for five
times more animal sacrifices than the other, and thus accounted for the
overwhelming majority of all animal sacrifices in that city.32 This most
common sacrifice was a ‘peace offering’ (which also appears in the
Bible, such as Leviticus 3). A peace offering was a fellowship dinner in
which a portion of the animal was offered to the god but the bulk of the
meat was consumed by worshipers. The name of the offering implies
its religious meaning: it created peace among the worshipers as well
as peace between worshipers and their god. The word ‘peace’ meant
more than the absence of strife or warfare; it designated wholeness
and well-being for the community. The other of the two most common
meat sacrifices was called a ‘burnt offering’ (also in the Bible, such as
Leviticus 1). As the name implies, the animal was wholly burnt on the
31 I discuss the error of translating ‘holy ones’ as ‘temple prostitutes’ in K. L.

Noll, ‘Canaanite Religion’, pp. 83–4. Although contemporary scholarship has,
for the most part, abandoned the hypothesis that sexual rites were performed
in Canaanite temples, several popular English translations continue to circulate
in which the Hebrew words for male and female ‘holy ones’ (minor temple
personnel) are incorrectly rendered ‘prostitutes’, ‘harlots’, ‘cult prostitutes’,
or ‘temple prostitutes’ (for example, KJV, NRSV, and Tanakh make this error
in Gen. 38.21; Deut. 23.18 [Eng. 23.17]; Hos. 4.14, etc.). No ancient biblical
author believed that the Canaanites or anyone else were having sex in their
temple services. In the ancient world, minor temple personnel were unmarried
slaves owned by the god of the temple. As such, there were numerous instances
in which these ‘holy ones’ were sexually promiscuous or engaged in the sex
trade, but this had nothing to do with their status as temple personnel. It might,
however, explain why Deut. 23.18 [Eng. 23.17] desires to ban such personnel
from the temple of Yahweh (compare 1 Sam. 2.22).
32 Pardee, Rituals and Cult at Ugarit, p. 225.
altar so that it was transformed into smoke that rose up to the god’s
abode in the sky. A burnt offering was both food for the god and a
thanksgiving for the god’s continued blessings.
Humans were expected to obey their god, but the gods never expected
humans to be without sin. Therefore, in divine mercy, ritual sacrifice
provided communion between the divine and humanity. At Late Bronze
Ugarit, for example, an autumn festival was similar to the biblical
autumn ritual of forgiveness that Jews today call the High Holy Days
or the Days of Awe. In the Bible, this begins with a new-year festival
(Rosh Hashanah), followed by a solemn day for repentance from sin
(Yom Kippur), and a celebration for the grape harvests (Sukkoth or
Tabernacles). These rites, described in Leviticus 23 and elsewhere, were
given additional religious meaning by relating the rituals to the myth
of Moses and the exodus from Egypt, but their agricultural foundation
preceded the invention of Moses by many centuries. Each part of the
biblical festival finds its counterpart in the much older traditions of
Ugarit. That city’s week-long harvest festival, corresponding to biblical
Tabernacles, preceded a new-year’s observance that involved a ritual
for the well-being of the Ugaritic people, an event that was similar to
biblical Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.33
Because sin was a part of daily life, provisions were made for
repentance and forgiveness at any time of the year. Every patron god
insisted that genuine forgiveness could be achieved only by genuine
repentance, which included reparation (for example, Lev. 5.20–24
[6.1–5 in some English versions]). Obedience was better than sacrifice
and every human was expected to walk humbly with the patron god
(Hos. 6.6; Mic. 6.6–8). If the sinner has returned from the wayward
path and made amends to those who were harmed, this was all that
was really necessary. Nevertheless, it was also acceptable, usually on a
voluntary basis, to ritualize the process of repentance and forgiveness
(Lev. 5.25–26 [6.6–7]).
In the ancient world, the concept of sin covered aspects of life that
were not considered unethical. In addition to ethical transgressions,
sin might involve touching a ritually unclean object or carcass (Lev.
5.2–3) or a natural emission of a bodily fluid (Lev. 15.13–15). Sin
33 Pardee, Rituals and Cult at Ugarit, pp. 56–8; G. del Olmo Lete, Canaanite
Religion: According to the Liturgical Texts of Ugarit (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2004), p. 154.
even resulted from selected natural stages in the process of life, such as
childbirth (Leviticus 12). In fact, sin was really any aspect of life that
placed a human into a ritual state that the god preferred to keep outside
the temple precincts. Obviously, any patron god wished to exclude
those who committed egregious criminal actions (‘sinners’ in a modern
religious sense), but the god also wanted to exclude persons who,
though ethical in their conduct, sometimes became ‘filthy’ through no
fault of their own (‘sinners’ in an ancient sense). It is an error to believe
that the ancients viewed all such ritual states as unethical or immoral.
In the Bible, sacrifices could ritualize the transition from a state
of sin to a state of purity. A ‘sin offering’ was made, which ‘covered
up’ the sin (for example, Leviticus 4). This ritual did not generate
divine ‘forgiveness of sin’ (although it is often translated that way in
English). Rather, a sin offering was a ritual declaration that the god
has acknowledged a human’s efforts to correct the imperfection prior
to the ritual event. Centuries later, the authors of the New Testament
emphasized Jewish sacrifices in order to provide a religious explanation
for the death of Jesus, who is described as a ‘sin offering’ (for example,
Hebrews 3–10). One must stress, however, that the New Testament has
made two errors. First, a human victim could never function as a sin
offering.34 Second, sin offerings were relatively minor rituals, far less
common and certainly less necessary than peace offerings and burnt
offerings, neither of which had anything to do with human sin in either
the modern or the ancient sense of the word.
This chapter has introduced one of the most fundamental concepts
in the ancient Near East, the patron–client relationship and its religious
dimensions. It should be noted that there was no officially sanctioned
‘orthodox’ version of a patron-god religion. The basic doctrines
34 I discuss the hypothesis of human sacrifice in Noll, ‘Canaanite Religion’, pp.

84–5. Biblical commands to perform human sacrifice, as well as prohibitions
against, and accusations of, human sacrifice (such as Exod. 22.28–9 [Eng.
22.29–30]; Lev. 20.2–5; Jer. 19.5; Ezek. 20.25–6) are difficult to assess in light
of a complete absence of evidence for human sacrifice in Palestine during the
Bronze and Iron ages. Some researchers are convinced that data from North
Africa are pertinent to the discussion, though I remain unconvinced. Many of the
biblical accusations of human sacrifice can be viewed as hyperbole, the rhetorical
flourishes of polemical diatribes. It seems that humans were victims of religious
sacrifice only during warfare or similar situations (biblical herem) and such sacri-
fices were never associated with sin sacrifices of any kind.
associated with a patron god and described in this chapter were suffi-
ciently simple that even people with no education or special religious
training could master them easily. With the exception of situations in
which a king believed it necessary to impose an intolerant henotheism
(a very rare situation, and always an unsuccessful or short-lived policy),
there was no need to police the religious beliefs or practices of the
general population. As long as each person, family, or clan paid its taxes
in the form of ritual offerings to the patron god, any other religious
activities would not interfere with the divine-patronage doctrine. In a
later chapter of this book, a few additional aspects of the patron-god
religion will be discussed, and we will explore some of the religious
options available to the population below the level of royal religious
propaganda.

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Boyer, Pascal, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
(New York: Basic, 2001).
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Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 205; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
Cross, Frank Moore, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the
Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).
Davies, Philip R., Whose Bible Is It Anyway? (JSOTSup, 204; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1995).
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Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
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Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994).
Noll, K. L., ‘Canaanite Religion’, RC 1 (2007), pp. 61–92.
Pardee, Dennis, Rituals and Cult at Ugarit (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002).
Parker, Simon B. (ed.), Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).
Porter, Barbara Nevling (ed.), One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient
World (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2000).
—What is a God? Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in
Ancient Mesopotamia (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009).
Pyysiäinen, Ilkka, Supernatural Agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Smith, Mark S., The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient
Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2nd edn, 2002).
Smith, Morton, ‘The Common Theology of the Ancient Near East’, JBL 71 (1952),
pp. 135–47.
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History and Cognition (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004).
Zevit, Ziony, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches
(London: Continuum, 2001).
Chapter 7
The Transitional Decades
Introduction
Three of the most memorable figures in the Bible are Saul, David, and
Solomon, the famous ‘first kings’ of biblical Israel. Their stories are told
in 1–2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1–11. A very different version of the story
appears in 1 Chronicles 10–29 and 2 Chronicles 1–9.
According to the narrative of Samuel–Kings, Saul was appointed king
of Israel by the prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 10.1). The story asserts that King
Saul engaged in almost constant battle, usually against the Philistines,
who controlled the Coastal Plain and the Jezreel Valley (1 Samuel 9–31).
Intertwined with Saul’s story is the narrative about David, who was a
warrior in Saul’s army but fell out of favor with the king (1 Samuel 16 to 1
Kings 2). David escaped to the Judean hills, gathered a band of outlaws who
became his personal army, and eventually joined forces with the Philistines
(1 Samuel 19–27). When Saul died in battle against the Philistines, so the
story goes, David became king of Judah (2 Sam. 2.1–4), and eventually
king of Israel (2 Sam. 5.1–5). After 40 years as king, and in response to a
palace intrigue, David appointed his son Solomon to be king (1 Kings 1–2).
Many historians depend on these biblical narratives to paint a portrait
of Palestine’s tenth century (the 900s) bce. Usually, these historians
interpret the passage in 2 Samuel 5 as a key political event of that
century. According to this hypothesis, the Cisjordan Highlands north
of Jerusalem were not politically affiliated with the Judean hills south
of Jerusalem. Saul ruled the northern sector and David gained his first
center of power in the south. After David became king of both Judah
and Israel (2 Sam. 5.1–3), he conquered a previously non-Israelite city
that lay on the border between Israel and Judah (2 Sam. 5.6–10). This
was the city of Jerusalem, which became the capital of this new political
entity, the so-called United Monarchy. The term United Monarchy never
occurs in the Bible, but it is common in contemporary scholarship.
Almost all researchers of the twentieth century and many in the

twenty-first century treat the existence of a tenth-century bce United
Monarchy as a self-evident reality. It is usually believed that this
kingdom survived roughly 70 to 80 years before collapsing into two
rival kingdoms during the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam (1 Kings
12). Because the biblical narratives are inconsistent, scholarship is not
able to decide how much land the United Monarchy governed, but most
researchers who accept the hypothesis assume that David and Solomon
enjoyed direct rule over the region ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’ (an
occasional biblical cliché; see, for example, 2 Sam. 3.10 and 17.11).
Some researchers also believe that the United Monarchy governed, by
means of vassal kings who paid tribute to Jerusalem, much of Canaan
between the Euphrates and the Sinai Peninsula (based on 1 Kgs 5.1,
which is 4.21 in some English versions).
Is this hypothesis about a vast United Monarchy plausible? Are these
narratives as useful for a study of the tenth century as supporters of
this hypothesis suggest? Not everyone thinks so. In fact, one of today’s
most prominent Israeli archaeologists asserts that archaeology, and not
the Bible, constitutes the sole source of information about this century
of ancient Palestine’s past.1 At first glance, his conclusion might seem
radical, but it is worthwhile to survey how and why such a judgment
might be deemed reasonable.
The theme of this book is the question how do we know what we
think we know? In this chapter, that question is applied to the debate
surrounding the tenth century bce. First, some of the most relevant
aspects of the biblical text will be reviewed to see what, if anything,
the Bible can offer a historian. Second, the archaeological case in favor
of a United Monarchy will be presented. Third, this hypothesis will be
evaluated and its weaknesses enumerated. The next two sections will
discuss the debate over so-called High and Low Chronologies, as well
as the introduction of a newer Middle Chronology. Last, this chapter
will draw some conclusions about the transition from the Iron Age I
(previous chapter) to the Iron Age II (next chapter), the era that this
book calls the Transitional Decades (950–900 bce).
1 I. Finkelstein, ‘Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible’, in B. B.

Schmidt (ed.), The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the
History of Early Israel (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), pp. 9–20
(17).
7. The Transitional Decades 217
Figure 27. The hills of Judah near Jerusalem would have been, according to a
popular hypothesis, the political and military center of an all-Canaan empire
during the Transitional Decades (950–900 BCE)
The Bible and the Tenth Century bce (the 900s bce)
Obviously, the Bible does not speak of the ‘tenth century bce’, because
that is a modern way of dividing the past into manageable units. If one
accepts the biblical chronology, King David was active in the eleventh
century (c. 1060–1020). After cross-referencing the biblical chronology
with ancient Mesopotamian records, all historians adjust the dates for
David’s activity down to the tenth century. Thus, David’s dates are
usually listed in history books as 1000 to 960 or so, and Solomon is
given dates between 960 and 920 bce. This reflects the biblical cliché
of 40-year reigns for each (2 Sam. 5.5 and 1 Kgs 11.42), which sounds
suspiciously artificial. The two may have been active for less than 80
years. Nevertheless, if David and Solomon were real people, they lived
in the tenth century. That is why researchers who treat the books of
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles as relatively reliable accounts do so by
reading the literature against the background of tenth-century archaeo-
logical data.
When injecting biblical texts into a discussion of the tenth century,
almost all scholars acknowledge two foundational principles of research.
First, it is not unreasonable to suggest that a few portions of Samuel,

Kings, and Chronicles might derive from sources dating to the tenth
century. However, even if a document was first composed in the tenth
century, every biblical text was completed by scribes who lived many
centuries later, and unequivocal evidence demonstrates that revisions
to the texts have been made during the intervening centuries. For that
reason, it is unreasonable to suggest that every biblical narrative about
Saul, David, and Solomon is a reliable account of a tenth-century event.
Second, if a researcher wishes to view a biblical datum (a verse or
half-verse, a paragraph, a poem, a chapter) as one that contains reliable
information about the tenth century, it is the researcher’s obligation to
make a case for this. The burden of proof rests with the one who wants
to trace the text to such an early date, and no one is obligated to believe
that any portion of the Bible provides information about the tenth
century in the absence of evidence and sound reasoning.
A handful of biblical texts are viewed as potentially tenth-century
fragments by a substantial number of scholars, though no biblical text
enjoys unanimity of opinion. Usually, the best case for an early text
is based on comparison of that text to Iron Age literature known to us
from archaeological recovery. In particular, portions of the Bible that
seem to derive from a royal bureaucracy receive considerable attention
from historians, because most of the literate people in the Iron Age were
connected to a state bureaucracy in one manner or another. For example,
some researchers conjecture that royal archives were the source for
biblical lists of royal administrators, royal tax revenues, and royal
policies. (The most commonly discussed texts include 2 Sam. 8.16–18;
20.23–6; 1 Kgs 4.2–19; 9.26–8; 10.11–12, 28–9.) Also, texts that might
have been copied from a royal inscription or a royal chronicle, such
as battle reports or notices about fortification projects, raise hopes that
one has encountered a text from the tenth century. (Among the most
commonly discussed are 2 Sam. 8.1–14; 10.6–19; 12.26–31; 1 Kgs
9.15–19; 2 Chron. 11.5–12.) Sometimes scholars focus on bits of poetry
because these might derive from ancient, now lost, documents such as
the enigmatic Book of Jashar. (This ancient document is mentioned in 2
Sam. 1.18; some manuscripts of 1 Kgs 8.12–13 and Josh. 10.12–13 also
mention it, but other manuscripts of these passages do not.)
Nevertheless, a majority of researchers would agree that, given the
predominantly illiterate society of the Iron Age, most of the sources
available to the scribes who wrote Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles were
not written documents, but oral traditions. They were likely to have
been folk memories about prominent families in Iron Age Cisjordan
(such as the families of Saul and David).2 Oral traditions of this kind
were rarely transmitted in a fixed form and can be highly unreliable.
Comparison of these stories to traditional tales in cultures around the
world can be enlightening. One researcher has compared 1–2 Samuel
to a great variety of folklore and has concluded that every significant
segment of the book relies upon a common stock of basic storytelling
motifs.3 This does not mean that the narratives have no factual basis,
but it demonstrates that these stories have been shaped with the artistic
needs of the storyteller in mind, so that any reliable details survived
only when those details supported the narrative art and not because the
transmitters of the stories possessed a keen interest in the past.
The folklore that stands behind a book such as 1–2 Samuel betrays
evidence that some of its memories derive from very early times.4 For
example, the story presumes that the primary city of Philistia is Gath.
In the story, only Gath has a ‘king’ and the other Philistine cities have
rulers of lesser rank, such as ‘princes’ or ‘officials’ (1 Sam. 21.11 [21.10
in some English versions]; 27.2; 29.3–4, 9). This is interesting because,
from ancient archaeological data, it is clear that Gath was one of the two
largest and most significant Philistine cities in the tenth century (along
with Ashdod), but it was destroyed in the latter half of the ninth century.
Although it was rebuilt, it was smaller and played only a minor role
in subsequent political and military events. Apparently, folk memory
remembered the significant status of Gath in spite of its later diminished
status (though this folk memory forgot about Ashdod’s prominence).
Other aspects of the folklore possess a similar authenticity. For example,
2 K. L. Noll, The Faces of David (JSOTSup, 242; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic

Press, 1997), pp. 40–1. For background, see P. G. Kirkpatrick, The Old Testament
and Folklore Studies (JSOTSup, 62; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988); S. Niditch,
Folklore and the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
3 H. Jason, ‘King David: A Folklore Analysis of His Biography’, in M. Heltzer and
M. Malul (eds), Teshûrōt LaAvishur: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near
East, in Hebrew and Semitic Languages (Festschrift Yitzhak Avishur) (Tel Aviv:
Archaeological Centre Publications, 2004), pp. 87*–106*.
4 The examples in this paragraph derive from N. Na’aman, ‘In Search of Reality
behind the Account of David’s Wars with Israel’s Neighbors’, IEJ 52 (2002),
pp. 200–24; idem, ‘David’s Sojourn in Keilah in Light of the Armana Letters’,
VT 60 (2010), pp. 87–97.
David is described as an outlaw with his own personal army, who

offers to ‘protect’ local communities (for example, 1 Sam. 22.2; 23.1–5;
25.2–8). This depiction of David as a renegade patron, a kind of mobster
who operates outside the established patronage structure of the region’s
royal cities, echoes a similar situation known from the Late Bronze-era
Amarna letters, when bands called ‘apiru were able, from time to time,
to ‘protect’ communities in a similar manner. If the story of David is a
fiction, it is at least a realistic fiction.
Nevertheless, the folklore preserved in books like Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles has ignored or, more likely, forgotten significant details of
the period it claims to describe. For example, archaeological research
demonstrates that the Philistine city of Ekron in the Shephelah suffered
military devastation in the middle decades of the tenth century, exactly
when many researchers believe David would have been fighting the
Philistines.5 But the biblical narratives make no mention of an attack
on Ekron or the city’s unfortunate fate.6 It is impossible to know why
the memory of this event was not preserved in the folk literature, but its
omission (like the omission of Ashdod’s prominence) warns the reader
5 Na’aman, ‘In Search of Reality’, p. 216. Na’aman illustrates how uncertain our
knowledge of the ancient past can be. In one recent publication, he attributes
the destruction of Tel Miqne-Ekron IV to the Philistine army from Tel es-Safi
(Gath) and in another he attributes this destruction to the pre-Omride emerging
state of Israel from the region of Shechem or Tirzah. Compare Na’aman, ‘When
and How Did Jerusalem Become a Great City? The Rise of Jerusalem as Judah’s
Premier City in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries B.C.E.’, BASOR 347 (2007),
pp. 21–56 (26–7), with idem, ‘The Northern Kingdom in the Late Tenth-Ninth
Centuries BCE’, in H. G. M. Williamson (ed.), Understanding the History of
Ancient Israel (PBA, 143; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 399–418
(404). Miqne-Ekron IV is the last Iron Age I stratum at the site and, according to
either the Middle or Low Chronology, was destroyed about the early to middle
of the tenth century, not earlier as once was thought.
6 The story of Samuel’s miraculous battle against the Philistines takes place near
Mizpah and does not involve Ekron. Rather, Ekron and Gath are described as
Israelite cities that were held by the Philistines temporarily (1 Sam. 7.14). Except
Joshua 15’s fanciful description, no other biblical text suggests that Ekron was
Israelite, so the detail in 1 Sam. 7.14, like the entire story, appears to come from
a storyteller who knew nothing of the Iron Age I or early Iron Age II. (The
Masoretic text of Judg. 1.18 gives Ekron to Judah, but one should read with the
superior Vorlage to the Old Greek, ‘did not dispossess’.)
not to expect a reliable account of even the region’s most significant

events.
Some researchers dispute the suggestion that the scribes were dependent
on unreliable oral sources or that they preferred the storyteller’s art to
reliable reports about the past. A handful continue to insist, as did many
scholars in the twentieth century, that books such as Samuel derive from
eyewitness reports shortly after the events took place.7 However, this kind
of hypothesis is difficult to sustain in light of the evidence to be discussed
in this chapter. As a result, a more common hypothesis among defenders of
biblical reliability is that the tales about Saul, David, and Solomon can be
trusted because they are works of political or religious-political propaganda.
According to the propaganda hypothesis, the narrative of 1–2 Samuel
defends David’s reputation against various accusations. The story tries
to convince its reader that David did not commit treason by joining the
Philistine army and did not take part in the killing of King Saul, or the
murder of Saul’s heir, or the murder of Saul’s general, or a variety of
other unsavory events. Since the story consistently exonerates David
from wrongdoing in these matters, these researchers have suggested that
the story (or, more likely, an older document from which this story has
been constructed) presupposes that its original ancient readership knew
about these matters and strongly suspected David’s guilt. If this propa-
ganda hypothesis is correct, the narrative’s details provide a reliable
witness to actual crimes of treason and murder committed by David,
crimes that the propaganda tries to whitewash. As one supporter of the
propaganda hypothesis cleverly summarized it, the biblical narrative
about David can be trusted because it is ‘nothing but lies’.8
7 A recent example is J. Vermeylen, ‘La révolte d’Absalom comme événement

historique’, in A. G. Auld and E. Eynikel (eds), For and Against David: Story and
History in the Books of Samuel (BETL, 232; Leuven: Peeters, 2010), pp. 327–45.
8 B. Halpern, ‘Text and Artifact: Two Monologues?’ in N. A. Silberman and D.
B. Small (eds.), The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting
the Present (JSOTSup, 237; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp.
311–41 (330). The propaganda hypothesis is widespread, but these two volumes
are representative: S. L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), and B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah,
Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). Other researchers
view the tales as socioreligious propaganda that defends one Jewish faction or
sect against another. Examples are legion. See, for example, J. Van Seters, The
Biblical Saga of King David (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009).
In any case, whether one views the scribes as creative storytellers

working with a variety of unreliable oral tales or as political propagan-
dists spinning real events to produce reliable falsehoods, the historian
today is advised to approach the biblical tales with caution. A prominent
Israeli archaeologist summarized the biblical evidence succinctly by
saying that ‘much of the biblical narrative concerning David and
Solomon can be read as mere fiction and embellishment written by later
authors’.9 This is true regardless of which motivations (artistic story-
telling or political propaganda) we attribute to these ancient authors.
After all these necessary words of caution have been expressed, it
remains reasonable to ask: what does the Bible say about the tenth
century bce? If one assumes, for the sake of argument, that some
reliable information might be available from Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles, what kind of picture emerges about the reigns of the three
famous ‘first kings’ of ancient Israel? And does the Bible provide any
insights into the larger geopolitical context in which those kings lived?
The biblical portrait is, alas, murky, but a few details emerge clearly.
Apart from colorful folktales, the Bible provides little information
about King Saul. The biblical verse that tries to report the length of
Saul’s reign (1 Sam. 13.1) is corrupt in some ancient manuscripts,
entirely missing from others, so the length of his reign is anyone’s
guess.10 The Bible never outlines the geographic boundaries of Saul’s
kingdom, but if one assumes that Saul’s son inherited the full extent
of Saul’s realm when Saul died, then 2 Sam. 2.8–9 provides a rough
map of his realm (see Figure 28). This text seems to suggest that the
kingdom of Saul was limited to the Cisjordan Highlands, from just north
of Jerusalem to just south of the Jezreel Valley and, perhaps, a portion of
the Jezreel itself (the foothills of Mount Gilboa near Beth-shean, where
Saul is said to have died). This is the region that the Bible frequently
calls the ‘tribes’ of Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh. Saul’s kingdom
also seems to have included a small strip of land along the Jabbok River
(where the Bible locates Mahanaim), and perhaps the westernmost part
of Gilead (where the Bible locates Jabesh-gilead), regions that the Bible
9 A. Mazar, ‘The Search for David and Solomon: An Archaeological Perspective’,

in Schmidt (ed.), Quest for the Historical Israel, pp. 117–39 (138).
10 P. K. McCarter Jr., I Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes and
Commentary (AB, 8; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 222–3.
sometimes claims for the ‘tribe’ of Manasseh as well.11 Various stories

about Saul suggest that he never ruled Judah or the Shephelah (which
is the region from about Gezer to Lachish), but may have enjoyed some
kind of alliance with Judean clans. If 1 Samuel 31 preserves memory
of a real battle, one can conclude that Saul died while attempting to
expand his rule by invading the Jezreel Valley at its eastern edge, near
Beth-shean. The Bible presents Saul’s enemies as the Philistines to the
west and north, the Ammonites to the east, and the Amalekites to the
south.
Tales about King David’s rule are more detailed than those about
Saul, but not entirely coherent. Part of the difficulty is that many biblical
texts crucial to this discussion are ambiguous or bear unequivocal
marks of later revision. For example, several battle reports refer to
an unnamed river (2 Sam. 8.3 and 10.16). Most English translations
designate this river the Euphrates, which is not impossible but certainly
problematic. Without discussing the complex details, suffice it to say
that 10.16 is a clear case of a late cliché (‘beyond the river’) intruding
into a story about a much earlier era, and the region described by 8.3–5
is ambiguous, but arguably not anywhere near the Euphrates. (Compare
the similar battle region with a similar set of enemies in 2 Sam.
10.6–19.)12 Another example of late revision occurs in 2 Samuel 24, in
which David orders his military commander to travel throughout the
kingdom in order to take a census of the people. One section includes a
description of David’s imperial realm (2 Sam. 24.5–8), but this passage
does not exist in the parallel version of the tale found in 1 Chronicles
21. A textual critic recognizes this as a common type of expansionism,
so it is probable that this geographic note is a late fictional addition to
the tale.13 Problems of this type suggest that the story of David is not an
entirely coherent description of Iron Age politics and geography.
According to 1–2 Samuel, David fought nine or ten foreign enemies
11 For the problematic text, see P. K. McCarter, II Samuel: A New Translation with
Introduction, Notes and Commentary (AB, 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1984), pp. 82–3, 87–8. McCarter’s appeal to the Syriac, replacing the anachro-
nistic reference to Assyrians (Ashurites) with Geshurites, is possible. However,
in my view, this scribe intended the portion of the Cisjordan Highlands that, in
his day, held a post-722 bce political status.
12 Contrast the views of N. Na’aman, ‘In Search of Reality’, p. 208, with McCarter,
II Samuel, pp. 272–3.
13 The text was expanded sometime after the version in Chronicles became a
Figure 28. Palestine during the Transitional Decades and early Iron Age II
during his career, and these help us to determine the Bible’s portrayal
of his geographic holdings (see Figure 28). David is said to fight the
Amalekites to the south of Judah, as well as the Philistines to the west,
three kingdoms to the east (Ammon, Moab, Edom), and a coalition
of four or five Aramean kingdoms to the north (Tob, Maacah, Aram
of Damascus, and two kingdoms that were sometimes defined as one:
Beth-rehob and Zobah).
Although the Bible claims victory for David everywhere, most of these
battles are described as raids in which spoils or tribute are gathered but
the enemy’s land is not annexed or occupied. Exceptions are found in
2 Sam. 12.26–31, where David captures the Ammonite city of Rabbah
and ‘all’ other Ammonite cities, as well as 2 Samuel 8, where David is
said to place garrison troops in Edom (8.14) and among the Arameans
of Damascus (8.6). It is interesting to note, however, that these military
occupations are in the least populated and weakest regions among
David’s neighboring kingdoms, such as Ammon and Edom. The large,
strong city of Damascus only seems to be an exception (2 Sam. 8.6). In
reality, this verse does not have David place garrison troops in the city
of Damascus, but only in some land held by Aram of Damascus.14 He
also extracts ‘great amounts of bronze’ from two Aramean cities, but
does not actually travel to or occupy these cities (2 Sam. 8.8). Rather,
the literary context (8.3–8) suggests that bronze from these cities was
sent to David as tribute in light of his victories over Aramean troops in
the field (a not uncommon resolution to conflicts in the ancient world).
In other words, the scribes who penned these stories presuppose that
David did not rule over any Aramean kingdoms, but only raided their
southern border regions.
The Bible also stresses that David’s rule involved a variety of diplo-
matic alliances with neighboring kingdoms (see Figure 28). He is said
to enjoy good relations with King Hiram of Tyre in Phoenicia (2 Sam.
5.11), King Talmai of Geshur near Galilee Lake (2 Sam. 3.3; compare
13.37–38), and King Toi of Hamath far to the north of Zobah (2 Sam.
separate literary stream. McCarter (II Samuel, pp. 509–10) treats the text as
original but fails to offer a sound reason for doing so.
14 So also Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 191–2. In addition, see B. Halpern,
‘The Construction of the Davidic State: An Exercise in Historiography’, in
V. Fritz and P. R. Davies (eds), The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States
(JSOTSup, 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), pp. 44–75.
8.9–10). Each of these kingdoms is located in the heavily populated

and militarily superior regions of Syria and northern Palestine. Biblical
David also had an alliance with an old enemy of Saul named King
Nahash of Ammon (2 Sam. 10.1–2; compare 1 Sam. 11.1–11) before
the alliance was broken by Nahash’s heir to the throne (2 Sam. 10.1–5).
In another text, David seems to open diplomatic relations with a
small city somewhere in western Gilead called Jabesh-gilead (2 Sam.
2.4–7; compare 1 Sam. 31.11–13). These and other details in the story
suggest that the ancient scribes presuppose a complex regional political
environment in which a king of any significance can maintain his status
only through an equally complex set of diplomatic ties.
Taking stock of these details from the stories of King Saul and King
David, the Bible’s picture of the tenth century emerges. Saul and David
are portrayed as minor, regional kings with holdings limited to the
Cisjordan Highlands, whose relationships with realms outside their own
power base restrict their movements and limit their capacity to expand.
Saul’s center appears to be in the region the Bible calls Benjamin, just
north of Jerusalem, and extends northward toward the Jezreel Valley.
David’s regional center is Hebron in Judah, to the south of Jerusalem,
and he is said to have occupied Jerusalem after several years as king (2
Sam. 5.5–10).
A crucial detail that emerges from the biblical narratives is that Saul
and David never controlled any significant city of the tenth century
bce. David never gets near the coastal cities of Dor, Joppa, Ashdod,
Ashkelon, or Gaza, much less Tyre or Sidon; nor does he visit the major
inland cities, such as Dan, Hazor, Megiddo, Beth-shean, Shechem, or
even Gezer. The narratives suggest that Saul tried and failed to occupy
the Jezreel Valley, where a number of large, fortified cities remained
outside his power. By contrast, the Bible does not credit David with any
attempts on the Jezreel or other populated regions. The Bible gives David
Jerusalem, Hebron, and Rabbah, the largest cities of peripheral lands, but
David is not even credited with an attack on Philistine Ekron, as noted
earlier. An obscure note in 2 Sam. 8.1 claims that David received from
the Philistines ‘metheg-ammah’ (perhaps a form of tribute, but probably
a textual corruption for the Hebrew phrase meaning ‘the pasture land’).
By contrast, 1 Chron. 18.1 replaces ‘metheg-ammah’ with a reference to
Gath and its villages. Most researchers suspect the Chronicles version
is a late reinterpretation of a difficult, perhaps corrupt, original text.15

In sum, the Bible suggests that Saul and David were minor kings ruling
small, highland villages, who had no control over the large cities of the
lowlands or coastal regions. The portrait of Solomon, however, muddies
this picture.
The Bible portrays Solomon in contradictory ways, sometimes as an
emperor reigning over a vast realm and at other times as a minor regional
king. Most passages are of the latter type, presenting a Solomon whose
authority is restricted to the Cisjordan Highlands. A few passages assert
that Solomon’s kingdom was huge, far larger than the one attributed to
David, even though the story never tries to explain how Solomon, who
is never portrayed as a warrior, was able to grab vast tracts of additional
real estate.
The humble Solomon who rules a small region is ubiquitous in
the biblical text. A number of biblical passages suggest that Solomon
exerted no imperial control over neighboring kingdoms, not even the
capacity to raid them for spoils as David had been said to do. For
example, Solomon depends on the king of Egypt to conquer the city
of Gezer and to provide that city as a gift to Solomon (1 Kgs 9.16),
and this implies that Solomon did not control the Shephelah, just a few
miles down the valley from Jerusalem (see Figure 28). In 1 Kgs 2.39,
the Philistine city of Gath, which is also just down the valley from
Jerusalem, is mentioned in an offhand way as an independent kingdom.
If Gath was a vassal kingdom under the authority of Jerusalem at the
time of Solomon, nothing in this text indicates Gath’s inferior status.
Likewise, the tale of Solomon clearly assumes that the kingdom of Tyre
is an independent and superior political entity. Biblical Solomon trades
land for prestige items from Tyre’s king (1 Kgs 9.10–14) and plays the
junior partner in some merchant ventures (1 Kgs 9.26–28; 10.11–12).
Likewise 1 Kgs 11.23–25 seems to presuppose that Solomon never
controlled Aram of Damascus; the passage implies that Damascus was
a breakaway from the imperial rule of nearby Zobah (compare 2 Sam.
8.3–8).
The so-called district list attributed to Solomon (1 Kgs 4.7–19)
is difficult to assess.16 This purports to be a list of 12 administrative
15 McCarter, II Samuel, p. 243.

16 For a succinct summary of the issues, see P. S. Ash, ‘Solomon’s? District?
List’, JSOT 67 (1995), pp. 67–86. Somewhat more speculative is N. Na’aman,
districts, each of which is said to have provided supplies for the royal
estate in Jerusalem. If these 12 districts represent the entire realm of
Solomon (and the text certainly implies this), then Solomon reigned
over a region larger than, and yet oddly different from, David’s
kingdom. Solomon is said to have controlled the Jezreel Valley in the
north, which Saul died trying to capture and David never entered. He
controlled the Galilee (biblical Naphtali) to the north of the Jezreel as
well as the border region between the Galilee and the kingdom of Tyre
(biblical Asher). Also, Solomon’s districts extended from the Jezreel
southward to Jerusalem, and included parts of Gilead. Although the
coastal city of Dor is mentioned in Solomon’s district list, it is not
counted as under Solomon’s authority; rather, the biblical text says only
that one administrative district includes the hinterland of Dor (Hebrew
‘all the heights of Dor’, 1 Kgs 4.11; the Hebrew phrase is sometimes
disputed, but no viable alternative interpretation has been generated).
No mention is made of any other coastal city. Likewise, no mention is
made of Judah to the south of Jerusalem, which is puzzling in light of
the fact that David is said to have held Judah as his political and military
base of operations. Perhaps the author of 1 Kgs 4.7–19 assumed that
Judah was exempt from the tax system described in the list, but if this
is the case, the scribe has not clarified the point.
In contrast to these textual suggestions of a relatively limited
kingdom, a few passages assert that Solomon ruled a vast empire. The
most explicit such passage is 1 Kgs 5.1–32 (in some English transla-
tions, this is 1 Kgs 4.21–5.18). Here we are told that Solomon ruled
over ‘all the kingdoms from the River (Euphrates?) to the land of the
Philistines and the boundary of Egypt’ (1 Kgs 5.1 or 4.21). A few verses
later, the scribe seems to shy away from such a grand imperial vision and
instead states that Solomon’s kingdom of ‘Judah and Israel’ extended
only ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’ (1 Kgs 5.5 or 4.25). Probably the
ancient scribe has in mind that the kingdom of Israel-Judah extended
from Dan to Beer-sheba, but the empire of Israel-Judah’s king extended
from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt. This imperial reign is also
implied by the author of 1 Kgs 9.15, in which Solomon is able to fortify
four strategic cities over a wide expanse of land: Hazor, Megiddo,
Gezer, and Jerusalem (see Figure 28). In 1 Kings 11, the king’s sins
‘Solomon’s District List (1 Kgs 4.7–19) and the Assyrian Province System in
Palestine’, UF 33 (2001), pp. 419–36.
have caused Yahweh of Israel to punish Solomon by stripping away

a portion of his empire: Edom breaks away (1 Kgs 11.14–22), which
implies that the author of this passage presupposes 2 Sam. 8.13–14.
From these examples, it can be seen that biblical texts do not agree
with one another about how much land, and specifically which tracts of
land, were ruled by Saul, David, and Solomon. It might be reasonable
to interpret the biblical data as representing a series of sequential
phases, in which the borders of the kingdom gradually grew until they
expanded into a vast empire. But that interpretation goes beyond the
Bible’s literal text. Even if one favors such an approach, it is difficult
to fit every biblical reference about Solomon’s imperial rule into a tidy
chronological sequence; his ‘empire’ shrinks and expands from chapter
to chapter, sometimes from verse to verse.
The survey also reveals the Bible’s portrait of non-Israelite regional
kingdoms (see Figure 28). If the Bible is accepted, for sake of argument,
as relatively accurate, the small kingdoms of Israel and Judah were
hemmed in on every side as they perched atop the Cisjordan Highlands,
south of the Jezreel Valley and terminating just south of Hebron. To the
south of Judah was the ‘city of Amalek’ (1 Sam. 15.5), apparently in
the Beer-sheba valley, though some researchers believe the Bible has in
mind a region farther south. On the west and immediately to the north,
the Bible claims that the Philistines controlled the Coastal Plain from
Gaza to Dor and also the Jezreel Valley from Megiddo to Beth-shean.
To the east, Damascus ruled as far south as Bashan, and the kingdom of
Geshur was located in Bashan just east of Lake Galilee, while Ammon
ruled the region of the Jabbok. Between these realms lay Gilead, which
the Bible seems to view as a hotly disputed territory, perhaps partly
ruled by Israel (Saul) and Israel-Judah (David, Solomon), but partly in
the hands of the Aramean kingdoms of Tob and Jabesh-gilead. To the
southeast, Moab was near the Arnon, and Edom lay farther south. North
of the Jezreel, the Bible knows of several Aramean states. The kingdom
of Maacah was somewhere in the vicinity of, and perhaps included,
Dan. Just north of Dan and west of Mount Hermon lay Beth-rehob,
and just north of Beth-rehob was Zobah. Even farther to the north was
the Syrian city of Hamath. Along the coast, the Bible is aware of the
kingdom of Tyre. The Bible does not, with the exception of the clearly
fictional ‘imperial’ additions to Solomon’s story, envision an Israelite or
Judahite rule over these regional kingdoms by Saul, David, or Solomon.
This survey of the Bible’s tenth-century narratives demonstrates the
Bible’s ambivalence about which regions and cities came under the
influence of David or Solomon, and calls into question the common
scholarly notion of a significantly large United Monarchy. The biblical
cliché ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’ might not indicate the actual
extent of Israelite or Judahite political power. Rather, it might represent
a religious or ethnic ideal that was never or only rarely realized. (Of
course, the cliché might be nothing more than the rhetorical quirkiness
of a single ancient scribe and therefore provide no reliable information
at all. It occurs in the Bible only nine times – in Judg. 20.1; 1 Sam.
3.20; 2 Sam. 3.10; 17.11; 24.2, 15; 1 Kgs 5.5 [English 4.25]; compare
1 Chron. 21.2; 2 Chron. 30.5 – and could have been added by a single
scribe in a single afternoon during, say, the early Greco-Roman era.)
Until recently, many believed that archaeological data supported the
hypothesis of a large United Monarchy, but even when this optimistic
view was dominant, defenders of the hypothesis were compelled
to admit that pottery and buildings from archaeological sites are
not able to provide information about political control, and inscrip-
tions boasting about the imperial authority of a David or a Solomon
are non-existent.17 For that reason, one frequently encounters from
defenders of the hypothesis carefully constructed statements of this
kind: ‘How the lowland sites were integrated into the United Monarchy
of Israel remains a mystery. David did not conquer them. . . . Yet Dor
and the Jezreel fortresses were integrated into Solomon’s kingdom.’18
The viewpoint expressed in this quotation from a respected historian
is designed to fill the gap between the evidence and the historian’s
17 The Tel Dan inscription will be discussed in the next chapter. The kingdoms of
Samaria-Israel and Jerusalem-Judah produced royal inscriptions in the latter half
of the Iron Age II, and very tiny fragments of these have been discovered (for
texts and bibliography, see G. I. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus
and Concordance [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], pp. 65, 69;
F. M. Cross, ‘A Fragment of a Monumental Inscription from the City of David’,
IEJ 51 [2001], pp. 44–7). S. B. Parker calls attention to the curious way in which
1–2 Samuel has been composed: the authors assume that prominent leaders erected
monuments (1 Sam. 15.12; 2 Sam. 8.3, 13; 18.18), but these authors apparently had
no access to any such texts. See Parker, ‘Did the Authors of the Books of Kings
Make Use of Royal Inscriptions?’ VT 50 (2000), pp. 357–78 (361).
18 B. Halpern, ‘The Dawn of an Age: Megiddo in the Iron Age I’, in J. D. Schloen
(ed.), Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 151–63 (159).
assumption about what ought to have been the case. In my view, such
statements are a concession that the United Monarchy is a hypothesis in
desperate need of supporting evidence.
If the United Monarchy is defined as a unification of two tiny
kingdoms restricted to the Cisjordan Highlands south of the Jezreel
Valley and north of the Negev Valley, the term might remain useful to a
historian. Unfortunately, only a few researchers who use the term have
such a restricted geography in mind, and the routine use of the phrase in
the scholarship seems to be both unbiblical and unrealistic. It is time to
turn to the archaeological data. What light can be shed on the question
of tenth-century Palestine from the evidence in the dirt?
The Archaeological Case for a United Monarchy

Although the United Monarchy hypothesis is no longer as dominant as it
once was, many archaeologists believe there was a centralized, regionwide
kingdom in Palestine with its capital at Jerusalem in the Cisjordan
Highlands, which experienced its peak period of political centralization
during the Transitional Decades (950–900 bce). At first glance, this
hypothesis seems unlikely. The Transitional Decades of the tenth century
stand between two eras. On one side, Iron Age I (1150–950 bce) was
a period of decentralized political units, most of which were in the
lowlands. The Cisjordan Highlands, as we saw in the last chapter, were
populated with small, unfortified villages and had no apparent political
hierarchy. On the other side, during the Iron Age II (900–586 bce), the
Cisjordan Highlands became home to small, regional states, as evidenced
by material remains and inscriptions to be discussed in the next chapter.
Any archaeologist faced with these data from the dirt would not, in the
absence of the Bible’s claims about Solomon’s vast empire, go looking for
a regionwide political unification during the Transitional Decades. If the
evidence suggested an absence of such a state, no one would be surprised.
Therefore, a hypothesis advancing this state’s presence is a surprise.
Each defender of the United Monarchy hypothesis presents a unique
case, but the purely archaeological hypothesis for political unification of
Palestine usually rests on three pillars. First, Palestine is thought to have
displayed a marked shift from predominantly rural villages to larger
urban settings in the tenth century bce. Such urbanization could be a

mark of state formation and is the best argument in favor of a hypothesis
for a United Monarchy.19 Second, there is evidence for increased inter-
national trade during the Iron Age II (900–586 bce), and a number of
researchers have argued that this trade traveled through Canaan as early
as the tenth century bce.20 Third, building complexes, including formi-
dable fortifications with elaborate city gateways, have been found in
three of the four places mentioned in 1 Kgs 9.15: Hazor, Megiddo, and
Gezer (see Figures 28 and 29). It was believed that these fortifications
were built by King Solomon.21
Each of these three pillars is essential to the thesis that the tenth
century was home to a regionwide kingdom ruled by David and
Solomon. The first pillar, the shift from rural to urban settings, should
not be overstated, since almost all people in this predominantly agricul-
tural society remained tied to the land. Even most of those who lived
within the walls of a city walked to the fields each day to earn their
living. Nevertheless, the growth of a dozen or so urban centers was part
of a general increase in population, and any growth in population places
pressure on structures of leadership, which can, in turn, compel more
hierarchical political systems. By the early Iron Age II, Palestine was
home to more than 100,000 people, a considerable increase over the
population of the Late Bronze and early Iron Age I. If this population
surge began in the Transitional Decades (950–900 bce), it might
support the hypothesis of a United Monarchy.
19 Using the High Chronology, the urbanization hypothesis is relevant to the tenth
century; the argument is more difficult, though not entirely impossible, with
the Middle or Low Chronologies. For the urbanization thesis using the High
Chronology, see W. G. Dever, ‘Archaeology and the “Age of Solomon”: A
Case Study in Archaeology and Historiography’, in L. K. Handy (ed.), The Age
of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium (Leiden: Brill, 1997),
pp. 217–51.
20 For example, J. S. Holladay, ‘The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Political and
Economic Centralization in the Iron IIA–B (c. 1000–750)’, in T. E. Levy (ed.),
The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (Leicester: Leicester University
Press, 1998), pp. 368–98 (383–6).
21 In a significantly modified form, this thesis remains with us today. For example,
A. Mazar, ‘The Spade and the Text: The Interaction between Archaeology
and Israelite History Relating to the Tenth-Ninth Centuries BCE’, in
H. G. M. Williamson (ed.), Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (PBA,
143; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 143–71.
Closely associated with increased population and urbanization is

an economy that is able to feed the additional mouths, which is why
the second pillar is essential to the hypothesis. Subsistence agriculture
cannot sustain a large political state because very little surplus is
produced. If all of Palestine had come under a central authority in
the tenth century, an imperial family, together with its bureaucracy,
priesthood, and army, would need to be fed, and these people would not
be agricultural producers. The kings of the ancient world controlled the
economies over which they presided, taxing the agricultural income.
Even this would not, however, suffice to enable a state bureaucracy to
sustain itself, for imperial control of Palestine requires an enormous
investment of human resources. The king of a hypothetical United
Monarchy would need to tax a revenue source from outside his own
domain. In other words, there would have to have been an international
network of trade in the tenth century and a Palestinian king intimately
involved in that trade.
During the Iron Age II (900–586 bce), there is evidence that Palestine
was the hub for a brisk trade in goods from the south.22 Spices, such as
myrrh, and incense, such as frankincense, came from the lands that
the Bible calls Sheba (western Yemen) and Ophir (perhaps Somalia).
Rare goods, such as gemstones, gold, ivory, ebony, and exotic animals,
moved from Africa and the Arabian Sea into the land of Sheba, then
north through the region the Bible calls Midian (northwestern Saudi
Arabia) and into Palestine, where they were distributed toward Egypt,
Phoenicia, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. These exotic goods begin to
appear as early as the ninth century in Neo-Assyrian written records,
and the archaeology of eighth- and seventh-century Palestine shows
clearly that the trade was peaking at that time. Also, as will be discussed
below, the Iron Age I (1150–950 bce) had seen the emergence of a
copper industry from the Negev moving northward into Palestine. This
trade also peaked in the ninth century bce, the early Iron Age II.
It is not impossible that all this trade has its beginnings in the
Transitional Decades (950–900 bce), but it is not clearly attested in
22 I. Finkelstein, ‘The Archaeology of the Days of Manasseh’, in M. D. Coogan,

J. C. Exum, and L. E. Stager (eds), Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the
Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox, 1994), pp. 169–87 (179); see also K. A. Kitchen, ‘Sheba and Arabia’,
in Handy (ed.), Age of Solomon, pp. 126–53 (134–5).
the data. For example, the archaeological excavations in the region

that the Bible calls Ezion-geber (1 Kgs 9.26) reveal that trade through
this region began no earlier than the late eighth century, long after
Solomon’s time. Nevertheless, if this hypothesis of early trade networks
is adopted as a tentative possibility, biblical references to an alliance
between Solomon and the king of Tyre, as well as the folktale about the
visit from the queen of Sheba, can be viewed as having preserved a faint
memory of a trade relationship in which Solomon provided shipping,
military escort, and protection for the trade routes (1 Kgs 9.26–10.13).
The final pillar of this hypothesis is essential, for it points toward
Jerusalem by appealing to a biblical text (1 Kgs 9.15). Without
reference to the biblical tale of a kingdom ruled by David and Solomon,
the pattern of increased urbanization and trade could be (and probably
should be) attributed to a political center other than Jerusalem (which
is in the highlands, removed from major population centers and trade
routes). A more reasonable hypothesis would locate the political center
of any tenth-century regional kingdom in the lowlands, in a city such as
Ashdod, Gath, Gezer, Megiddo, Beth-shean, or Hazor.
Archaeological investigation reveals that a massive city gate was
built at each of three Iron Age cities: Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer (see
Figure 29. Excavation of the city gates at Megiddo, in the Jezreel Valley
Figures 29 and 31). The gates are very impressive. With six guardroom
chambers and a well-defined public space in the center, each gate
protected its city and provided a town center where merchants could
display their goods and city elders could meet to settle legal disputes.
Many archaeologists believed that the gate structures at Hazor,
Megiddo, and Gezer were designed according to a single architectural
plan, implying a single builder, a king who presided over a centralized
state. Because the Bible describes King Solomon as the first great
builder of his era (in contrast to his predecessors David, Saul, and the
biblical ‘judges’), researchers logically assumed that the earliest stage of
Iron Age constructions at many archaeological sites could be assigned
to Solomon. In particular, the three massive gates seemed to harmonize
perfectly with 1 Kgs 9.15. Because these cities will be discussed from
time to time throughout the remainder of this chapter, I recommend that
you consult Figure 30, which associates these three gates (indicated
by [G]) with Hazor stratum X, Megiddo stratum VA–IVB, and Gezer
stratum VIII.
From the city gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, two additional
logical inferences were made. First, each city stratum with which these
massive gates were associated produced a particular style of serving
bowls for daily meals. This type of bowl was decorated with a deep
red (sometimes red-brown or orange) slip and was hand-burnished by
the potter so that the bowl would have a lustrous sheen. By logical
inference, these red-slipped, hand-burnished vessels were assigned to
the tenth century, so that wherever they were found, a tenth-century
settlement was believed to have been discovered (see Figure 30).23 One
such site was the earliest Iron Age stratum at a Negev location called
Arad (stratum XII). The correlation of this settlement in the Negev with
the three cities with massive city gates is based on their pottery.
The second additional logical inference involved correlation of
another biblical text with a secure tenth-century datum. The Bible asserts
23 In the common version of the United Monarchy hypothesis, it was assumed that
the red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery went out of use prior to the ninth century
and perhaps as early as the 920s bce, just after Sheshonq’s raid. For discussion of
this assumption, see Z. Herzog and L. Singer-Avitz, ‘Redefining the Centre: The
Emergence of State in Judah’, Tel Aviv 31 (2004), pp. 209–44 (209–10). For a
helpful discussion of this pottery, see O. Zimhoni, Studies in the Iron Age Pottery
of Israel: Typological, Archaeological and Chronological Aspects (Tel Aviv: Tel
Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, 1997), pp. 169–72.
Figure 30. Sample excavations
that an Egyptian king named Shishak ‘came up against Jerusalem’

several years after Solomon died (1 Kgs 14.25–6). Coincidentally,
the founding ruler of Egypt’s Twenty-second Dynasty was Sheshonq
(sometimes spelled Shoshenq), a name that is linguistically related to
biblical Shishak. Although the precise dates for this king are not certain,
he is usually assigned a reign from about the 940s to the 920s bce,
which would make him a contemporary of the Bible’s King Solomon
according to the conventional dates assigned to Solomon.24
At the end of his reign, perhaps a year or so before he died, Pharaoh
Sheshonq claims to have subdued Palestine, and his partially completed
memorial inscription carved on the wall of a temple at Karnak in
Egypt provides some limited information about this event. Although
the inscription does not mention Jerusalem, it lists about 180 places in
Palestine.25 One of the places that Sheshonq claims to have subdued
was ‘great Arad’ in the Negev Valley, where, as we have just noted, the
earliest Iron Age stratum produced red-slipped, hand-burnished ware
(see Figure 30). Thus, by logical inference, archaeologists concluded
that Solomon’s great kingdom was dismantled by Sheshonq in the 920s
bce and all the wealth described in 1 Kings 1–11 disappeared to Egypt
24 A. J. Shortland, ‘Shishak, King of Egypt’, in T. E. Levy and T. Higham

(eds), The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating: Archaeology, Text and Science
(London: Equinox, 2005), pp. 43–54. A. Fantalkin and I. Finkelstein suggest that
Shortland’s treatment of the data is not sufficiently cautious; see Fantalkin and
Finkelstein, ‘The Sheshonq I Campaign and the 8th-Century-BCE Earthquake:
More on the Archaeology and History of the South in the Iron I–IIA’, Tel Aviv 33
(2006), pp. 18–42 (21).
25 The absence of Jerusalem from Sheshonq’s list has stirred debate. Because a
portion of the inscription is damaged, some suggest that Jerusalem had been
mentioned in the damaged section. Although this is possible, it is not probable.
The section of the inscription dealing with the Cisjordan Highlands is not
very damaged, and no location in the Shephelah or the Judean hills appears in
Sheshonq’s list.
when Sheshonq ‘came up against Jerusalem’, which is why no archaeo-

logical excavation has recovered a hint of that wealth.
These three interlocking inferences were thought to provide a solid
foundation for tenth-century archaeological evaluation; in the view of a
significant number of researchers, these arguments remain convincing,
although the hypothesis is frequently modified somewhat in light of
considerations to be discussed momentarily. Defenders of the thesis
conclude that King Solomon ruled the region from Hazor and Megiddo
in the north to Gezer and Jerusalem in the south, as implied by 1 Kgs
9.15. (Usually, it is assumed that he also ruled north to Dan and south
to the Negev Valley – ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’ – even though
the Bible does not credit Solomon with the construction of fortifica-
tions at these cities.) Red-slipped, hand-burnished vessels continue to
be identified as the common pottery of the tenth century, and destruc-
tions thought to be wrought by Pharaoh Sheshonq I, founder of the
Twenty-second Egyptian Dynasty, are interpreted as the final collapse
of this United Monarchy. There were difficulties with this hypothesis,
and dissenting voices could be heard from the start. Nevertheless, this
paradigm has guided most publications dealing with tenth-century
archaeology until very recently. Beginning in the 1990s, and increas-
ingly in the twenty-first century, this thesis has become a target of
criticism.
The Case Against the United Monarchy Hypothesis

Even if one accepts the arguments in favor of a United Monarchy
roughly as they have been presented above, there is no compelling
reason to accept this thesis, because the three pillars upon which it rests
do not add up to a United Monarchy ruled by David and Solomon.
Consider the following objections to this thesis.
First, this hypothesis fails to consider the peripheral nature of
the United Monarchy’s alleged center, Jerusalem and Judah.26 The
26 This objection was formulated by T. L. Thompson and has been reiterated by

many others, too numerous to list. See Thompson, Early History of the Israelite
People from the Written and Archaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp.
288–92. Thompson argued that Judah’s gradual Iron Age occupation was largely
controlled by outside forces. Jerusalem, suggested Thompson, emerged as a
player in the politics of the region only in the seventh century bce.
highlands of Judah, between Jerusalem and Hebron, were home to

about two or three dozen villages and perhaps 8,500 people, or fewer.27
Even when the population of Judah is combined with the population of
Jerusalem, the total represented no more than 10 percent of Palestine’s
tenth-century population. Significant population increase took place
in Judah only in the eighth and seventh centuries bce, not the tenth.
Jerusalem and its hinterland would have had difficulty mustering armies
capable of permanently ruling far-reaching conquests. An army need
not be as numerous as the people it conquers, but an army too small
cannot conquer; at best, it can raid, plunder, and flee. In this respect, the
Bible’s portrait of a David who engages in small-scale warfare, usually
taking place in regions even less populated than Judah, is more realistic
than the modern United Monarchy hypothesis in its usual form.
If Judah was, as the Bible suggests, David’s center of power, it was a
weak and peripheral imperial center, lacking monumental architecture
or any suggestion of a social hierarchy, and also lacking any visible sign
of a trade network. Hebron, biblical David’s first capital city (2 Sam.
5.5), had been a large, fortified city ages ago, during portions of the
Early and Middle Bronze Ages, but it was unoccupied during the Late
Bronze and Iron Age I, and might have been home to a small village
of no more than a few hundred, probably fewer, by the tenth century.28
Not only was Judah incapable of mustering a significant army, but it
was dependent upon subsistence agriculture, so it was incapable of
feeding a large army even if a king of Hebron or Jerusalem recruited
mercenaries from outside the region. Moreover, the red-slipped, hand-
burnished pottery was produced in small, local workshops and differs
significantly from the mass-produced, wheel-burnished varieties that
emerged in the eighth century bce. There is nothing in the pottery or
its associated material culture to suggest that Judah was involved in a
healthy interregional trade at this early date.
To be sure, not every advocate of the United Monarchy fails to
acknowledge that, from an archaeological perspective, the Canaanite
cities of the Coastal Plain and valleys remained a dominant population
and, for the most part, were unaffected by the material culture found
27 Mazar objects to estimates below 10,000 and suggests a number as high as

20,000, but his estimate is a wildly optimistic interpretation of the same data
others have interpreted. See Mazar, ‘Spade and the Text’, pp. 154–5.
28 Herzog and Singer-Avitz, ‘Redefining the Centre’, pp. 219–20.
in the Cisjordan Highlands. These researchers usually affirm that the

Phoenicians, Philistines, and other Canaanites remained independent of
David and Solomon, but they often suggest that the Phoenicians were
allied with the United Monarchy and the Philistine-Canaanite popula-
tions were confined by David’s military prowess. This is a dubious
hypothesis because it seems to go well beyond the most optimistic
interpretation of the data, both biblical and archaeological.
Recall that biblical texts are inconsistent about whether David and
Solomon had diplomatic ties to the outside world and, if so, what nature
these ties took. For example, these kings are said to enter alliances with
faraway Tyre (2 Sam. 5.11; 1 Kgs 5.15 [5.1 in some English versions]).
Yet David never enters Gezer, just down the valley from Jerusalem (2
Sam. 5.25), and Solomon awaits possession of Gezer until an Egyptian
monarch conquers the city and gives it to his daughter, Solomon’s
bride (1 Kgs 9.16). In the suspiciously ‘imperial’ notice at 1 Kgs 9.15,
Solomon is able to fortify Gezer and two faraway cities, Megiddo
and Hazor. But the verses that follow 9.15 offer a sober and realistic
(not necessarily accurate, but certainly sober and realistic) portrait of
Solomon (1 Kgs 9.16–19). Here, Solomon fortified Gezer and several
locations that were in, or quite near the borders of, the highlands of
Judah.29 In short, if one ignores the tiny number of sensationalistic, and
probably fictional, glosses in the Bible (such as 1 Kgs 9.15), not even
the Bible favors the modern United Monarchy hypothesis in the form
that is usually defended.
A second objection to the United Monarchy hypothesis takes aim at
the twin pillars of increased urbanization and the beginnings of interna-
tional trade in the tenth century bce. These are the stronger two of the
three pillars upon which the United Monarchy rests. In the absence of
these two arguments for population growth and economic development,
29 First Kings 9.17–19 has suffered textual corruption, and some of its difficulties
might be beyond our capacity to correct. Gezer and Beth-horon present no
textual difficulties. The city of Baalath (‘Lady’ – a title for a goddess) is lacking
in Greek manuscripts. Some manuscripts read Tadmor for Tamar, which is
certainly an error (compare 2 Chron. 8.4); but if Tamar is ‘Ein Hazevah (which
seems probable) then it was not a tenth-century site, so its appearance in the list
is anachronistic. The Masoretic Text reads ‘Lebanon’ and this word is lacking in
Greek manuscripts. Many researchers interpret ‘Lebanon’ as a scribe’s error for
‘Libnah’ (possibly Tel Zayit).
the hypothesis would be a non-starter. However, these two pillars

cannot withstand the weight they are designed to bear.
Increased urbanism is a prerequisite to a unified state in many situa-
tions, but a unified state is not the inevitable result of urbanization. For
example, all researchers (and the Bible!) agree that Palestine in the Iron
Age II (900–586 bce) was an urban society in which small, regional
political units competed with one another. In other words, even if this
process of population growth and shift toward larger cities began as
early as the tenth century, nothing in the archaeological record suggests
that it brought with it a political unification of the region.
We have noted already that any process of urbanization as early as
the tenth century certainly bypassed the Judean highlands, but it is not
even certain that Jerusalem was an urban center at this early date.30
Excavation in Jerusalem is difficult because the city has remained
inhabited from ancient times to the present day. Later generations often
took the stones of earlier structures to use in new buildings, and this
wreaks havoc on attempts to sort out the city’s stratigraphy. Also, the
medieval Muslim holy sites (the Haram esh-Sharif) stand atop the real
estate that had been, according to all available evidence, the location of
the temple and royal palace during Iron Age II (900–586 bce), if not
during the tenth century.
Despite the difficulties, sustained archaeological research in Jerusalem
and its environs suggests that the tenth century saw a small, unfortified
or underfortified city on the eastern hilltop. Optimistically, one can
estimate the tenth-century population at about 1,000 people. In contrast
to Jerusalem’s apparently modest size, the two leading Philistine cities
30 The publications on Jerusalem are legion. For discussion and bibliography,

see M. Steiner, ‘The Archaeology of Ancient Jerusalem’, CR:BS 6 (1998), pp.
143–68; idem, ‘Propaganda in Jerusalem: State Formation in Iron Age Judah’,
in L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIA
(c. 1250–850 B.C.E.), Vol. 1, The Archaeology (LHB/OTS, 491; New York:
T&T Clark International, 2008), pp. 193–202; T. L. Thompson (ed.), with
S. K. Jayyusi, Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition (London: T&T
Clark, 2003); A. G. Vaughn and A. E. Killebrew (eds), Jerusalem in Bible and
Archaeology: The First Temple Period (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2008); I. Finkelstein et al., ‘Has King David’s Palace in Jerusalem Been Found?’
Tel Aviv 34 (2007), pp. 142–64; D. Ussishkin, ‘The Temple Mount in Jerusalem
during the First Temple Period: An Archaeologist’s View’, in Schloen (ed.),
Exploring the Longue Durée, pp. 473–83.
of the tenth century, Gath in the Shephelah and Ashdod on the Coastal
Plain, were populated by more than 5,000 people each (perhaps more
than 9,000 in Ashdod). Gezer, also in the Shephelah, appears to have
been home to about 3,000, and even Philistine Ekron, which shrank
during the tenth century, housed about 1,000 people. Recent attempts to
argue for a large, fortified city at Jerusalem in the tenth century generally
tend to reiterate the picture just painted, but using rosier language,
inflated numbers, and speculation unsupported by data. (For example,
some have estimated Jerusalem’s population at 2,000 or more, but this
hypothesis assumes that the city extended from near the Gihon spring,
where most of the evidence has been found, north toward the area that is
now under the Muslim holy sites. It is worth noting that a recent Muslim
renovation in the Haram esh-Sharif produced tons of dirt containing
many Iron Age II potsherds, but nothing from the tenth century.31)
Regardless of whether Jerusalem was an urban center in the tenth
century, the archaeological data indicate clearly that it was not home
to a state bureaucracy. This hypothetical United Monarchy produced
no inscriptions of any kind, not even trace evidence for a literate
bureaucracy to handle day-to-day affairs of the king, the army, and the
tax collectors. In Palestine, a few tenth-century (or, more likely, early
ninth-century) inscriptions have been found. Except for a few such
artifacts from the Jezreel Valley, almost all these inscriptions have been
found in the Shephelah, in or near cities such as Gezer, Ekron, and Gath.
That is why several researchers associate the earliest signs of writing
and literacy in this region not with Israelites or Judahites, but with the
Philistines, or with the influence of Phoenician culture from the north.32
31 Ussishkin, ‘Temple Mount in Jerusalem’, p. 480.

32 N. Na’aman observes that all the allegedly early ‘Hebrew’ inscriptions are really
proto-Canaanite and derive from the lowland – mostly Philistine – satellite
towns, in Na’aman, ‘In Search of the Ancient Name of Khirbet Qeiyafa’, Journal
of Hebrew Scriptures 8 (2010), article 21, available at http://www.arts.ualberta.
ca/JHS/. See also the important observations of A. Lemaire, who views the Gezer
calendar as Philistine in Lemaire, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Millennium
B.C.E. in the Light of the Epigraphic Evidence (Socio-Historical Aspects)’, in
S. E. Fassberg and A. Hurvitz (eds), Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic
Setting (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), pp. 177–96 (184–7). C. A.
Rollston makes a reasonable case for viewing the early Iron Age epigraphs
as examples of Phoenician script, not a proto-Hebrew script as sometimes
suggested, in Rollston, ‘The Phoenician Script of the Tel Zayit Abecedary and
Even if urbanization had occurred in Jerusalem, unequivocal signs of

regional state formation with associated bureaucracy had not.
Likewise, the suggestion that international trade made its way
through tenth-century Palestine under the watchful eye of Jerusalem is
reasonable but remains in dire need of supporting evidence. If any trade
was taking place, the evidence suggests that it was not primarily inter-
national, but rather intraregional, and its core was located on the Coastal
Plain in the Philistine cites, not in highland Jerusalem. The Judean hills
are cut by a series of valleys running from the highlands in the east
down to the Mediterranean coast in the west. Each of these valleys
runs by one of the major cities of the Shephelah: Gezer, Ekron, Gath,
Lachish (see Figure 28). Recent archaeological research suggests that
these valleys were used for trade networks that originated in the coastal
cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza and moved inland, passing and
enriching the Shephelah cities. Highland towns such as Hebron and
Jerusalem represented the end of the trade line, the peripheral outposts
of this system. Although some defenders of a United Monarchy view
Jerusalem as central to, or perhaps even in control of, this trade network,
the evidence suggests the opposite.33
One other aspect of trade in this period is worthy of mention: the
copper trade. Copper was, of course, a highly coveted commodity in
any era. During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce), copper indus-
tries in the southern desert region were controlled by Egypt, as was
trade with Cyprus, which was another source of copper. Much later,
during the early Iron Age II, the copper trade with Cyprus resumed
the Putative Evidence for Israelite Literacy’, in R. E. Tappy and P. K. McCarter

(eds), Literate Culture and Tenth-Century Canaan: The Tel Zayit Abecedary in
Context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), pp. 61–96 (80–1).
33 For example, see R. E. Tappy, ‘East of Ashkelon: The Setting and Settling of the
Judean Lowlands in the Iron Age IIA’, in Schloen (ed.), Exploring the Longue
Durée, pp. 449–63. Compare E. A. Knauf, ‘The Glorious Days of Manasseh’,
in L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Good Kings and Bad Kings (LHB/OTS, 393; London:
T&T Clark International, 2005), pp. 164–88 (165–7). T. L. Thompson posited
an economically driven power struggle in the late tenth century, continuing into
the Iron Age II, and involving the dominant Shephelah cities, the less-dominant
Negev centers, and the peripheral highland towns. See Thompson, Early History
of the Israelite People, pp. 329–34. Thompson’s hypothesis has been reiterated
in slightly modified form by Z. Herzog, ‘Beersheba Valley Archaeology and
Its Implications for the Biblical Record’, in A. Lemaire (ed.), Congress Volume
Leiden 2004 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 81–102.
under a powerful ninth-century king from Damascus. Between these

two eras, however, copper trade in and through Palestine did not
entirely cease.
Recent excavations in the region that the Bible calls Edom have
discovered a large copper-producing industry at a site directly south
of the Dead Sea.34 It is apparent from a variety of data that this copper
production began after the Egyptian empire in Palestine collapsed.
During the late tenth century and early ninth centuries, this copper
supplier became a large-scale operation, reaching a peak of production
during the mid-800s bce, before declining rapidly and collapsing in the
final decades of that century.
Who controlled this copper trade? The answer might involve appeal
to a seemingly coincidental situation in the nearby Negev Valley.
During the period in which Edomite copper production was increasing
and reaching its peak, the climate had shifted toward increased rainfall,
permitting agricultural exploitation of the Negev Valley on a scale
rarely before seen. Small cities emerged at places such as Beer-sheba,
Arad, and Tel Masos (see Figure 28). People at some of these sites
were even able to raise cattle, which is usually not possible in the arid
Negev Valley. Even at its peak, the Negev Valley could sustain no more
than about a thousand people, but this brief burst of Negev life in the
late tenth and early ninth centuries is unusual in light of its usual desert
conditions.35
A probable explanation for these simultaneous phenomena is that
the large Philistine cities sponsored the agricultural exploitation of the
Negev Valley, and those Negev settlements simultaneously functioned
as way stations for copper exploration and trade running from Edom
34 The finds at Khirbet en-Nahas remain a topic of debate, as are the finds in the
Negev, especially Tel Masos, but also including the multiple sites that were
once known as the ‘fortresses’. For entry, see the following recent publications,
as well as the items listed in their bibliographies: I. Finkelstein, A. Fantalkin,
and E. Piasetzky, ‘Three Snapshots of the Iron IIA: The Northern Valleys, the
Southern Steppe, and Jerusalem’, in Grabbe (ed.), Israel in Transition, Vol. 1,
pp. 32–44; I. Finkelstein and E. Piasetzky, ‘Radiocarbon and the History of
Copper Production at Khirbet en-Nahas’, Tel Aviv 35 (2008), pp. 82–95; Herzog,
‘Beersheba Valley Archaeology’, pp. 81–102; I. Finkelstein and L. Singer-Avitz,
‘The Pottery of Khirbet en-Nahas: A Rejoinder’, PEQ 141 (2009), pp. 207–18.
35 Z. Herzog, ‘The Fortress Mound at Tel Arad: An Interim Report’, Tel Aviv 29
(2002), pp. 3–109 (8–9).
into Philistia and up through the Philistine intraregional trade network.

(Consider, in this context, the note in 1 Sam. 13.19–21, which may or
may not describe conditions as early as the tenth century bce.) In this
case as well, the data are better explained if one does not insist upon an
unnecessary hypothesis of Jerusalemite centrality in an otherwise clear
picture of the region’s lowland urbanization and intraregional trade
networks.
A third argument against the United Monarchy hypothesis pertains
to the three city gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, as well as their
alleged relationship to 1 Kgs 9.15 (see Figures 29, 30, and 31). Similarly
designed massive city gates were uncovered at sites with which it is
impossible to associate King Solomon. Examples include a ninth-
century six-chamber gate at Lachish in the Shephelah, an eighth-century
gate at Philistine Ashdod on the coast, a ninth- or eighth-century gate at
a site in Moab, east of the Dead Sea, and an eighth- or seventh-century
gate at a site in the Negev Valley. These and other gates suggest that a
common architectural style persisted for several centuries, with local
variations in some cases. This style of architecture probably persisted
because it was the most effective design from a military perspective, not
because it reflects the stylistic mark of a single king and his court. The
Figure 31. A reconstruction of the city gates at Megiddo

possibility of equating the gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer with 1

Kgs 9.15 is not entirely ruled out, but it has been called into question by
these data.
In sum, the three pillars of the United Monarchy hypothesis appear
to be shaky foundations. Judah and Jerusalem in the tenth century
were peripheral, not central, and the city gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and
Gezer are not compelling evidence. Above all, neither the urbanization
argument nor the hypothesis of increased trade networks can support
the thesis that tenth-century Palestine was subject to a large, regionwide
state governed by Jerusalem.
In my view, all available data are compatible with a hypothesis that
views the Transitional Decades (950–900 bce) as an era in which a
series of autonomous cities existed throughout the region, with the cities
along the Coastal Plain, in the Jezreel, and in the Shephelah dominating
the less-populated highland regions. No ‘United Monarchy’, whether
Israelite, Judahite, or even Philistine, existed at this time. Although
significant portions of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are
certainly inaccurate or anachronistic, the general portrait of Canaan’s
political structure in those biblical texts is compatible with the archaeo-
logical record, but incompatible with most versions of the modern-era
United Monarchy hypothesis.
The Debate over High and Low Chronologies

The preceding case against the United Monarchy assumes that the
three pillars upon which the hypothesis rests are, generally speaking,
accurate descriptions of tenth-century data. The tenth century saw some
early stages of urbanization, may have seen the beginnings of some
kind of trade network, either intraregional or international, and saw the
construction of massive city gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. But
what if these things were not the case? What if most of the data just
discussed does not, in fact, date to the tenth century? What if these data
date to the ninth century instead?
As noted above, the United Monarchy thesis depends on inter-
locking inferences about specific kinds of pottery and specific strata at
various excavations (see Figure 30). The massive city gates at Hazor,
Megiddo, and Gezer are associated with red-slipped, hand-burnished
pottery, which must be dated prior to the invasion of Egyptian Pharaoh
Sheshonq (920s bce). It is this interlocking set of inferences that has
established the tenth-century date for the entire hypothesis. As early as

the 1940s, voices questioned this interpretation of the data. Recently,
new voices have echoed those early concerns and have introduced a
challenge that has the potential to bury the United Monarchy hypothesis
forever.
In the discussion to follow, the United Monarchy hypothesis is
equated with a new term, High Chronology. This new term is neces-
sitated by the introduction of a competing hypothesis called the Low
Chronology. As its name implies, the Low Chronology would move
the excavated strata associated with King Solomon’s building projects
down from the tenth to the ninth century bce. In other words, the city
gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer would no longer be contemporary
with King Solomon in the tenth century. Rather, they would date to
about the middle of the ninth century, when Solomon had been dead for
about half a century.
The hypothesis called the Low Chronology does not need to construct
a single unified kingdom that ruled ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’; that
is to say, it does not defend a United Monarchy. Quite the contrary;
because the archaeological picture appears to favor a hypothesis of
autonomous cities that could give rise, very gradually, to a series
of regional kingdoms, this is the kind of political process the Low
Chronology assigns to the middle of the ninth century. If the Bible is to
be invoked in this discussion, the Low Chronology calls attention to an
Israelite kingdom that appeared after Solomon’s time, a kingdom that is
described in the Bible at 1 Kings 16 (the so-called Omri dynasty, also
known as the Bit Humri or House of Omri). What was once assigned to
Solomon is now assigned to Omri and his ‘wicked’ son, Ahab. How did
this reassignment take place?
The Low Chronology is based on a series of reinterpretations of the
original data associated with the High Chronology: the issues related
to city gates, Pharaoh Sheshonq’s invasion, and the red-slipped, hand-
burnished pottery.36 The first objection to the High Chronology is to the
36 This discussion summarizes two decades of research. Consult these recent publi-
cations as well as the bibliography in them: D. Ussishkin, ‘The Chronology of the
Iron Age in Israel: The Current State of Research’, ANES 45 (2008), pp. 218–34;
Z. Herzog and L. Singer-Avitz, ‘Sub-dividing the Iron Age IIA in Northern
Israel: A Suggested Solution to the Chronological Debate’, Tel Aviv 33 (2006),
pp. 163–95; Fantalkin and Finkelstein, ‘Sheshonq I Campaign’; I. Finkelstein
equation of red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery with the period prior to

Sheshonq’s invasion. Most advocates for the High Chronology assume
that this pottery’s peak use preceded Sheshonq and that the pottery went
out of use not long after Sheshonq returned to Egypt. This assumption
has created an awkward gap in the archaeological record.
If the red-slipped, hand-burnished bowls are always a sign of the
tenth century bce, many excavations throughout Palestine have failed
to identify ninth-century strata. In that case, one is compelled to
identify tenth-century settlements, followed by occupation gaps in the
ninth century, and then reoccupation of these sites in the eighth, when
a non-slipped, wheel-burnished pottery had decisively replaced the
earlier red-slipped, hand-burnished ware (see Figure 30). As mentioned,
significant voices have been objecting to this problem since the 1940s.
An occupation gap at one or two sites occasions little surprise among
archaeologists. But when a pattern of occupation gaps appears at many
sites, one begins to suspect that there is a flaw in the system by which
dates have been assigned to these sites. It seems implausible that so
many cities were suddenly abandoned for several human generations in
the ninth century, only to be just as suddenly reoccupied in the eighth.37
In recent years, as refined studies of pottery sequencing have been
completed, it has become apparent that red-slipped, hand-burnished
pottery can be associated with several successive phases of associated
pottery forms, such as imported pottery from ninth-century Cyprus.38
This is significant, for if one views the red-slipped, hand-burnished
pottery as a part of the ninth-century archaeological context, it does
away with such puzzling phenomena as the appearance in Palestine
of a Greek pottery called ‘proto-geometric’ almost simultaneously
with (if not earlier than) the appearance of that pottery in Greece. In
other words, even if it was used in the tenth century, the red-slipped,
hand-burnished ware remained in use for a long time during the ninth
century, thus solving the mystery of the occupation gaps created by
and E. Piasetzky, ‘The Iron I–IIA in the Highlands and Beyond: 14C Anchors,
Pottery Phases and the Shoshenq I Campaign’, Levant 38 (2006), pp. 45–61;
Levy and Higham (eds), Bible and Radiocarbon Dating.
37 This observation is one of the primary reasons that I have favored the Low
Chronology. See K. L. Noll, ‘The God Who Is Among the Danites’, JSOT 80
(1998), pp. 3–23.
38 See especially Zimhoni, Studies in Iron Age Pottery. See also Herzog and Singer-
Avitz, ‘Redefining the Centre’, p. 215.
the High Chronology. Advocates of the Low Chronology suggest that

red-slipped, hand-burnished ware had only been introduced near the
close of the tenth century (roughly the time of Sheshonq’s invasion)
and continued to be produced throughout the ninth century and even
the early decades of the eighth. This sheds an entirely different light on
the data in Figure 30.
A second objection to the High Chronology takes aim at the thesis that
Sheshonq destroyed key cities in Palestine, such as the Megiddo fortress
with its massive city gate, or the ‘great Arad’ mentioned in Sheshonq’s
inscription. Advocates of the Low Chronology say that Sheshonq might
not have destroyed any cities in tenth-century Palestine. Not every
king who invades necessarily destroys; the degree to which devastation
occurs depends on the degree to which the defenders of a city resist the
invader. Most of the sites listed in Sheshonq’s inscription were small
and unfortified, so it would not have been difficult for this pharaoh’s
army to occupy these places without facing much resistance from local
residents, who were unarmed and not likely to have received military
training.
In light of this observation about Sheshonq’s military tactics, the
excavations at both Megiddo and Arad are compatible with the thesis
advanced by advocates for the Low Chronology (see Figure 30).
The earliest Iron Age stratum at Arad (called stratum XII) was not
fortified. Because this is the earliest Iron Age stratum at Arad, and
because Sheshonq specifically mentions ‘great Arad’ in his Karnak
inscription, this stratum is the best candidate for the Arad that Sheshonq
encountered. In fact, almost all researchers, including defenders of the
High Chronology, identify this stratum as Sheshonq’s ‘great Arad’.39
However, because the site did not suffer destruction, it is reasonable to
conclude that its red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery remained in use
for years, perhaps decades, after Sheshonq’s visit to the site.
Likewise, this second objection to the High Chronology offers a
39 A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 BCE (New York:
Doubleday, 1990), pp. 390–8; N. Na’aman, ‘Israel, Edom, Egypt in the 10th
Century B.C.E.’, Tel Aviv 19 (1992), pp. 71–93 (81–3); Herzog and Singer-
Avitz, ‘Redefining the Centre’, p. 229. For a dissenting viewpoint, see Fantalkin
and Finkelstein, ‘Sheshonq I Campaign’, p. 19. If this dissenting argument were
accepted, the original Low Chronology start of Iron IIA could be maintained at
c. 900 bce. However, even Finkelstein has been satisfied with a starting date for
Iron IIA c. 920s bce, and that is where I have placed it in this discussion.
reasonable interpretation of Megiddo, where a large fragment from

Sheshonq’s royal stela was recovered in an unstratified context. Based
on the size and shape of the stone fragment, researchers estimate that
the original monument stood about ten feet high and about five feet
wide. That Sheshonq erected a huge memorial stone in his own honor
suggests that this king did not desire to destroy Megiddo. Rather, he
occupied and ‘consecrated’ it as newly subject to his imperial rule.
A recent study of the excavation reports from Megiddo has traced the
precise find-spot from which Sheshonq’s stone fragment was recovered
and its relationship to the site’s stratigraphy.40 This study suggests that
the stratum most likely to have contained Sheshonq’s royal inscription
was, like Sheshonq’s ‘great Arad’, an unfortified stratum (specifically,
stratum VB; see Figure 30). This stratum was the earliest Megiddo
stratum to produce red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery in significant
quantity. In fact, its pottery matches Arad’s earliest Iron Age stratum,
which suggests that the two strata are contemporary.41 Moreover, this
stratum, like Arad, was not destroyed. After surviving for at least a
few decades, Megiddo evolved gradually into the next, more complex
phase of construction (called stratum VA-IVB). This next stratum saw
construction of the massive city gate even while it continued to use
red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery.
In other words, it would seem that Sheshonq, during the 920s bce,
visited a city of Megiddo that lacked any formal city gate and then, in
the ninth century (early 800s bce), this city was renovated with the
gate structures once attributed to Solomon (see Figures 29 and 31). The
city gate at Megiddo was constructed long after both Sheshonq and
Solomon had passed from the scene.
A third objection to the High Chronology emerges when one compares
the finds at Megiddo with the excavation at a city called Samaria.
According to the Bible, the city of Samaria was built in the ninth century
by King Omri (1 Kgs 16.23–4). This biblical tradition is compatible
with data from the excavation, including a luxury item from Egypt. The
artifact is an alabaster vase with the name of a ninth-century Egyptian
king written on it, a king who seems to have lived during the very
years that, according to Neo-Assyrian inscriptions, the Omride dynasty
40 R. L. Chapman III, ‘Putting Sheshonq I in His Place’, PEQ 141 (2009), pp. 4–17.
See also, Finkelstein and Piasetzky, ‘Iron I–IIA in the Highlands’, pp. 57–8.
41 Na’aman, ‘Northern Kingdom’, p. 402.
was active.42 A reasonable hypothesis states that the vase had been a
gift, part of a diplomatic exchange between the Egyptian king and the
Samarian king. All data from the texts and excavation are compatible
with the hypothesis that Samaria’s first phase of construction dates to
the ninth century bce (see Figure 30).
An archaeologist who advocates the Low Chronology has noted that
the stones used for the royal palace at Samaria bear several mason’s
markings that are identical to the mason’s markings on stones at a
palace uncovered at Megiddo.43 These two palaces also share similar
building supplies and might have been built using an identical system
of measurements (though this is not quite as certain as has been
suggested). The Megiddo palace is part of the stratum that was fortified
with the massive city gate (stratum VA–IVB). Therefore, if these obser-
vations about the mason’s markings are accepted, the massive city
gate at Megiddo is contemporary with the first phase of construction
at Samaria, and this earliest phase at Samaria was built in the ninth
century, not the tenth.44 It should be noted that these three objections to
the High Chronology targeted the very same data used to establish that
chronology in the first place.
The differences between the High and Low Chronologies can be
summarized easily. The High Chronology equates red-slipped, hand-
burnished pottery with the entire tenth century bce, thus associating
strata containing that pottery with figures such as David, Solomon, and
Pharaoh Sheshonq. The Low Chronology argues that the red-slipped,
hand-burnished pottery had just been introduced at about the time of
42 G. A. Reisner, C. S. Fisher, and D. G. Lyons, Harvard Excavations at Samaria

1908–1910 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924), p. 247 and plate
56g.
43 N. Franklin, ‘Correlation and Chronology: Samaria and Megiddo Redux’, in
Levy and Higham (eds), Bible and Radiocarbon Dating, pp. 310–22.
44 In addition to Samaria, the excavation at the fortification called Jezreel, in the
Jezreel Valley to the east of Megiddo, is frequently a part of the Low Chronology
thesis. It is a significant site, but it represents a weaker argument because of diffi-
culties with the excavation’s findings. Nevertheless, Mazar, ‘Spade and the Text’,
p. 157, offers an objection that cannot be accepted: Mazar suggests that Jezreel
is not contemporary with Megiddo VA–IVB because the same royal bureaucracy
that constructed Jezreel’s strong perimeter wall would not have settled for the
relatively weak fortification system at Megiddo VA–IVB. In my view, one should
base stratigraphy on the data and not on one’s notion of what an ancient royal
administration ought to have done.
Sheshonq’s invasion. This pottery type reached its peak production in

the ninth century and was still in use in the early decades of the eighth.
Therefore, strata containing red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery can be
dated no earlier than Sheshonq’s invasion, and never to the period in
which David and Solomon (assuming them to be real people) would
have lived.
Figure 30 illustrates how these chronologies differ. Both the High
and Low Chronologies equate Arad stratum XII with the invasion of
Sheshonq in the 920s bce. However, these are the final days of Arad
XII in the High Chronology but the early days of its existence in the
Low Chronology. The massive gate at Hazor stratum X is, according to
the High Chronology, contemporary with the gates at Megiddo VA–IVB
and Gezer VIII (all three were built by Solomon, who reigned 40 years;
compare 1 Kgs 9.15; 11.42). By contrast, the Low Chronology views
Hazor X as earlier than the other gates by at least a few decades and
probably unrelated to them (assuming 1 Kgs 9.15; 11.42 to be fiction).
The High Chronology suggests that King Solomon built the massive city
gate in Megiddo VA–IVB that Sheshonq destroyed. The Low Chronology
suggests that Sheshonq did not destroy Megiddo, but erected his stela in
stratum VB. In the Low Chronology, King Omri of Samaria built Megiddo
VA–IVB when he also built his new city of Samaria in the ninth century (1
Kgs 16.24), and this stratum at Megiddo was destroyed by a ninth-century
king from Damascus named Hazael, c. 830s bce (2 Kgs 13.3).
In sum, the High Chronology defends a United Monarchy under David
and Solomon; the Low Chronology argues that Saul, David, and Solomon
were minor kings of the Cisjordan Highlands who never controlled a
major city such as Megiddo or Hazor. The High Chronology’s thesis rests
on a variety of biblical texts (especially 1 Kgs 9.15), whereas the Low
Chronology’s thesis is independent of any biblical text, though certainly
compatible with many biblical passages. Although it is rarely discussed by
either side, it might be noted as well that the High Chronology favors the
biblical description of lengthy reigns for David and Solomon, so that their
careers encompass almost all of the tenth century (2 Sam. 5.5; 1 Kgs 11.42).
To the extent that the Low Chronology discusses Saul, David, and Solomon
(these figures are not central to the thesis of the Low Chronology), it can be
assumed that their careers, altogether, spanned a few decades just prior to
Sheshonq’s invasion (perhaps about the 940s to 920s bce), which is more
realistic in light of the political structures presupposed by the Bible’s stories

(see the discussion in the first half of this chapter and see the next chapter).45
Radiocarbon Dating and the New ‘Middle’ Chronology

In an effort to settle the stalemate between the High and Low
Chronologies, researchers have resorted to a new source of data: a set of
dates established by the use of radiocarbon dating. The method is based
on basic biological science. Plants and animals take in the radioactive
isotope carbon-14 throughout their lives. At death, the C–14 begins to
disintegrate at a known rate. Therefore, if one tests an uncontaminated
sample of an ancient organic material, one can measure the C–14 and
determine, within a reasonable margin of error, how long ago that
organism died.
The key to successful use of carbon dating is selection of the right
kinds of organic material for analysis. For example, if one selects
samples from the lumber that was used to build a house, the radiocarbon
analysis will determine the age of the tree BP (before present). But the
tree was killed to build the house and the house might have remained
in use for several human generations, perhaps even several centuries. In
this case, the C–14 evaluation has determined the earliest possible date
(the date at which the tree was cut down), but not the range of dates for
the house’s occupation. Samples from organic material that remained in
use for much shorter periods of time can be more useful. For example,
olives are common in Palestine, and olive pits are discovered often in
the archaeological remains. A pit from an olive represents the year in
which that olive was harvested, and it is almost certain that the olive
was part of the daily life of a site’s occupants. Experts prefer these
shorter-duration samples.
Another key to successful use of the radiocarbon method is a large
number of samples from the site. One or two samples do not provide
the statistical validity that a large number of samples can. There will be
some outliers in every batch of samples, a few C–14 tests which provide
45 In the late 1980s, E. A. Knauf proposed, as a testable hypothesis, that David

would be shown to have been active closer to the mid-century than earlier. See
Knauf, ‘From History to Interpretation’, in D. V. Edelman (ed.), The Fabric of
History: Text, Artifact, and Israel’s Past (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), pp. 26–64
(37). The Low or Middle Chronology tends to confirm this suggestion.
dates that are widely at variance with the average dates of the entire
group. These outliers are usually discounted by the researchers. Related
to this is the challenge of selecting organic samples that are unequivo-
cally stratified. If the samples are not securely related to a clear stratum,
the sample does not provide a date for that stratum. This means that an
excavation in which the stratigraphy is disputed by archaeologists might
not be able to provide samples for secure radiocarbon dating. If only
one or two samples from one or two sites have been tested, there is no
guarantee that these few samples are useful for determining the date
of the sites. Statistical means and averages are the goal of radiocarbon
dating.
When useful samples in sufficient quantities from Iron Age Canaanite
strata have been tested, with surprising regularity the dates determined
by radiocarbon analysis come remarkably close to what the researchers
expected to see. The dates consistently fall within the range that
defenders of both the High and Low Chronologies had determined to
be possible using more conventional dating techniques (for example,
pottery typology). Nevertheless, this is also the point at which radio-
carbon testing becomes controversial.
Perhaps the most interesting result from the many radiocarbon tests is
their general tendency to favor the Low Chronology.46 This is a general
trend, but there are exceptions. For example, some radiocarbon results
from the site of Dan are quite high, in fact too high even for advocates
of the High Chronology. By contrast, an excavation at Dor on the
Coastal Plain produced radiocarbon dates consistently younger than
the Low Chronology. Meanwhile, an excavation in the southern Jezreel
Valley, called Tel Rehov, produced some radiocarbon dates consistent
with the Low Chronology and other dates consistent with the High
Chronology. The experts debate the choice of individual samples and,
in some cases, the degree of certainty associated with the stratigraphic
context of the samples (which is a key source of uncertainty in many
cases). Nevertheless, the trend of radiocarbon tests favoring the Low
Chronology is difficult to deny.
Recently, several influential Israeli archaeologists have introduced
modified chronologies that fall between the High and the Low extremes.47
46 See especially the essays in Levy and Higham (eds), Bible and Radiocarbon
Dating.
47 The two most influential modified chronologies are those of A. Mazar and Z.
These newer models carry a variety of labels, such as ‘modified conven-

tional chronology’. Each differs from the others in its details. For our
purposes, a generalized version of these new paradigms can be called the
Middle Chronology. Even though the Middle Chronology is defended
by some archaeologists who previously favored the High Chronology,
it is no surprise that the Middle Chronology moves closer to the Low
Chronology, for this compromise position ‘is mainly the result of dates
obtained by the radiocarbon method, which fit the low chronology better
than the higher’.48 In fact, the Middle Chronology has been described as
‘a generous concession towards the low chronology’.49
The Middle Chronology generally accepts the youngest dates from the
Low Chronology while stretching the oldest dates back in the direction
of the High Chronology. So, for example, the Middle Chronology
recognizes that the red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery continued to be
used throughout the ninth century (which is the claim made by the Low
Chronology). Nevertheless, according to the Middle Chronology, this
pottery was in use well before Sheshonq’s invasion, perhaps as early as
950 bce (which is a partial acceptance of the High Chronology’s desire
to place the date around 1000 bce). Clearly, this compromise permits
the Low Chronology’s interpretations of almost all archaeological
excavations to stand with little modification. It permits a few of the
High Chronology’s ideas to remain in the discussion as well.
It is too soon to know whether the Middle Chronology will become
a consensus viewpoint. In my view, it has merit and should play a
central role in the discussion.50 It seems reasonably clear that the High
Chronology can survive only by reincarnating itself as some variation
of the Middle Chronology. Otherwise, the Low Chronology is likely to
become the standard chronology in future research.
Herzog. Mazar wants to date red-slipped, hand-burnished pottery (Iron IIA) from
980 to 840 bce and Herzog prefers 950 to early 700s bce, dividing the Iron IIA
into ‘early’ (950–900) and ‘late’ (900–early 700s). See Mazar, ‘Spade and the
Text’; Herzog and Singer-Avitz, ‘Sub-dividing the Iron Age IIA’.
48 Na’aman, ‘Northern Kingdom’, p. 402.
49 I. Sharon et al., ‘The Early Iron Age Dating Project: Introduction, Progress
Report, and an Update on the Tel Dor Radiometric Dates’, in Levy and Higham
(eds), Bible and Radiocarbon Dating, pp. 65–92 (66).
50 The division of eras employed in this textbook is based on Herzog’s version of
the Middle Chronology. My category called Transitional Decades (950–900 bce)
is equivalent to Herzog’s Early Iron IIA.
Figure 32. View of the Jordan River Valley looking east toward the Transjordan
Highlands. During the Transitional Decades (950–900 bce), these highlands
were sparsely populated, yet this is where the Bible locates King David’s most
celebrated victories.
Conclusion: Observations about the Transitional Decades

(950–900 bce)
And the women sang to one another as they made merry, ‘Saul has
killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands!’ (1 Sam. 18.7).
This chapter is more complex than most others in this book, but that
is necessary because the question of a United Monarchy remains a hot
topic of debate within academe. As always, the focus in this discussion
has been on how we know what we think we know. I have my own
point of view (for example, I favor a Low or Middle Chronology),
but I am less interested in your agreement with me than in presenting
the methods by which historical judgments are made. I have tried to
introduce the basics of the scholarly discussion so that if you choose to
read more widely in the research, you will have a sound foundation to
understand and carefully evaluate what you encounter.
Did Saul kill his thousands and David his ten thousands? Advocates
for the United Monarchy, as it was usually defined in twentieth-
century research, would answer this question with a strong yes. In this
hypothesis, Saul established a kingdom in the Cisjordan Highlands and

Gilead that was expanded enormously by his successor, David. These
researchers suggest that David conquered all the land ‘from Dan as
far as Beer-sheba’ as well as subduing the Philistines to the west and
the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites to the east. According to this
hypothesis, David gained imperial control over at least some portions
of southern Syria (for example, Tob, Maacah, Damascus, Beth-rehob,
Zobah). Other researchers modify this thesis in one manner or another,
diminishing David’s accomplishments here and expanding them there.
I have suggested that the data to support this hypothesis are lacking.
Those who are not convinced that Saul killed his thousands and
David his ten thousands emphasize that the population of the Cisjordan
Highlands could not produce this many men of military age in a single
generation. All the military leaders of the tenth-century Cisjordan
Highlands were relatively minor players in a complex landscape. It
is possible, but by no means demonstrated, that some of the tales in
1–2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1–11 derive from faint memory of real tenth-
century events. Nevertheless, numerous researchers have argued that
the ‘memory’ preserved in texts such as 2 Samuel 8 is not, in fact, any
memory of David in the tenth century, but rather a mix of facts and
folklore from later in the Iron Age II (900–586 bce).51 For example, the
notice in 2 Sam. 8.13 about David’s defeat of Edom in the Valley of Salt
appears to be a repetition of 2 Kgs 14.7, which attributes this military
victory to a Judean king of the eighth century bce, a period when such a
battle seems much more realistic. (Very few people lived in Edom during
the tenth or ninth centuries, but there were some Edomites to fight in the
eighth.) The same researcher suggests that David’s enemy Hadadezer
51 C. Edenburg, ‘David, the Great King, King of the Four Quarters: Structure
and Signification in the Catalog of David’s Conquests (2 Samuel 8:1–14; 1
Chronicles 18:1–13)’ in K. L. Noll and B. Schramm (eds), Raising Up a Faithful
2010), pp. 159–75; A. A. Fischer, ‘Die literarische Entstehung des Grossreichs
Davids und ihr geschichtlicher Hintergrund: Zur Darstellung der Kriegs-Chronik
in 2 Sam 8,1–14(15)’, in U. Becker and J. van Oorschot (eds), Das Alte Testament
– ein Geschichtsbuch?! Geschichtsschreibung oder Geschichtsüberlieferung
im antiken Israel (Arbeiten zur Bibel und ihrer Geschichte, 17; Leipzig:
Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), pp. 101–28; see also N. Na’aman, ‘Sources
and Composition in the History of David’, in Fritz and Davies (eds), Origins of
the Ancient Israelite States, pp. 170–86.
ben Rehob (2 Sam. 8.3) is, in reality, the by-product of a foggy folk
memory about the famous ninth-century king Hazael of Damascus,
who was almost as powerful as this fictional Hadadezer seems to be
(compare 2 Kgs 10.32–3).52 Likewise, researchers frequently argue that
the splendor attributed to Solomon in 1 Kings 4–10 fails to match the
data in the dirt, but sounds suspiciously like the rise of the Omrides
of Samaria some forty to fifty years later. It is reasonable to conclude
that Sheshonq did not bother to attack Judah or Jerusalem because this
region was too sparsely populated to attract his attention. Nevertheless,
if oral tradition managed to remember that someone named Shishak
invaded other portions of Palestine, it is probable that the scribe who
penned 1 Kgs 14.25–28 used that folk memory as an excuse to rid his
narrative of all Solomon’s wealth, a wealth that the scribe surely knew
was nothing more than a romantic invention.53
It is important to emphasize that the archaeological data provide the
foundation for one narrative, and the biblical narratives are a source of
data of an entirely different kind. One of these does not prove the other.
The historian constructs a third narrative, which is a hypothesis. In some
cases, this hypothesis might be nothing more than a paraphrase of Bible
stories.54 In other cases, the hypothesis might judge the Bible’s narrative
to possess no evidential value.55 The proper way to evaluate each
hypothesis is to return again and again to the data, seeking a hypothesis
that is as fully compatible with the data as possible. When this is done,
the archaeological picture tends to be relatively stable regardless of
High, Middle, or Low Chronology, and it is only a matter of deciding
to what extent, if at all, biblical narratives can shed further light on the
data from the dirt. A hypothesis that begins with the biblical text, such
52 Na’aman, ‘In Search of Reality’, pp. 214 (2 Sam. 8.13) and 208–9 (2 Sam. 8.3).
53 E. A. Knauf, ‘King Solomon’s Copper Supply’, in E. Lipiński (ed.), Phoenicia
and the Bible (Studia Phoenicia, 11; Leuven: Peeters, 1991), pp. 167–86 (178,
182 n. 60).
54 For an example of a historical hypothesis that is self-consciously a Bible
paraphrase (he calls it a ‘bibliology’, which is an unnecessary label), see Z.
Zevit, ‘The Davidic-Solomonic Empire from the Perspective of Archaeological
Bibliology’ in C. Cohen et al. (eds), Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient
Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M.
Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, Vol. 1 (Winona Lake, IN:
55 T. L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People.
as the Bible’s assertion that Solomon ruled from the Euphrates to Egypt,
is self-evidently incompatible with the data. In that sense, the Israeli
archaeologist who insisted that archaeology is the sole source for the
tenth century is not far from the mark, but perhaps too one-sided.
Even the strongest advocates for a huge United Monarchy governing
Syria and Palestine for more than half a century agree that this Davidic-
Solomonic empire was a brief and rather artificial interlude in the long
sweep of the land of Canaan’s Iron Age experience. After the interlude
(if that interlude ever took place), the separate kingdoms of Israel-
Samaria and Judah-Jerusalem were tiny and usually powerless pawns in
the larger arena of Canaanite politics and, increasingly, Mesopotamian
and Egyptian politics.
In other words, even if one wants to believe that Saul killed his
thousands and David his ten thousands, the thrill of the slaughter was a
flash in the pan, a moment of gory glory that left no lasting impact on
Iron Age life and culture. If Saul and David were responsible for cutting
short the lives of several thousand people, these dubious achievements
have left no trace in the literature except a series of colorful folktales.
They have left even fewer traces in the archaeological record. As one
defender of the United Monarchy hypothesis has noted, ‘Short-lived
achievements like those of David may be beyond what the tools of
archaeology are capable of grasping.’56

Ash, Paul S., David, Solomon, and Egypt: A Reassessment (JSOTSup, 297; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1997).
Auld, A. Graeme, and Erik Eynikel (eds), For and Against David: Story and History in
the Books of Samuel (BETL, 232; Leuven: Peeters, 2010).
Davies, Philip R., In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (JSOTSup, 148; Sheffield: Sheffield
Fantalkin, Alexander, and Assaf Yasur-Landau (eds), Bene Israel: Studies in the
Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour
of Israel Finkelstein (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the
Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free
Press, 2006).
Fritz, Volkmar, and Philip R. Davies (eds), The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States
(JSOTSup, 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
56 Mazar, ‘Spade and the Text’, p. 165.

Grabbe, Lester L. (ed.), Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIA (c.
1250–850 B.C.E.), Vol. 1, The Archaeology (LHB/OTS, 491; New York: T&T
Clark International, 2008).
—(ed.), Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIA (c. 1250–850 B.C.E.), Vol.
2, The Texts (LHB/OTS, 521; New York: T&T Clark International, 2010).
Halpern, Baruch, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).
Handy, Lowell K. (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium
(Leiden: Brill, 1997).
Levy, Thomas E., and Thomas Higham (eds), The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating:
Archaeology, Text and Science (London: Equinox, 2005).
Liverani, Mario, Israel’s History and the History of Israel (trans. Chiara Peri and Philip
R. Davies; London: Equinox, 2003).
McKenzie, Steven L., King David: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000).
Na’aman, Nadav, Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography: The First Temple Period
(Collected Essays, vol. 3; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006).
Thompson, Thomas L., Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and
Archaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
Van Seters, John, The Biblical Saga of King David (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2009).
Vaughn, Andrew G., and Ann E. Killebrew (eds), Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology:
The First Temple Period (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).
Chapter 8
The Iron Age II
Introduction
The biblical books of 1–2 Kings and 2 Chronicles tell a story about
kings who ruled in Jerusalem from the time of Solomon to the war with
the Babylonians. According to the biblical chronology, this narrative
spans about four centuries (434 years and 6 months, according to 1–2
Kings). When specific kings and events mentioned in the Bible are
matched to the ancient epigraphs from Mesopotamia, it is clear that this
is the period that modern researchers label the Iron Age II (900–586
bce), a period of about three centuries. The evidence demonstrates that
the ancient authors whose writings are included in books such as Kings,
Jeremiah, and, to a lesser extent, Chronicles and Isaiah had access to
several reliable sources of information.
The theme of this book is that we must focus on how we know what
we think we know, so it will not suffice to read the biblical narrative as
though it were a reliable report of the Iron Age II. The scribes modified
any sources they might have received from that era and the majority
of the narratives derive from folklore rather than written sources.
Nevertheless, the Iron Age II is the one ancient period for which
the Jewish Bible and the non-biblical evidence tell parallel stories.
Therefore, even after we acknowledge that the scribes were not trying
to write a history, it is exciting to discover that a few biblical passages
provide vivid details of this era.
We will begin with a general overview of the era and the political
economy that created it. Next, events will be narrated from the
viewpoint of the Mesopotamian imperial powers. After that, specific
aspects of Palestine’s regional kingdoms will be analyzed, and two
sample controversies will be examined.
8. The Iron Age II 261
General Overview of the Iron Age II

Palestine’s population increased gradually but relentlessly during the
Iron Age I (1150–950 bce) and the Transitional Decades (950–900
bce). As noted in the last chapter, the population might have grown as
large as 100,000 people by the late tenth century or the early ninth. This
steady increase continued during the Iron Age II until the population
reached a peak of about 400,000 in the final decades of the eighth
century.1 At that point, wars and Assyrian imperial policies of depor-
tation halted the natural growth in population. Nevertheless, Palestine
in the Iron Age II was home to more people per generation than in any
previous period.
The Phoenician and Philistine cities of the Coastal Plain continued to
exert their influence during the Iron Age II. Aramean and Neo-Hittite
cities in Syria competed with one another and with the coastal powers.
Eventually, they would be joined by small states in the peripheral regions,
such as Israel, Ammon, Moab, and, eventually, Judah and Edom.
The most significant political power in Canaan during the Iron Age
II was the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Assyria had been a significant power
ages before, but had fallen into a period of relative weakness during
the eleventh and tenth centuries. By the ninth century, this rejuve-
nated (hence the prefix ‘Neo’) territorial state had secured its hold
over northern Mesopotamia and had begun to expand southward and
westward, into Babylon and Canaan. Motivated by a desire to secure the
income from the international trade on the Mediterranean and the land
routes from Egypt and Arabia, the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s unrelenting
goal was to bring all of Canaan under its rule. Local Canaanite
powers occasionally buried their differences and cooperated in military
coalitions against this common enemy. The struggle continued for
more than a century before Neo-Assyria was victorious. Eventually,
the Neo-Assyrian dominance gave way to a resurgent Babylon (the
Neo-Babylonian Empire) as the Iron Age II came to a close.
Meanwhile, in Palestine, an ethnic group called Israel, which had
been in the region for centuries, was coalescing into a political power.
1 Precise numbers are impossible to determine and, of course, each researcher

includes or excludes specific regions from a definition of Palestine. For general
discussion and justification of a number around 400,000, see M. Broshi and
I. Finkelstein, ‘The Population of Palestine in Iron Age II’, BASOR 287 (1992),
pp. 47–60.
By the early ninth century (the 800s bce), a royal family at the city of
Samaria had begun to dominate the Cisjordan Highlands and the Jezreel
Valley. Neo-Assyrian inscriptions named this Samarian-based power
Bit Humri, or House of Omri. These are the biblical kings of the Omri
dynasty: Omri, his son Ahab, and Ahab’s sons Ahaziah and Jehoram.
The Neo-Assyrians continued to call the kingdom of Samaria-Israel the
Bit Humri even after the Omri dynasty was no more. To the south, a less
populated region began to coalesce into a small kingdom as well, with
its capital at Jerusalem. A ninth-century Aramaic inscription named the
Jerusalem-based power Bet Dawid, or House of David.
By what process did these ruling dynasties appear at this particular
moment? The process was not a planned effort by the leaders of Israel
and Judah any more than the emergence of any other political state had
been. Rather, it was the net result of an organic development in the
region.
The conditions permitting the rise of the Hebrew-speaking kingdoms
were four regional transformations during the Iron Age II. First, the
Cisjordan Highlands approached a point of full exploitation. That is
to say, given ancient farming techniques, the Cisjordan Highlands
achieved a population size that was taking advantage of all arable
regions. This was a population sufficiently large to organize into a small
state.
Second, for the first time, a significant sedentary population appeared
in the Judean highlands. As we have seen, very few people had ever
lived in the harsher and more arid hills south of Jerusalem prior to
the tenth century. That is why the Bible names the ‘tribe’ located just
north of Jerusalem ‘Benjamin’, which means ‘sons of the south’. When
Benjamin got its name, Judah as a populated region to its south did not
yet exist.
Why did the peripheral region of Judah become inhabited at this
time? From the archaeological surveys, it appears that a spillover took
place as the Cisjordan Highlands north of Jerusalem reached capacity.
Perhaps some previously non-sedentary pastoralists settled down as
well. It is important to emphasize that Judah was never as populous
as the Cisjordan Highlands north of Jerusalem. In fact, at their peak
level of human density, there were about three people in the kingdom
of Samaria-Israel to the north for every one person in the kingdom
of Jerusalem-Judah in the south. Nevertheless, by the eighth century,
Judah had become a fully settled territory.
A third radical change for the Cisjordan Highlands was the intro-
duction of major urban centers. This region always had a few cities, but
they had never been large. With the exception of Middle Bronze Hazor
(which was on the edge of the fertile Jordan Valley and on a major
trade-route crossroad), cities of the Cisjordan Highlands were really
only large, walled villages. During the Iron Age II, a series of cities in
the Cisjordan Highlands and the Shephelah became urban centers of
significant size, including Samaria, Tirzah, Shechem, Gezer, Lachish,
and Jerusalem (see Figure 33).
Among these urban centers, Samaria and Jerusalem came to dominate.
During the ninth and eighth centuries, Samaria was the most prominent
city of the Cisjordan Highlands and capital of the kingdom of Israel. At
its peak in the middle decades of the eighth century, Samaria was home
to perhaps as many as 15,000 people. It became part of a Neo-Assyrian
province in the late eighth century. Jerusalem grew more gradually, but
recent archaeological discoveries confirm the appearance of a royal
bureaucracy at Jerusalem by the second half of the ninth century.2 This
city reached its peak either in the late eighth century or, more likely, the
very early seventh, at which time its population was one of the largest
in all of Palestine (though numbers are difficult to estimate). Jerusalem
was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian army in or near the year 586 bce.
The fourth radical innovation in the Cisjordan Highlands in the
Iron Age II was the introduction of literacy. Archaeologists have
recovered hundreds of documents, from small stamp seals and ostraca
to tomb inscriptions and even a few fragments of royal inscriptions.
Collectively, these writings attest to the rise of a literate class within
the previously illiterate Cisjordan Highlands population. Only a few
people in any generation could read and write. There was no public
education system and the vast majority remained illiterate. Among the
literate elite, there were degrees of literary skill. Some could read and
write their own names, or reproduce the Hebrew alphabet as a kind of
2 A fill under an eighth-century house contains pottery matching the pottery

at Lachish stratum IV, as well as seals and bullae typical of the late ninth
century. See R. Reich, E. Shukron, and O. Lernau, ‘The Iron Age Finds from
the Rock-Cut “Pool” near the Spring in Jerusalem: A Preliminary Report’, in
L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Israel in Transition: From the Late Bronze II to Iron IIA (c.
1250-850 B.C.E.), Vol. 1, The Archaeology (LHB/OTS, 491; London: T&T Clark
International, 2008), pp. 138–43.
Figure 33. Palestine during the Iron Age II

talisman, but little else. At the other extreme, a very tiny minority could
read and understand a complex work of literature, such as the narratives
and poetry now contained in the biblical anthology.3
These four changes in the Cisjordan Highlands set the stage for the
rise of Hebrew-speaking kingdoms centered at Samaria and Jerusalem.
But one additional ingredient was necessary. The soil in which these
seeds were able to grow was prepared by a specific development in the
political economy of Palestine, a topic to which we now turn.
The Political Economy of Palestine in the Iron Age II

We have seen in Chapter 5 that, after the collapse of the Late Bronze
Hittite and Egyptian empires in Canaan, smaller independent cities
had emerged as the political players in Iron Age I (1150–950 bce).
Dominant among them had been the Phoenician cities on the Syrian
coast, such as Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre. To the south, the Philistine-
Canaanite cities of the Coastal Plain and the Jezreel Valley dominated.
The Cisjordan Highlands were a quiet backwater during those centuries.
The cultural dominance of Phoenicia can be seen in the material
culture of Palestine throughout the Iron Age. Phoenician craftsmanship
in pottery, the carving of ivory, the manufacture of metal products, the
design of horse-drawn chariots, the use of cedar lumber, and the use of
dressed stones for buildings, to name a few, demonstrate Phoenicia’s
leadership role. Even the writings of Palestine are based on the
Phoenician alphabet. Regardless of regional dialect, such as Hebrew,
Aramaic, Moabite, or Ammonite, the inscriptions of this era employ a
script that derives from a Phoenician original.
The pattern of archaeological evidence suggests a core–periphery
political economy. A core–periphery relationship is one in which a polit-
ically and culturally dominant core area influences a less-developed
peripheral region. Examples of such relationships abound in modern
times, where the influence of the modern West results in fledgling
capitalist democracies in other parts of the world. The capitalist
trinity – McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and free elections – are the gospel
3 For entry into the complex research on writing and literacy (with substantial
bibliography), see C. A. Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient
Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2010).
delivered from a politically and culturally dominant core into many

peripheries. Sweatshop labor and the exploitation of natural resources
in those peripheries benefit the West. In ancient times, core–periphery
relationships were common. We have seen several such relationships in
Palestine during phases of the Bronze Age, at which time the core area
was primarily Egypt.
If one plots the results of excavations throughout Canaan on a map,
one can see the core–periphery relationship between Phoenicia and
Palestine emerge over time (see Figure 33). The richest and most techno-
logically dynamic region was the Coastal Plain, especially Phoenicia,
but also stretching south into the Philistine cities. As one moves south
and east, this level of material culture gradually diminishes. At the
southeast corner (the region the Bible calls Edom), one finds the least
populous and least advanced region. Likewise, as one moves south and
east, the date at which a region emerges into a more advanced stage of
material culture grows ever later. The Cisjordan Highlands to the north
of Jerusalem developed earlier than the Judean hills just to the south.
In Transjordan, the region the Bible calls Ammon was advanced prior
to the region called Moab, and Moab prior to Edom. It is as though a
wave of cultural ascent swept over Canaan, beginning with Phoenicia
and moving outward from that core.
The core–periphery relationship in the Late Bronze Age was based
on Egyptian imperial dominance, but the core–periphery relationship
of the Iron Age II appears to have been primarily Phoenician cultural
and economic influence. The city of Samaria that was built in the early
ninth century and was, according to 1 Kgs 16.23–4, the kingdom of
Israel’s capital city, has revealed to excavators remnants of a luxuriant
lifestyle enjoyed by a wealthy ruling class. The royal palace was
among the largest of such palaces in Canaan and displays a Phoenician
architectural style. Among the many Phoenician-inspired artifacts are
exquisitely designed ivory carvings (see Figure 34). The author of
Amos 6.1–8 knew well of what he wrote when he described the royalty
of Samaria lying on their ‘beds of ivory’.
It would seem, therefore, that the emergence of monarchy in the
Cisjordan Highlands was a product of Phoenician influence. The
Phoenician core, in cities such as Sidon, invested in an elite ruling class
at Samaria, in return obtaining raw resources. The primary resources
were the cash crops of Palestine: wine, olive oil, honey, and wheat.
These were essential staples in the ancient Near East (see, for example,
Figure 34. An ivory sphinx from Iron Age Samaria
Ezek. 27.17). The Phoenicians could rely on this core–periphery

relationship as well to gain access to trade routes running south into
Arabia.
It is no surprise that the Bible narrates a treaty relationship between
Phoenicia and Samaria, including a royal marriage. Israel’s King
Ahab is said to have married a princess from Sidon named Jezebel (1
Kgs 16.31). As the dominant half of this alliance, Sidon’s king sent
a Phoenician god along with Jezebel. Jezebel’s name means ‘Where
is Zebul?’ This ritual question, ‘Where is Zebul?’ derives from the
mythological tradition associated with the god Baal, whose title Baal
Zebul means ‘Lord Prince’. The Bible claims that Ahab built a temple
for Baal (1 Kgs 16.32), which the authors of the Bible did not like (1
Kgs 16.33; compare 2 Kgs 10.18–28). Biblical writers slandered the
city of Ekron’s god, also called Baal, by calling him Baal-zebub, which
means ‘Lord of Flies’ (2 Kgs 1).
Why was it Israel that emerged through this core–periphery
relationship and not some other ethnic group in the Cisjordan Highlands,
such as Gibeonites or Jebusites? In any core–periphery relationship, the
peripheral region already has an indigenous leadership prior to the start
of the core’s investment policy. More often than not, a local leadership
is the primary recipient of the core’s attention. In the Cisjordan
Highlands, the remnant of Merneptah’s Israel no doubt still lived among
other Canaanite groups. Probably, they were a majority population in
the early Iron Age II, though that was not necessarily the case.
If one presumes that Israel took some form of leadership role, that
group would be the beneficiaries of Phoenician investment. Biblical tales
probably preserve the folk memory of that leadership role. Legendary
figures that the Bible places prior to the rise of the Omri dynasty, such
as Saul, Jeroboam I, and Baasha, probably were the regional leaders.
Likewise, David, Solomon (Absalom?), and Rehoboam were their
counterparts in the less populous region to their south.
Biblical tales of ancient battles and profiles of the so-called judges
and early kings are the anthologized remains of many diverse, local oral
memories mixed with folklore. Tales such as Deborah’s battle in the
Jezreel Valley (Judges 4–5), Abimelech’s turbulent relations with the city
of Shechem (Judges 9), Saul’s battles (1 Samuel 9–31), David’s banditry
(1 Samuel 16–1 Kings 2), and the war between Asa and Baasha (1 Kgs
15.16–22) might retain memories of real people and events, though our
capacity to extract a historical hypothesis from such tales is limited. One
thing seems clear: the chronological framework into which these stories
have been placed is artificial. As one researcher has observed, it was the
haphazard fortunes of editorial design in the literary anthology that trans-
formed Abimelech into a ‘judge’ of a fictional ‘premonarchic’ era, whereas
Saul and David became ‘kings’ of the equally fanciful ‘early monarchy’.4
4 E. A. Knauf, ‘King Solomon’s Copper Supply’, in E. Lipiński (ed.), Phoenicia

and the Bible (Studia Phoenicia, 11; Leuven: Peeters, 1991), pp. 167–86
(181 n. 55).
If these three men were real persons, they probably lived and died during
the Transitional Decades (950–900 bce), though this can be disputed (see
the previous chapter).
The biblical stories of 1 Kings 1–11 also reflect the period under
discussion here, but in a different manner. The core–periphery
relationship between Phoenicia and Samaria is presupposed by King
Solomon’s tale set in Jerusalem. Significant details in this story sound
like actual conditions at Samaria in the early ninth century. Solomon
possesses chariots and a cavalry (1 Kgs 5.6 [4.26 in some English
versions]; cf. 10.26). Cavalry was invented during the ninth century; it
did not yet play a military role in the tenth century, when Solomon is
supposed to have lived. Also, Solomon enters a treaty relationship with
a Phoenician king (1 Kgs 5.26 [5.12]). The Phoenician king provides
lumber and artisans so that Solomon can build a palace and a temple,
and he gives Solomon great quantities of gold. In return, Solomon
pays with raw resources and cedes land to Phoenicia (1 Kgs 5.22–5, 32
[5.8–11, 18]; 7.13–14; 9.10–14). This description is a perfect example
of a core that invests in, and thus elevates, an elite class in the periphery
so that raw resources can be extracted.
The Bible sets its tale of King Solomon in the eleventh century bce,
and modern historians set it in the tenth, but the reality behind the tale
belongs to the ninth century. In the previous chapter, it was noted that
archaeological data to support the image of Solomon at Jerusalem are
lacking. By contrast, the excavation at Samaria fits the literary images.
Why would the biblical authors transfer details of King Omri’s capital
at Samaria to King Solomon’s Jerusalem of an earlier era? Social
anthropologists have noted many instances in which the details of a
less famous person’s story ‘migrate’ to a more famous person. In this
case, from the perspective of a scribe living in Jerusalem who does not
personally identify with Samaria, ‘our’ King Solomon is more signif-
icant than ‘their’ King Omri. The authors of 1 Kings 16 clearly did not
like Omri, but perhaps they believed that Solomon was the greatest king
the world had ever known (1 Kgs 3.4–15).
In sum, the kingdom of Israel began to emerge in the human
generations just prior to the building of a ninth-century capital city at
Samaria. Samaria’s rise derives from substantial Phoenician investment
to promote a preexisting elite class in this peripheral region. Once
established, Samaria gradually emerged as its own core area, so
that it exerted influence to its south and east. The kingdom of Judah
emerged as a substantial state in the latter half of the ninth century

bce, probably as a vassal of Samaria. Meanwhile, Samaria-Israel’s
interest in Transjordan had a similar impact on the emergence of states
in Ammon, Moab, and, eventually, Edom. The balance of powers would
change, however, as the Neo-Assyrian Empire began to encroach upon
the Canaanite regional kingdoms. Let us take a look at Palestine from a
Mesopotamian point of view.
Neo-Assyria and Neo-Babylonia,

the Mesopotamian Powers of Iron Age II
Desire to extract raw resources and to control the international trade
routes tempted the Neo-Assyrian Empire westward as early as the ninth
century, and these persistent kings continued their assault on Canaanite
lands for generations. Biblical authors, such as those who constructed
the ‘books of prophecy’ (for example, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah,
Jeremiah), blame the destruction of Israel and Judah on the sinfulness of
the kings and people. These writers claim that the failure to obey divine
commands caused divine punishment. In reality, even if these kingdoms
had been populated by perfectly righteous people, their demise was
a foregone conclusion. Neo-Assyrian, and later Neo-Babylonian,
aggression in Canaan came in waves, like the rising tides that engulf
sand castles on the seashore. The large armies that Mesopotamian kings
mustered dwarfed the relatively tiny kingdoms in the peripheral regions
between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah
never stood a chance. It is surprising that they lasted as long as they did.
The details of politics, warfare, and cultural change within Mesopotamia
are beyond the scope of this book. The relentless Neo-Assyrian invasion
of Canaan will be our focus. At times, the military campaigns were
almost annual, with Neo-Assyrian troops marching, extracting locally
grown food, and giving their king opportunity to collect tribute. These
troops engaged in battle only when necessary. In many cases, the
local kings found it more expedient to submit, pledge fealty to the
Neo-Assyrian lord, and retain their own thrones. In other cases, local
kings would resist and face the onslaught from the military servants of
the mighty god Ashur. In a few cases, local kings banded together into
anti-Assyrian coalitions to halt the Neo-Assyrian advance.
As the Neo-Assyrian Empire gradually engulfed Canaan, that region
became an intricate network of vassal kingdoms and provinces. From
the Neo-Assyrian king’s viewpoint, a vassal kingdom was better than

a province. A vassal king paid tribute just as a province paid taxes, but
it was less trouble to maintain. The vassal had an indigenous bureau-
cracy in place, and that made for more efficient governance than the
cumbersome creation of a new provincial government. Moreover, if
an outside power were to attack the region, the vassal would, in part,
shed his own soldiers’ blood and invest his own resources in defense,
whereas a provincial government would require imperial troops and
funds for that effort.
From the perspective of the vassal kingdom, Neo-Assyrian dominance
had some advantages as well as its quite obvious disadvantages. The
vassal king was viewed by the Neo-Assyrian emperor as a governor
who ruled on behalf of Assyrian interests, but he was viewed by his
own subjects as a king appointed by the patron god. As a vassal, this
king was obligated to pay an annual tribute and to supply troops and
resources to meet Neo-Assyrian needs around the vast empire. The
tribute was demanding, which necessitated imposition of heavy taxes
on the local population, and that could create unrest. On the other hand,
this financial burden was offset by the security that the empire promised
and usually delivered.
Vassal kings could and did flourish under Neo-Assyrian rule. In some
cases, a local king even sought Neo-Assyrian protection as he struggled
against his neighbors. In a few cases, a vassal king or even a provincial
governor was able to achieve such prominence that he could operate as
a kind of emperor over his own small region. Nevertheless, vassals had
to be careful, lest they overstep their authority and risk the wrath of their
Neo-Assyrian lord.
Neo-Assyrian interaction with the peoples of Canaan can be divided
into three phases: expansion, followed by consolidation, and then
decline (see Figure 35). The first phase was the longest because
the process of expansion was not smooth and uninterrupted. Some
Neo-Assyrian emperors were more successful than others, and the
early era of expansion saw a few periods in which stagnation or even
withdrawal was the norm. The second phase, consolidation, was a
relatively uninterrupted period of Neo-Assyrian control over Canaanite
land, but this was followed by a brief period of rapid decline during
which a new power, Babylon, emerged.
A significant player in the first phase was Neo-Assyrian King
Shalmaneser III (858–824 bce), whose royal inscription describes
Neo-Assyria Neo-Babylonia
Expansion Consolidation Decline Expansion
900–745 bce 745–620s bce 620s–609 bce From 620s bce
Significant kings: Kings: Minor kings Significant kings:
Shalmaneser III Tiglath-pileser III Nabopolassar
Adad-nirari III Shalmaneser V Nebuchadnezzar II
Sargon II
Sennacherib
Esarhaddon
Ashurbanipal
Figure 35. Neo-Assyria and Neo-Babylonia
an anti-Assyrian coalition that included King Ahab of Israel (1 Kgs

16.29). The coalition’s leadership came from two cities on the front
lines of this war: Damascus and Hamath. According to Shalmaneser
III, the coalition included about ten or twelve regional powers, as well
as a contingent of Egyptian soldiers. Apparently third in command
behind the kings of Damascus and Hamath was ‘Ahab the Israelite’,
which is the only reference to Israel in any Neo-Assyrian text. In spite
of his insistence that he was victorious from the start, Shalmaneser was
compelled to battle this coalition several times between 853 and about
845 bce. Apparently, only in the late 840s did the coalition finally
collapse. Although participation in the anti-Assyrian coalition was
perhaps the most significant military and financial commitment of King
Ahab’s career, the Bible is entirely silent about it. The Hebrew scribes
either did not know about it or did not think it was important.
A second emperor was central to this early period of Neo-Assyrian
expansion. On a royal inscription, Adad-nirari III (810–783 bce) boasts
of his victory over Damascus and claims to have received tribute from
that kingdom and many others. Included in his list is a reference to the
tribute paid by ‘Joash of Samaria’. This appears to be King Jehoash
of Israel, whose name can be spelled two ways, with an ‘intervo-
calic h’ (Je-ho-ash, as in 2 Kgs 13.10) or without (Jo-ash, as in 2 Kgs
13.14). Once again, however, the Bible is silent about Adad-nirari’s
involvement in Israel’s affairs.
Consolidation of Neo-Assyrian power in Canaan began with the
powerful Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 bce), who also is mentioned in
the Bible. He is the King Pul who received tribute from an Israelite
king (2 Kgs 15.19–20). The name ‘Pul’ also appears in Mesopotamian
records; it was a shortened form, a kind of nickname, for the more

formal ‘Tiglath-pileser’. The Bible also notes that Tiglath-pileser devas-
tated northern Palestine (2 Kgs 15.29), and archaeological data suggest
that warfare was a part of this region in the middle of the eighth century
bce.
Neo-Assyrian inscriptions tell us that Tiglath-pileser conducted
three military campaigns in Canaan. He transformed the kingdom of
Damascus into an Assyrian province and captured the Philistine coast
so that he could seize control of the trade routes. From the emperor’s
perspective, Israel and Judah were pieces of troublesome real estate
in the midst of the region he coveted for financial gain. To solve the
headaches these small kingdoms created, Tiglath-pileser clipped off
portions of Israel (its holdings north and east of the Jezreel Valley) and
made Samaria and Jerusalem tribute-paying vassals. During this tumult,
Tiglath-pileser tells us that Samaria’s King Pekah was killed and that
he installed Hoshea on the throne of Israel, which is similar (but not
identical) to the report in 2 Kgs 15.30.
Consolidation of the Neo-Assyrian realm obligated the regional
vassal kingdoms to maintain a patron–client relationship. Tiglath-
pileser’s royal inscriptions include long lists of kings who paid tribute.
Among them are Menahem of Samaria (2 Kgs 15.19–20) and Jehoahaz
of Judah (whom the Bible knows by the shortened version of the same
name, Ahaz, in 2 Kgs 16).5 Also, a Neo-Assyrian archive records a
contingent of Judean soldiers who were serving in the Neo-Assyrian
imperial army, a detail that the Bible fails to mention. It is even possible
that the vassal alliance resulted in the marriage of Israelite or Judahite
women to Neo-Assyrian kings. This is by no means certain, but a tomb
in an Assyrian royal city contained the skeletons and grave goods of
women named Yapa or Yaba (possibly an Assyrian rendering of the
Hebrew word for ‘Beautiful’) and Atalya (perhaps the Hebrew name
Athaliah). Yapa/Yaba was a wife of Tiglath-pileser and gave birth to
his heir, Shalmaneser V (727–722 bce). Atalya was a wife of Sargon
5 The hypothesis of a Syro-Ephraimite war remains popular with many researchers.

For entry into this issue with bibliography, see L. R. Siddall, ‘Tiglath-pileser III’s
Aid to Ahaz: A New Look at the Problems of the Biblical Accounts in Light of
the Assyrian Sources’, ANES 46 (2009), pp. 93–106; S. Ernst, Ahas, König von
Juda: Ein Beitrag zur Literatur und Geschichte des Alten Israel (Arbeiten zu
Text und Sprache im Alten Testament, 80; St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2006).
II (722–705 bce). It is not certain that these women were from Israel
or Judah, but royal marriages were a routine part of treaty alliances. If
these were Israelite or Judahite women, this is another detail that does
not appear in the Bible.6
Consolidation did not bring uninterrupted peace to the regional
kingdoms of Palestine. Frequently, vassals would rebel against their
Neo-Assyrian lord. This was particularly common when an emperor
died and a moment of uncertainty about the identity of his successor
gave the regional vassals confidence to withhold tribute. If they
presumed that the next Neo-Assyrian king would be too weak to restore
his empire, their hunch was usually incorrect. Samaria-Israel was one
of the foolish rebels after the death of Tiglath-pileser III in 727 bce
(2 Kgs 17.4).7
The Neo-Assyrian Empire squashed Israel’s rebellion in or near the
year 722 bce. According to Mesopotamian chronicles, Shalmaneser V
(727–722 bce) terminated Israel’s existence as an independent vassal
kingdom. This is compatible with biblical references to Shalmaneser V
(2 Kgs 17.3–6; 18.9–12; perhaps also Hos. 10.14), but there is a degree
of uncertainty, because the next emperor, Sargon II (722–705 bce), also
claims to have defeated Samaria. It is possible that one emperor began
the process and the other completed it, but the situation remains unclear.
In any case, over a period of about a decade (c. 722–711 bce), Sargon
II appears to have transformed Hamath and Samaria into provinces.
During military campaigns, he laid siege to Philistine Ekron and devas-
tated the Israelite city of Shechem (see Figure 33). He also captured
Philistine Ashdod, which became a province as well (compare Isa.
20.1). By the final decade of the eighth century bce, the few remaining
independent vassal kingdoms were in southern Palestine, including
Jerusalem-Judah and the Philistine cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron.
When Sargon II died on a battlefield in Anatolia, the news resounded
in Jerusalem and other regional powers of Palestine, where the leadership
6 S. Dalley discusses the archived letter mentioning Judean troops in the imperial
army as well as the graves of Yapa/Yaba and Atalya, in Dalley, ‘Recent Evidence
from Assyrian Sources for Judaean History from Uzziah to Manasseh’, JSOT 28
(2004), pp. 387–401.
7 Most researchers identify the ‘King So of Egypt’ mentioned in 2 Kgs 17.4 with
Osorkon IV, the last king of the crumbling Twenty-second Dynasty. This identi-
fication is possible but entirely uncertain.
underestimated the new king, Sennacherib (705–680 bce). According

to both the Bible and Neo-Assyrian inscriptions, Jerusalem’s King
Hezekiah rebelled against Neo-Assyria (2 Kgs 18.7). Neo-Assyrian
inscriptions claim that Hezekiah conspired with a king of Sidon and
a Philistine ruler of Ashkelon. Hezekiah even annexed portions of
Philistine land and jailed the king of Ekron. Archaeologists have found
the remains of storage jars stamped with a Judahite royal insignia in
cities throughout the region, from Jerusalem and Lachish to Gezer,
Ekron, and Gath (see Figure 33). All these data are compatible with
the hypothesis that Jerusalem conspired against Neo-Assyria’s King
Sennacherib between 705 and 701 bce.8
Jerusalem’s rebellion was squashed by Sennacherib and the
Neo-Assyrian Empire.9 Sidon was captured, its rebellious king fled,
and the king of Ashkelon was deported. The king of Ekron, whom
Hezekiah had jailed, was restored to his throne and the Philistine region
was politically reorganized to Ekron’s benefit, resulting in losses of real
estate for Judah.
Sennacherib devastated the Shephelah, destroyed the Judahite cities
of Lachish, Beth-shemesh, Beer-sheba, and Arad, to name a few, and
penned up Hezekiah in Jerusalem ‘like a bird in a cage’, as Sennacherib
boasts on his royal inscription (see Figure 33). The book of Isaiah seems
to recall the same devastating resolution of the war in these words: ‘Your
land is desolate, your cities have been burned with fire. . . . Daughter
Zion [Jerusalem] remains like a booth in a vineyard, like a shelter in a
field, like a besieged city’ (Isa. 1.7–8). The archaeological data suggest
that Sennacherib did not attack isolated farmsteads or small villages.
He was, however, merciless against any fortified obstacle or any sign of
military resistance (see Figure 11).
The Bible tells a fanciful story in which the god of Jerusalem
protected King Hezekiah and saved his city (2 Kgs 18.17–19.37; Isaiah
36–7; 2 Chron. 32.1–23). The reality, however, is apparent from the
8 The pattern of the late-eighth-century royal storage jars (lĕmelek jars) is

consistent with a hypothesis that the list of fortified cities attributed to King
Rehoboam dates to the late eighth century and describes a fortification system
created by King Hezekiah (2 Chron. 11.5–10). See L. L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel:
What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (London: T&T Clark International,
2007), p. 177, with citations there.
9 L. L. Grabbe (ed.), ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701
BCE (JSOTSup, 363; London: T&T Clark International, 2003).
many archaeological excavations indicating widespread devastation

near the close of the eighth century bce. These remains match the sober
versions of the event recorded in the verses from Isaiah just quoted, and
in Neo-Assyrian records (see also 2 Kgs 18.13–16). All fanciful stories
of miraculous intervention aside, the policy of King Hezekiah was folly
and resulted in the unnecessary and violent deaths of many thousands.
On occasion, a historian speculates that Hezekiah’s personal
survival, together with the non-destruction of Jerusalem, indicates that
Sennacherib did not entirely achieve his military goals, but that specu-
lation is not necessary. The Neo-Assyrian inscriptions indicate that,
from time to time, a rebellious king who showed appropriate contrition
was not exiled or killed, but rather reinstalled as a vassal king. For
example, Tiglath-pileser III claims to have bestowed mercy on the
king of Philistine Gaza. Though that king had rebelled, the emperor
proclaims, ‘I returned him to his position’.10 The brief, sober account in
2 Kgs 18.14–16, which nearly matches Neo-Assyrian records, suggests
a similar resolution at Jerusalem (and suggests that 2 Kgs 18.17–19.37
is fiction). From the perspective of the Neo-Assyrian rulers, this was
a pragmatic solution, permitting the tribute to flow into Neo-Assyrian
coffers with a minimum of bureaucratic reorganization.
After Sennacherib’s invasion and defeat of King Hezekiah and his
coalition partners, Judah suffered a loss of population but Jerusalem
enjoyed a renaissance. Although Jerusalem was stripped of its rule
over the Shephelah and the Judean highlands experienced a temporary
reduction in population, the kingdom was permitted to remain an
independent, albeit tiny, vassal. The Neo-Assyrian emperors Esarhaddon
(680–669 bce) and Ashurbanipal (668–627 bce) list Judah’s King
Manasseh as a vassal in their inscriptions.11 Manasseh is said to pay
tribute and to supply troops for the Neo-Assyrian imperial army. Data
from several excavations (one at a place called Yabneh Yam on the
Coastal Plain and another at a southern desert site called Kadesh-
10 H. Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, King of Assyria: Critical

Edition, with Introductions, Translations and Commentary (Jerusalem: Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), pp. 140–1.
11 H. U. Steymans, ‘Die literarische und historische Bedeutung der
Thronfolgevereidigungen Asarhaddons’, in M. Witte et al. (eds), Die deutero
nomistischen Geschichtswerke: Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche
Perspektiven zur ‘Deuteronomismus’ – Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen
Propheten (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006), pp. 331–49.
Barnea) suggest that Judahite soldiers were stationed, along with

soldiers from other regions, in a system of fortifications established
either by the Assyrians or by an Egyptian army of the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty that was allied with Neo-Assyria.12
During the seventh century (600s bce), Philistine Ashkelon grew
to enormous proportions and was home to more than 10,000 people,
perhaps as many as 20,000 (see Figure 33).13 Likewise, Philistine Ekron
became a political and economic center of the region and the primary
producer of olive oil for export. Jerusalem and its highland villages
supplied olives for Ekron. Also, archaeological discoveries indicate that
Judah participated in the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s increased emphasis
on long-distance trade with Sheba to the south. The port at Tell
el-Kheleifeh (biblical Ezion-geber, at modern Eilat-Aqaba) emerged
in the late eighth or early seventh century, suggesting that this portion
of the tale of Solomon describes the policies of King Manasseh (1 Kgs
9.26).
Although the author(s) of 2 Kings seem to have hated King Manasseh,
calling him a wicked king who shed innocent blood, the evidence
suggests that Manasseh presided over Jerusalem’s moment of greatest
economic stability and peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. One
doubts the accusation of 2 Kgs 21.16. The bloodshed of this verse
contrasts sharply with the remainder of the charge against Manasseh
(2 Kgs 21.3–15). The specified crimes attributed to Manasseh are only
ritual aberrations. In the ancient world, a king maintained complete
control over the state religion, so the accusations are nothing more
than frustration expressed by someone with an alternative religious
opinion. The Bible claims that Manasseh ruled for 55 years (2 Kgs
21.1; 2 Chron. 33.1). The book of 2 Chronicles tries to explain how
such a wicked king could live so long by constructing an account of
Manasseh’s bondage in Babylon and subsequent religious repentance
12 Some have tried to interpret Yabneh Yam as evidence for an imperial expansion
by Jerusalem, but the argument is weak. For discussion of the site, see A.
Fantalkin, ‘Mezad Hashavyahu: Its Material Culture and Historical Background’,
Tel Aviv 28 (2001), pp. 1–165. Fantalkin suggests the site was part of the
Egyptian imperial expansion as Neo-Assyrian power declined.
13 N. Na’aman, ‘Ashkelon under the Assyrian Empire’, in J. D. Schloen (ed.),
Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 351–9.
(2 Chron. 33.10–13). The tale does not match Neo-Assyrian data of the
period and most researchers view it as a pious fiction.
During the seventh century bce, the focus of Neo-Assyria’s attention
was Egypt. Multiple attempts were made to invade and conquer the
land of the Nile. Esarhaddon marched on Memphis in 671 bce, and
Ashurbanipal conquered Thebes by 663. Their enemy was the Twenty-
fifth Dynasty (also called the Nubian, Cushite, or Napatan dynasty). This
was a line of kings from the region now called Ethiopia. This dynasty
emerged in the final decades of the eighth century, while Sargon II was
ruling over Neo-Assyria. The Ethiopian warrior with whom Esarhaddon
and Ashurbanipal contended was Taharqa (reigned c. 690–664 bce),
who fought in Palestine during the 670s bce. Biblical scribes know him
as Tirhakah and place him on the battlefield against Sennacherib in 701
bce (2 Kgs 19.9), which is unlikely because Taharqa was just a child in
that year. A few historians have reinterpreted the data so that the biblical
text can be viewed as reliable, but the more compelling explanation is
that Hebrew folk memory replaced the name of the actual Egyptian
leader of 701 bce (possibly Pharaoh Shabaka) with the name of a more
famous king who appeared a generation later.14
After Ashurbanipal’s capture of Thebes, a new Egyptian power
emerged with Neo-Assyrian support: the Twenty-sixth Dynasty with
its capital at Sais. These kings played a decisive role in the fate of
Palestine over the next few human generations. By the 620s bce, the
Neo-Assyrian Empire was weakening and Sais was growing strong. The
Neo-Assyrian Empire had become too large to maintain, and the kings
who followed Ashurbanipal were not up to the task. Several vassal
kingdoms in Mesopotamia attacked their lord, destroying the city of
Ashur in 614 and the city of Nineveh in 612. A biblical text attributed to
a prophet named Nahum gloats over Nineveh’s fate, but another book of
the Bible, Jonah, presents the opposite point of view. The story of Jonah
presents a hypothetical alternate fate for Nineveh. This is a parable
in which the god Yahweh sends a prophet whose message motivates
Nineveh to repent of its evil and be spared from destruction.
As Neo-Assyrian power in Palestine receded, the local provinces and
vassal kingdoms could not hope for independence, for the Twenty-sixth
14 D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 353 n. 163; Na’aman, ‘Ashkelon’, p. 356.
Dynasty had become a presence in Palestine.15 The king of Egypt,

Psammetichus I (663–610 bce), tried to support the disintegrating
Neo-Assyrian Empire, but Egyptian forces gradually became the new
occupying power in Canaan. This situation, which the Bible notes
almost incidentally when it says that Neo-Babylonian forces usurped
the lands once held by Psammetichus I (2 Kgs 24.7), placed Jerusalem,
among many others, under Egyptian control by the late 620s bce. The
Bible seems to preserve a memory that the king of Judah in this era,
Josiah, was a vassal of the emerging Egyptian Empire. Apparently,
the new Egyptian king Neco II (610–594 bce) discerned disloyalty in
Josiah and executed him during a state visit at Megiddo (2 Kgs 23.29).
(The book of Chronicles transforms this into a fanciful morality tale
about Josiah’s godless war of rebellion; 2 Chron. 35.20–25.)
The new power emerging from Mesopotamia was the Neo-Babylonian
Empire under the leadership of King Nabopolassar (626–605 bce). For
a few years, Egyptian troops in Canaan kept the Babylonians on the
eastern side of the Euphrates. Then, in 605 bce, Neco II was defeated
by a new Babylonian military genius, Nebuchadnezzar II, in a battle
at Carchemish in Syria (2 Kgs 24.7; Jer. 46.2). Egypt’s influence
vanished quickly from the region and Jerusalem, among many others,
appears to have submitted to a new lord, the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Archaeological data are consistent with a hypothesis of this change
in regime. For example, excavation at Ekron demonstrates that this
Philistine city was destroyed near the close of the seventh century bce.
A papyrus found in Egypt from a King Adon appears to be from the
last king of Ekron. This letter suggests that Ekron failed to submit to
Neo-Babylonia and faced its military wrath. King Adon pleaded, appar-
ently in vain, for assistance from Pharaoh.
Neo-Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 bce) hoped to
conquer Egypt. He attacked the Egyptian Delta in 601 bce, but
his army was defeated and turned back at the battle of Migdol
on the border between the Delta and the Sinai Peninsula. Because
Nebuchadnezzar was forced to return to Babylon and reconstruct
his army, Jerusalem rebelled. According to both Babylonian records
and the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar returned and attacked Jerusalem in
598–597 bce (2 Kings 24). Judah’s king was captured and exiled to
Babylon, where Babylonian archives record his presence and receipt of
15 N. Na’aman, ‘The Kingdom of Judah under Josiah’, Tel Aviv 18 (1991), pp. 3–71.
food rations (see also Jer. 24.1; 27.20). The Neo-Babylonian emperor
placed a new king on Judah’s throne (2 Kgs 24.17). However, when
Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon, he faced a rebellion against his
authority. Meanwhile, news reached Palestine that the new king of the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty, Psammetichus II (594–589 bce), had defeated
the last remnant of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty in southern Egypt. This
was soon followed by the Egyptian king’s ‘victory tour’ of Palestine in
593 bce. From the perspective of local leadership, it seemed as though
Egypt, not Babylon, was the new power in Palestine.
According to the Bible (2 Kings 25; Jeremiah 39 and 52), Jerusalem
rebelled a second time against the Neo-Babylonian Empire and was
destroyed by the army of Nebuchadnezzar II, in or near the year 586
bce. The Twenty-sixth Dynasty did not come to Jerusalem’s rescue.
The biblical story is consistent with archaeological data, which suggest
that Jerusalem lay in ruins from the early sixth century (500s bce) to
the middle decades of the fifth century. Although the rural population
was not significantly affected (there was only a slight drop in rural
population and the wine-producing industry appears to have been
untouched), the elites of the capital city disappear from the archaeo-
logical record. The Bible reports that the leadership of Jerusalem was
deported to Babylon and that Judah became a Babylonian province,
with a new capital at Mizpah, to the north of Jerusalem (see Figure 33).
The kingdom of Judah had ceased to exist.
This is a basic outline of events told primarily from the perspective of
the Mesopotamian imperial powers. Almost every detail of this narrative
would be disputed by one historian or another, but all researchers agree
with the broad outline. It is time, now, to take a closer look at some of
these same events from the perspective of the regional kingdoms of Iron
Age II Palestine.
Canaanite Regional Powers in the Ninth Century bce

The ninth century saw the rise of many regional kingdoms in Canaan. One
reason was Neo-Assyrian aggression, which compelled local leadership
to develop stronger, more unified regional states in self-defense. We
have noted that the southern regions emerged a little later than the more
populous and fertile northern areas. The exception was Philistia, which
was a series of independent cities that remained in control of the Coastal
Plain south of Phoenicia throughout the Iron Ages I and II.
With economic investment from Phoenicia, the House of Omri

became the first major power in the Cisjordan Highlands. Although these
kings were among the most successful Hebrew-speaking monarchs of
the Iron Age, their influence over the region was eclipsed quickly after
the dynasty’s end by a new and far more successful king of Damascus
named Hazael. Together, the House of Omri and King Hazael dominated
Palestinian regional politics in the ninth century bce.
The Hebrew scribes of Jerusalem apparently hated the House of
Omri and depicted King Ahab and his wife Jezebel as wicked and
foolish villains (1 Kings 16 to 2 Kings 10). If Hebrew scribes who
lived in Samaria had contributed books for the biblical anthology, the
Bible’s portrait of the Omrides might be quite different. Perhaps they
would be presented as pious and benevolent rulers. Beneath the biblical
text’s fictional embellishments, traces of information suggest that the
scribes knew more than they wrote about this dynasty. For example, an
incidental reference to Omri’s military power (1 Kgs 16.27) suggests
that the scribes were aware of the dynasty’s military accomplishments.
Those accomplishments can be traced in archaeological and epigraphic
evidence.
The center of Omride power was a newly built city called Samaria
in the Cisjordan Highlands, the excavation of which revealed a large
Phoenician-style palace. Archaeological data also suggest that the
Omri dynasty controlled the Jezreel Valley.16 Some researchers believe
that the early Israelite kings prior to the Omrides (for example, Saul,
Jeroboam I, Baasha) established Israelite control of the Jezreel Valley.17
By this hypothesis, the Omrides inherited the Jezreel, which was already
in Israelite political hands. It is possible that biblical folklore recalls the
process of this early takeover but creates an artificial chronology for the
events (for example, Judges 5; 1 Samuel 31).
The Omride realm rapidly became the political and economic core of
Palestine and spread into the Transjordan. A stone inscription discovered
16 For example, the newly constructed citadel called Jezreel; Megiddo VA-IVB;
Ta‘anach IIB; Tel Rehov V. For discussion of the High, Middle, and Low
Chronologies, see Chapter 7.
17 For example, Megiddo VB; Ta‘anach IIA. See N. Na’aman, ‘The Northern
Kingdom in the Late Tenth-Ninth Centuries BCE’, in H. G. M. Williamson (ed.),
Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007), pp. 399–418 (402–3).
at Dibon in Moab tells us that King Omri and his son occupied Moabite
land (see Figure 33). This royal stela commemorated King Mesha,
who claims to have rebelled against Israel’s oppression and established
an independent kingdom, an event that seems to have occurred about
midcentury (though some researchers suggest a date much later in the
ninth century). The Bible preserves a folktale based on this event (2
Kgs 3.4–27). The fact that the Omrides maintained an Israelite imperial
presence as far south as the Arnon suggests that they also made gains in
northern Transjordan, the region that connects their Cisjordan holdings
to Moab. Biblical folklore about warfare in Gilead (for example, 1 Kgs
22.1–40; 2 Kgs 8.28) is compatible with a hypothesis that the Omri
dynasty took control of the region from the Yarmuk south to the Arnon.
As for the southern portion of Omride lands, many researchers
believe that the Omrides fortified Gezer and maintained imperial
control over Jerusalem. In biblical folklore, the kings of Judah are
represented as less powerful than, and often subservient to, the kings
of Israel. For example, in 1 Kings 22 (compare 2 Chronicles 18),
when the Israelite king invites the king of Judah to go to war as an
ally, the king of Judah responds with the words of a loyal vassal, ‘I
am as you are; my people are your people, my horses are your horses’
(1 Kgs 22.4). The Bible reports the marriage of an Omride princess
to a Jerusalem king and, if reliable, this suggests that Jerusalem had
a treaty relationship with Samaria (2 Kgs 8.18, 26). The folktale of 2
Kgs 14.8–14 is set after the time of the Omrides, but if it preserves
any memory of a real event, it too illustrates the military superiority
of the northern kingdom, whose capacity for recruiting an army far
outnumbered that of the sparsely populated Judean highlands. In other
words, a hypothesis can be defended in which the Omri dynasty was
the dominant partner in an alliance with Jerusalem-Judah. This might
be the origin of the United Monarchy legend discussed in Chapter 7
(for example, 2 Samuel 5).
It is possible that the Omrides also extended their rule north into the
Galilee (biblical Naphtali) as far as Hazor, and perhaps controlled the
coastal city of Dor (see Figure 33). Almost all historians assume this to
be the case, but it remains uncertain. Neither a biblical text nor archaeo-
logical data suggest that an Israelite king ruled Dor (for 1 Kgs 4.11,
see the previous chapter). The excavations at Hazor reveal a city that
is contemporary with the Omri dynasty, but aspects of the architecture
are not identical to the structures at, say, Megiddo and Samaria. The
hypothesis that the Omrides controlled Dor and Hazor is reasonable but,
so far, supporting data are few and the hypothesis is easily contested.
Although Omri and his heirs dominated Palestine, they did not rule
Syria and the coastal regions, which were home to other significant
powers. Phoenician cities, such as Tyre and Sidon, were independent,
though the Bible suggests that the Omrides maintained an alliance with
Sidon. Beth-rehob and Hamath were political centers of significance in
southern and central Syria, and there were a number of large regional
kingdoms north of Hamath. But the city of Damascus produced a ruler
who would come to dominate almost all of Syria and Palestine after the
Omri dynasty had come to an end. Earlier, we noted that Neo-Assyrian
King Shalmaneser III fought a coalition of anti-Assyrian kingdoms
from about 853 to 845 bce. That coalition had been led by the kings
of Damascus and Hamath and included King Ahab of Samaria-Israel.
However, by 841 bce, the coalition was no more. The king of Hamath
seems to have submitted to Shalmaneser III and the king of Damascus
had died. This created a new distribution of power in the region.
According to Shalmaneser III, a king of Tyre and a king of Bit
Humri (Samaria-Israel) submitted to him in 841 bce, but a new king
of Damascus continued, alone, to defy Neo-Assyrian power. The
submissive king of Samaria-Israel was Jehu, whose brutal murder
of the last members of the Omri dynasty is described in the Bible
Figure 36. Israel’s King Jehu kneels before Shalmaneser III of Neo-Assyria
(2 Kgs 9.14–28). Although the Bible portrays Jehu as a usurper,

Shalmaneser was happy to treat him as the legitimate heir of Omride
power. Probably the Neo-Assyrian emperor was happy to treat Jehu
as legitimate precisely because Jehu had surrendered Omride power
to him. Several hypotheses have been developed to explain why Jehu
submitted to the same Neo-Assyrian lord that the Omri dynasty had
fought for many years. Perhaps the explanation has to do with purely
pragmatic concerns. The Omri dynasty was allied by marriage with
Sidon and Jerusalem and, if the stories of 2 Kings 9 and 10 derive from
reliable information, Jehu had broken both these diplomatic supports by
murdering the daughter of Sidon’s king and by murdering Judah’s King
Ahaziah, who was a son of an Omride princess named Athaliah. Quite
possibly, with enemies now on every side, Jehu had no choice but to
submit to an imperial protector. In any case, as interesting as Jehu might
be, the defiant king of Damascus is the key player in this drama.
Shalmaneser III calls the defiant king of Damascus ‘Hazael, son of
nobody’. This was an insulting way of saying that Hazael was not the
legitimate heir to the throne of Damascus. He had taken the throne from
King Hadadezer. The Bible tells a similar story, in the form of a folktale
(2 Kgs 8.7–15; see also 1 Kgs 19.15). In the Bible, Hazael responds to
an Israelite prophet’s vision by murdering his lord, King Ben-hadad.
The tale has remembered the name of the Aramean king incorrectly.
Hazael’s predecessor was Hadadezer, the coalition leader of 853–845
bce. By contrast, Ben-hadad (which is the Hebrew spelling of the
Aramaic name Bar Hadad) was Hazael’s son and heir. In spite of this
error, the biblical folktale might remember correctly that Hazael staged
a coup in Damascus. It would seem that both Samaria and Damascus
suffered military coups in the mid-840s bce. The more successful of the
two was that of Hazael.
This ‘son of nobody’ was a military strategist of the first rank.
Shalmaneser III seems to have been thwarted by Hazael. Although
the Neo-Assyrian emperor proclaims two great victories (in 841 and
838 bce), Shalmaneser does not report the death or the submission
of Hazael. It is possible that the two fought to a stalemate both times.
Moreover, a series of significant military destructions at cities in Syria
and Palestine suggest that the biblical portrait of a Damascene ‘empire’
is accurate (2 Kgs 13.3). The Bible describes Hazael’s victories in
Israel, Transjordan, and Philistia (2 Kgs 10.32–3; 12.18–19 [English
12.17–18]). Archaeological excavations suggest that the description
in Amos 6.2 might reflect Hazael’s military conquests: Calneh (Tell

Ta‘yinat in Syria), Hamath, and Gath suffered massive destruction
at about the same time, roughly the 840s to 810s bce. Other cities
suffered military attack or destruction at this time, including Hazor and
Megiddo. Although the author of Amos 1.4 was not Hazael’s contem-
porary, he recalled the House of Hazael with disgust.
If the House of Omri dominated Palestine in the middle decades of
the ninth century, Hazael dominated both Syria and Palestine during
the final decades of that century. After Shalmaneser III died in 824 bce,
Hazael was free of Neo-Assyrian aggression because Shalmaneser’s
heir was preoccupied with rebellions taking place in Mesopotamia.
Neo-Assyria would not return to Canaan until the days of Hazael’s son,
Bar Hadad (the Ben-hadad of 2 Kgs 13). In the meantime, Hazael was
free to conquer much of Syria and Palestine, and appears to have done
so from the 830s to the 810s bce. Many researchers have adopted the
hypothesis that most of Syria and Palestine (roughly, the traditional land
that had been called Canaan) came under the imperial rule of Damascus
during these decades.
Hazael must have died a few years before 800 bce, and his empire
did not survive him. Hazael’s son, Bar Hadad, pursued his father’s
aggressive policy but was far less successful. Vassal kings slipped away
from Bar Hadad’s power. A king of Hamath named Zakkur expanded
his own holdings by encroaching on neighboring regions. Zakkur’s
royal inscription speaks of a coalition force, led by Bar Hadad, that was
unable to defeat Zakkur. A significant reason for Bar Hadad’s losses was
the reappearance of Neo-Assyria under the leadership of Adad-nirari
III (810–783 bce), who attacked Damascus at the close of the ninth
century.
The Bible suggests that Israel’s House of Jehu expanded after the turn
of the century, with two successful members of the dynasty, Jehoash (2
Kgs 13.24–25) and Jeroboam II (2 Kgs 14.23–5). Jehoash (Joash) paid
tribute to Adad-nirari III, but might have taken advantage of the damage
Neo-Assyria had inflicted on Damascus by attacking and defeating Bar
Hadad. After the death of Adad-nirari III, Neo-Assyria again receded
from the region for about a generation, so a hypothesis that Israelite rule
expanded from roughly the 780s to the 740s bce is plausible. What was the
extent of that expansion? Just as important, what evidence could provide
an answer to this question? To illustrate how such a question is addressed,
let us turn to a sample site of investigation: the ancient city of Dan.
The City of Dan and an Aramaic Royal Inscription

The theme of this book is the question how do we know what we think
we know? The city of Dan provides an excellent sample of the problems
a historian must try to solve (see Figure 33). Dan might have been
the northernmost outpost of the Omride kingdom during the middle
decades of the ninth century bce. Perhaps it was an Israelite city as
early as the tenth century and as late as the eighth century. The belief
that Dan was Israelite in the tenth through eighth centuries is common
among researchers. However, the data, biblical and archaeological, are
not as compatible with this hypothesis as one might wish.
The Bible knows very little about the city of Dan. Usually when a
biblical text mentions Dan, it refers to a fictional ‘tribe’ or an eponymous
ancestor, one of the sons of Jacob.18 Although some researchers seek a
memory of a real event in the folktale of Judges 18, the most that can
be said is that this story might preserve the memory of an ethnic group
that migrated from Philistia to the city of Dan at an unknown date.
Some researchers are not convinced that the ethnic group in question
was Israelite.19
The Bible makes only a handful of references to the city of Dan,
and most of these were composed long after the Neo-Assyrian Empire
had permanently ripped the region of Dan out of any Israelite political
control. Some of these passages explicitly date themselves to a time
when no Israelite king could have ruled Dan (for example, Jer. 4.15;
8.16). Various researchers suspect that almost all other references to
Dan were invented at very late dates (for example, 2 Sam. 24.5–8; 1
Kgs 12.29–30; 2 Kgs 10.29; Amos 8.14).20 The only biblical mention of
18 This accounts for the majority of references to Dan in the Bible. For discussion,
see K. L. Noll, ‘The City of Dan in the Pre-Assyrian Iron Age’, Proceedings
of the Eastern Great Lakes and Midwestern Biblical Societies 15 (1995), pp.
145–56.
19 The classic hypothesis is that ‘Dan’ was connected to the Sea Peoples (Denyen)
and thus a Greek immigrant group or a subset of the Philistines who were
adopted into Israel by the Hebrew scribes. See Y. Yadin, ‘And Dan, Why Did
He Remain in Ships?’ Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology 1 (1968),
pp. 9–23. Compare the discussion in Y. L. Arbeitman, ‘Detecting the God Who
Remained in Dan’, Henoch 16 (1994), pp. 9–14.
20 The late, fictional nature of 1 Kgs 12.29-30 (with 2 Kgs 10.29) is commonly
recognized. See, for example, J. Pakkala, ‘Jeroboam without Bulls’, ZAW 120
(2008), pp. 501–25; A. Schenker, ‘Jeroboam and the Division of the Kingdom
the city that might derive from some kind of archival record is the notice
that Dan was captured by an Aramean king (1 Kgs 15.20); if this notice
is reliable, the city of Dan was not ruled by the Israelite kingdom when
the House of Omri came to power (1 Kings 16).21
In my view, the prevailing scholarly assumption that Dan was
an Israelite city derives from the biblical cliché ‘from Dan as far as
Beer-sheba’ (Judg. 20.1; 1 Sam. 3.20; 2 Sam. 3.10; 17.11; 24.2, 15; 1
Kgs 5.5 [English 4.25]; compare 1 Chron. 21.2; 2 Chron. 30.5). As noted
in the previous chapter, this cliché suggests an ideal rather than a reality.
Although the Hebrew scribes write as though the region surrounding
Dan was Israelite (for example, 2 Sam. 20.19), they occasionally admit
that this region was ruled by Aramean states (for example, Judg. 18.28;
2 Sam. 20.15). In this connection, it is worth noting that ninth-century
inscriptions found at Dan are written in the Aramaic language.22
It is clear from the Bible that, in the minds of some Hebrew
scribes, Dan and Beer-sheba ought to have been the northernmost
and southernmost outposts of the Israelite ethnic community. Around
the world, anthropologists frequently encounter this idealistic use of
geographic boundary markers. In this case, idealism did not match
reality. Beer-sheba was in the arid Negev Valley, which was sparsely
populated in the best of times and often uninhabited for centuries at a
in the Ancient Septuagint: LXX 3 Kingdoms 12.24A-Z, MT 1 Kings 11–12; 14

and the Deuteronomistic History’, in A. de Pury, T. Römer, and J.-D. Macchi
(eds), Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent
Research (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 214–57; J. Van Seters,
‘The Deuteronomistic History: Can It Avoid Death By Redaction?’ in T. Römer
(ed.), The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (Leuven: Leuven University
Press, 2000), pp. 213–22. On 2 Sam. 24.5–8, see A. G. Auld, ‘Prophets Shared –
But Recycled’, in Future of Deuteronomistic History, pp. 19–28 (21). Amos 8.14
might refer to a city of Dan that was ruled by an Israelite king during the lifetime
of the scribe who penned the text, but in my view, this text is a gloss dependent
upon the biblical cliché ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’ and 2 Kgs 17.29–34.
21 S. B. Parker compares this tale to ancient epigraphs, with mixed results, in
Parker, Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on Narratives
in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997), pp. 89–99 and elsewhere; see also idem, ‘Did the
Authors of the Books of Kings Make Use of Royal Inscriptions?’ VT 50 (2000),
pp. 357–78.
22 A. Lemaire, ‘West Semitic Inscriptions and Ninth-Century BCE Ancient Israel’,
in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel, pp. 279–303 (283).
time. Dan was, perhaps, the faraway place that a scribe, securely rooted
in Jerusalem, conceived as a plausible distant landmark between an
ill-defined ‘us’ and an equally ill-defined ‘them’ (for example, Jer. 4.15;
8.16).
Because the Bible knows so little about the city of Dan, any claim
that this Iron Age city was Israelite depends almost exclusively on
archaeological evidence. The ancient city has been excavated exten-
sively. The excavator had no doubt that the city was ethnically Israelite
and, except for short intervals, ruled by Israelite kings prior to Tiglath-
pileser III’s invasion of the region (2 Kgs 15.29).23
Discussion of the excavated strata at Dan can become complex. The
following discussion avoids complexity by focusing on three strata,
very broadly defined: the earliest is Dan V and the youngest Dan III/II
(see Figure 37).24 According to the excavator, stratum V was destroyed
about the middle of the tenth century bce, and IV was built afterward.
Then IV was destroyed in the early ninth century bce, and stratum
III/II was built afterward. This last stratum was destroyed, along with
a number of other sites in the region, by Neo-Assyrian troops in the
mid-eighth century bce (consistent with the hypothesis that Tiglath-
pileser III was responsible).
Many researchers believe that Dan IV can be assigned to the late
tenth century bce and that it was built by a biblical king of Israel,
Jeroboam I. Although the pottery of this stratum could be from the ninth
century as easily as from the tenth, a passage from the Bible seems to
support the earlier date.
Stratum IV includes an impressive religious structure frequently
equated with 1 Kgs 12.29. This verse claims that an ‘evil’ king of Israel
built a religious shrine with a golden calf at Dan. Because this king,
Jeroboam I, is believed to have lived in the late tenth century bce,
Dan IV with its new religious shrine is placed in the late tenth century.
Although the pottery of Dan IV is not uniformly characteristic of the
Transitional Decades (950–900 bce), the excavator of Dan believed this
23 A. Biran, Biblical Dan (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994); idem, ‘Two
Bronze Plaques and the Hussot of Dan’, IEJ 49 (1999), pp. 43–54.
24 My labels for the strata are modified from E. Arie, ‘Reconsidering the Iron Age
II Strata at Tel Dan: Archaeological and Historical Implications’, Tel Aviv 35
(2008), pp. 6–64 (32). Note that Biran’s IVB has become Arie’s VA, which I have
simplified to V; Biran’s IVA has become Arie’s IV.
Figure 37. Tel Dan Strata
pottery was close enough to that era to support his interpretation, based
on 1 Kgs 12.29, of this stratum as a tenth-century city.25
Even if Dan IV was a late-tenth-century city, the association of this
stratum with 1 Kgs 12.29 has never been convincing.26 The biblical
scribe asserts that the patron god of Dan was represented by a golden
calf. In spite of the scribe’s obvious disapproval of this object, the
description implies that Dan’s shrine used a culturally common bull
iconography.27 Therefore, it is reasonable to expect common varieties
of bull iconography in the excavation. Certainly a golden statue would
have been stolen from the site in ancient times. Items made of precious
metals were coveted artifacts and often stolen by invading kings.
Nevertheless, an archaeologist might find associated bull imagery in
the form of broken terra-cotta, drawings on broken pottery, or small
bronze objects. The presence of bull iconography would not prove that
Dan IV’s religious shrine was Israelite, because Canaanite bull iconog-
raphy is common, but the absence of bull iconography would be a mark
against the equation of the shrine with 1 Kgs 12.29.
25 Arie, ‘Reconsidering Iron Age II Strata’, pp. 32–4.

26 K. L. Noll, ‘The God Who Is Among the Danites’, JSOT 80 (1998), pp. 3–23.
27 Although older scholarship assumed, without supporting argument, that Jeroboam
built shrines at Bethel and Dan containing bull iconography, the thesis also
included a cogent argument that the biblical scribes do not have a non-Yahwistic
deity in mind in 1 Kgs 12.29 and elsewhere (for example, Exodus 32; use of
the plural notwithstanding); the only uncertainty is whether the bull imagery
derived from Baal=Yahweh or El=Yahweh. See F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth
and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 73–5 and elsewhere; M. S. Smith,
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities of Ancient Israel (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), p. 51; J. Day, Yahweh and the Gods and
Goddesses of Canaan (JSOTSup, 265; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
2000), pp. 34–41.
The religious shrine at Dan does not contain any trace of bull iconog-
raphy associated with its patron god. Quite the contrary, the primary god
of Dan IV appears to have been a large terra-cotta statue of a humanlike
deity, fragments of which were found in the excavation.28 The only trace
of bull iconography is a bronze plaque that depicts a winged goddess
who stands on a bull.29 This bull is a divine pedestal for the goddess and
does not represent a patron god. The goddess on this plaque is called
Shaushka, a goddess who had not been, so far as is known, paired
with Yahweh. Some researchers invoke a common cliché: the absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence. This cliché is irrelevant to
historical research. The absence of evidence weakens any hypothesis.
During the 1990s, fragments of an Aramaic royal stela were found
at Dan, and this monument also undermines the hypothesis that Dan
IV was built by an Israelite king (see Figure 38).30 Because this stone
monument was found in what archaeologists call a secondary context,
the stratum in which this stone had been on public display was, at first,
uncertain. But the evidence is now clear (see Figure 37). As noted
above, Dan V had been destroyed in the middle of the tenth century, and
IV was built afterward. Eventually, Dan IV was destroyed in a military
conflict, and strata III/II were built afterward.
During construction of Dan III, the Aramaic royal stela was smashed
and its pieces were used as building material in a wall and pavement.
It follows logically that the Aramaic inscription had been on public
display earlier than Dan III, as part of stratum V or IV. It is not difficult
to determine which. Although the date of the Aramaic inscription
cannot be determined precisely, all researchers agree that, on paleo-
graphic data, the stone was carved no earlier than the second quarter of
28 C. Uehlinger, ‘Eine anthropomorphe Kultstatue des Gottes von Dan?’ BN 72

(1994), pp. 85–100 (89–90, 96); J. S. Holladay Jr., ‘Religion in Israel and Judah
under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach’, in P. D. Miller et
al. (eds), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of F.M. Cross (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1987), pp. 249–99 (254–5).
29 Biran, ‘Two Bronze Plaques’; T. Ornan, ‘The Lady and the Bull: Remarks on the
Bronze Plaque from Tel Dan’, in Y. Amit et al. (eds), Essays on Ancient Israel
in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman (Winona Lake, IN:
30 A. Biran and J. Naveh, ‘An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan’, IEJ 43
(1993), pp. 81–98; idem, ‘The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment’, IEJ 45
(1995), pp. 1–18.
Figure 38. Tel Dan fragmentary inscription, circa ninth century bce
the ninth century bce. Because Dan V was destroyed in the mid-tenth
century, that stratum is much too early for a ninth-century inscription.
Therefore, it is clear that the ninth-century inscription was placed on
public display during Dan IV.
The royal inscription is fragmentary, but enough of it survives to
determine that the voice who speaks from the stone was an Aramaic-
speaking king who worshiped Hadad. Hadad was the patron god of
Damascus and appears to have been the patron god of Dan IV as well.
That stratum was home to both the inscription and the newly built
religious shrine containing a terra-cotta statue of an anthropomorphic
god. It is reasonable to conclude that the people who ruled Dan IV
equated this terra-cotta god with the god named on the royal inscription.
Dan’s religious shrine never contained an Israelite king’s golden calf
because it was not an Israelite city, and its divine patron was Hadad, not
Yahweh.
It is possible to dissent from the argument just presented, but
alternative interpretations are less compatible with the data. The best
alternative hypothesis suggests that Dan IV was built by a tenth-century
Hebrew-speaking king (such as Jeroboam in 1 Kgs 12.29), followed by
a change of administration during the life of this single stratum, so that
an Aramaic-speaking worshiper of Hadad could erect a royal stela in
the same city decades later. However, if such a change occurred through
violent means, as suggested by 1 Kgs 15.20 (as well as the Aramaic
inscription of Dan IV), one expects to see a layer of destruction or, at
least, some sign of military activity. The best that can be said is that
there is no evidence to disprove a change of royal administration in a
single stratum, but that same absence of evidence renders the hypothesis
of such a change moot. By all appearances, Dan IV was built by an
Aramaic-speaking king in the late tenth century or in the ninth century
bce.31
Recent research suggests that the excavator’s decision to assign
Dan IV to the late tenth century was an error.32 On the basis of its
pottery and associated objects (faience figurines and an olive press),
31 For a researcher who wants to harmonize the archaeological data with the Bible,
there is another option, although it is so strained that it is unlikely to gain much
support. One could argue that Dan IV underwent two separate regime changes,
each of which left no trace in the archaeological record. First, Jeroboam built IV
in the late tenth century (1 Kgs 12.29). Then the city was captured by an Aramean
king during the 880s bce (1 Kgs 15.20). Next, the city was restored to Israelite
control in the deal bartered by King Ahab in the 850s bce (1 Kgs 20.34). Almost
all researchers will reject this scenario for two reasons. First, the Neo-Assyrian
inscriptions render it impossible that King Ahab went to war with Damascus.
Quite the contrary, Ahab was an ally of Damascus, fighting with Hadadezer
of Damascus against the armies of Shalmaneser III, and by the conventional
chronologies Ahab died before the coalition collapsed. Second, most biblical
researchers do not think it is a coincidence that the stories in 1 Kings 20 and
22.29–38 almost match the situation described in 2 Kgs 13.15–19 and 24–5.
There are three battles, Aphek is featured as a battleground, and the Aramean king
Ben Hadad (not Hadadezer!) cedes lands to the king of Israel. It is reasonable to
suggest that the stories of 1 Kings 20 and 22.29–38 are misplaced, providing one
allows that the scribe made slight modifications to the tales when he moved them
to their present location. Originally, these three stories were located after 2 Kings
13 and derived from memory of events in the eighth century, not the ninth. In the
older version of 1 Kings 16–22, Ahab died peacefully (specifically, he ‘slept with
his fathers’ in 1 Kgs 22.40; compare 1 Kgs 21.27–29).
32 Arie, ‘Reconsidering Iron Age II Strata’, pp. 15–31. Compare Noll, ‘God Among
the Danites’, pp. 6–7.
Dan IV is best interpreted as a late-ninth-century city. Some vessels

from Dan IV are types that often enjoy long use. However, among the
pottery that is useful for dating the stratum, a significant proportion is a
wheel-burnished type that was introduced in the late ninth century and
continued to be used in the eighth, suggesting that the city was built
after about 840 bce. This, like so many aspects of historical research,
is a controversial conclusion.33 If this new research is correct, then Dan
was an unoccupied ruin when Jeroboam was supposed to be active
(1 Kgs 12.29), remained a ruin when the war of 1 Kgs 15.16–22 was
supposed to have taken place, and was not yet rebuilt when the House
of Omri ruled most of Palestine (1 Kings 16 to 2 Kings 10; note 2 Kgs
10.29), suggesting that, once again, biblical stories remember the past
imperfectly.
The hypothesis that seems most consistent with the evidence is that
the city of Dan IV was built upon a ruin by King Hazael, and it is
Hazael’s royal voice that speaks from the Aramaic inscription that was
on public display in that city. In the early eighth century, Dan IV was
destroyed, its royal stela smashed, and a new city (strata III/II) was
built. Many researchers attribute the destruction of stratum IV and the
building of stratum III to the Israelite army of King Joash (Jehoash) as
described in 2 Kgs 13.24–5. This is reasonable and might be supported
by the appearance of Yahwistic names on some ostraca dating to the
mid-eighth century (stratum II). On the other hand, if Dan was under
Israelite rule in the eighth century, it is puzzling that Dan is not listed
among the Israelite holdings devastated by Tiglath-pileser III in 2 Kgs
15.29. This Neo-Assyrian king almost certainly attacked the city of
Dan, and its demise is clear from a layer of military destruction at the
site dating to the mid-eighth century, when Tiglath-pileser was active.
Clearly, some questions remain, but a hypothesis that Dan became,
for the first time, an Israelite city during the eighth century is reasonable
(c. 800–732 bce), assuming 2 Kgs 15.29 provides an incomplete list of
33 For example, H. J. Bruins and others date Dan IVA (my Dan IV) from about the
mid-eleventh century to the late tenth, based on one set of radiocarbon analyses.
These dates are too high even for the standard High Chronology and are based on
a small sample. See H. J. Bruins et al., ‘Iron-Age 14C Dates from Tel Dan: A High
Chronology’, in T. E. Levy and T. Higham (eds), The Bible and Radiocarbon
Dating: Archaeology, Text, and Science (London: Equinox, 2005), pp. 323–36
(332–3).
Israelite holdings in 732 bce. Perhaps the cliché ‘from Dan as far as
Beer-sheba’ was coined during the eighth century? The hypothesis is far
from certain, however, and majority scholarship’s continued tendency
to treat Dan as an Israelite city is only weakly supported by the data. In
any case, other questions about Dan and its royal stela remain unsettled.
Because the Dan stela is fragmentary, the voice who speaks from
the stone is unknown, and the hypothesis that this voice is Hazael of
Damascus remains uncertain (see Figure 38). The vast majority of histo-
rians believe this voice is King Hazael, and many publications assert
this attribution as a fact.34 Prior to the recent clarification of the stratig-
raphy at Dan, I had been skeptical of this identification.35 The voice
on the stone speaks of his own royal father, but Hazael was a usurper
and did not have a royal father. However, proponents of the Hazael
hypothesis suggested that the voice on this stone might have claimed to
be the legitimate heir in Damascus in spite of reality. Alternatively, he
could have been a legitimate heir of a small kingdom under vassalage
to Damascus, and from that strategic starting point, took over the throne
of his lord, the king of Damascus. In this way he could have had a
genuine royal father and be a usurper. Examples of both possibilities
can be found elsewhere in the ancient Near East, so these suggestions
are not far-fetched. In my view, the pottery demonstrates that Dan IV
was built in Hazael’s lifetime and therefore seems to favor a hypothesis
that Hazael’s voice is heard on the inscription, but the issue remains
unsettled.
Other details on the fragmentary royal inscription raise interesting
questions. For example, the voice on the stone claims to have waged
war against a king of Israel and won lands that the king of Israel had
tried to annex. Which king of Israel would this have been, and what land
was under dispute? Does this passage suggest that, from the viewpoint
of inhabitants in Dan, Israel was a distant kingdom to the south that had
encroached on ‘our’ king’s territory? Also, the voice on the stone appar-
ently met, or battled, a representative from the Bet Dawid, ‘House of
34 For example, the paper brochure, dated 1996, available in the Goldman-Schwartz
Hall of the Israel Museum, where this inscription is on display, attributes the stela
to Hazael and does not discuss other possibilities. The same attribution is on the
Israel Museum web page: http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/galleries/viewItemE.
asp?case=3&itemNum=371407. (accessed July 2011)
35 Noll, ‘God Among the Danites’, p. 15, with n. 38.
David’. Is it possible that this is an inscriptional reference to the events

described in 2 Kgs 12.18–19 (English 12.17–18)? Or does it refer to
another event, about which the Bible does not speak? With the present
state of evidence, these are questions that cannot be answered.
A final example illustrates how little we can know from this tanta-
lizing inscription in Figure 38. On one corner of the inscription, the
names of two kings are listed, but the stone is broken and it is impos-
sible to know whose names were written here. The names are: ‘[ ]RM,
son of [ ]’ and ‘[ ]YHW, son of [ ]’. Majority scholarship jumped to an
ill-advised conclusion that the voice on this stone claims to have killed
‘[Jo]ram, son of [Ahab]’ and ‘[Ahaz]iah son of [Jehoram]’. As this book
goes to press, this remains the viewpoint of almost all researchers. If
they are correct, the Dan inscription directly contradicts the Bible’s
claim that Jehu murdered these two kings (2 Kgs 9.14–28). In my view,
the majority viewpoint is, at best, merely possible. However, there are
other conjectures that are just as possible or even more plausible. For
example, it is likely that this royal stela in Dan might mention a king
of nearby Tyre, such as ‘[Hi]ram, son of [unknown name]’. Likewise,
the king of Israel on this stone could be ‘[Ahaz]iah, son of [Ahab]’.36
There are other possibilities, but it is not my goal to identify the names
in this fragment. It is my goal to demonstrate that, until more complete
evidence becomes available, the names cannot be identified.
In sum, the city of Dan during the pre-Assyrian Iron Age makes an
36 If the name ‘[Ahaz]iah’ appears on the inscription, it has been spelled with the
‘intervocalic h’. This is not impossible in an Aramaic inscription, even though
the normal spelling in a northern Hebrew dialect would have elided the h. See
Noll, ‘God Among the Danites’, p. 10. G. Athas’s objection to the possibility that
‘[Hi]ram’ of Tyre might have appeared on the stone has no merit. If one accepts,
for sake of argument, the authenticity of the Tyrian king list in Josephus Against
Apion 1.18, and if Shalmaneser III’s reference to Ba‘al-manzer corresponds to
the son of Hiram (which is preferable on linguistic grounds), then it follows
logically that one cannot trust the years Josephus has assigned to each name,
which is hardly surprising. For example, it is Josephus and not his source who
labors to make Ithobalos (Ethba‘al) of Tyre equal to the Bible’s father of Jezebel,
who is king of Sidon (Josephus Antiquities 8.13.2). Moreover, one cannot
determine the referents on the stone by the paleographic date of the inscription,
as Athas seems to assert; the referents on the stone can be anyone who lived
during the lifetime of the stone’s royal voice, or even several generations earlier.
See G. Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation
(London: T&T Clark International, 2003), p. 242.
excellent test case with which to illustrate how historical hypotheses are
formulated, defended, and evaluated. Although many historians treat
Dan as the northern boundary of the Israelite kingdom from the tenth
century until the advent of Tiglath-pileser III in the eighth century, with
only a brief interlude of Aramean occupation in the middle decades of
the ninth, the data undermine that approach. It is likely that Dan was not
under Israelite rule until the eighth century bce. After Tiglath-pileser’s
devastation of the city in 732 bce, Dan was no longer Israelite, if it ever
had been.
King Hezekiah, King Josiah, and the Hypothesis of Temple Centralization

For centuries, readers of the Bible have noted two clusters of contra-
dictory commandments and stories in the Bible. From these conflicting
texts, an elaborate hypothesis emerged that involves royal policies at
Jerusalem as well as the practices of ancient scribes. This is another
test case for our theme: how do we know what we think we know? In
this example, it is necessary to describe and evaluate an interlocking set
of hypotheses about two kings, Hezekiah and Josiah, and one or more
hypothetical scribes called the Deuteronomistic Historian(s).
On the one hand, most portions of the Hebrew anthology assume that
shrines, altars, and temples for the god Yahweh could be built anywhere
worshipers of that god happen to have been. For example, in the book of
Genesis, individuals built altars at various locations (for example, Gen.
12.6–8; 13.18; 21.33; 26.23–5; 28.11–22; 33.18–20; 35.3, 6–7, 9–15).
Likewise, the book of Exodus permitted the construction of an altar ‘in
every place’ that the deity might choose (Exod. 20.21 [20.24 in some
English versions]). Stories of apparently legitimate altars and temples at
many locations can be found in books such as Joshua (8.30–35), Judges
(for example, 6.19–24; 9.4, 46; 13.15–20), Samuel (for example, 1 Sam.
1.3–28; 7.5–10, 17; 14.31–35), and Kings (for example, 1 Kgs 3.4–15;
18.20–40). Examples are so abundant that this can be described as the
common biblical viewpoint with respect to temples and altars.
On the other hand, a minority of biblical commandments and narra-
tives presuppose a god who chooses one place and no other to sanctify
as his holy site. The foundational passage appears in Deuteronomy 12.
After insisting that every shrine to another god must be demolished, this
chapter commands the reader to seek one place that Yahweh will choose
to ‘put his name’ (Deut. 12.5). There, and there only, worshipers should
bring their offerings (Deut. 12.13–14). Effectively, this commandment

centralizes the formal worship of Yahweh by making one building,
with its one courtyard altar, the only legitimate place for the sacrifice of
animals before the god Yahweh.
This commandment for centralized temple worship created practical
difficulties in an ancient agrarian culture where almost everyone traveled
by foot. Throughout the ancient Near East, the slaughter of any domestic
animal was considered a sacred act and performed in service to a god. If
local Yahweh shrines were declared to be illegitimate, anyone who lived
too far from Deuteronomy 12’s centralized temple (which is likely to
be almost everyone) might be deprived of any meat-based meal. Must
they become vegetarians? Deuteronomy’s commandment provides a
pragmatic solution by defining a new category of animal slaughter, a
secular slaughter at places far from the temple of Yahweh (12.15, 20–22).
Although this passage is from an ancient text, it inadvertently anticipates
a modern distinction between secular and sacred food preparations.
The influence of Deuteronomy 12 can be seen in other chapters of
Deuteronomy (14.22–7; 15.19–23; 16.1–17; 17.8–13; 18.1–8; 26.1–11),
but this influence appears only a few places elsewhere in the Jewish
Bible. Most biblical texts are silent on the issue of how many legitimate
places of worship Yahweh might possess. As we have seen, many biblical
stories presuppose a culture in which no commandment for centralization
existed, and even some portions of Deuteronomy (for example, chapters
19–25) make no reference to Deuteronomy 12’s distinctive idea. A
single verse and a short story in the book of Joshua are dependent on
Deuteronomy 12 (specifically, Josh. 9.27; 22.10–33), but this book is
strangely ambiguous about the place Yahweh is supposed to have chosen.
The only significant cluster of these ‘deuteronomistic’ emphases on
the centralization of worship is found in the books of 1–2 Kings and 1–2
Chronicles. More often than not, researchers have concluded that the
passages in Chronicles are copied from Kings, so it is the book of Kings
that receives most of the scrutiny in academic study of these texts.37
This decision among researchers might be judged odd in light of the
37 The many publications of A. G. Auld have damaged the widespread assumption

that Chronicles is secondary to the mature form of Samuel–Kings. For entry, see
Auld, Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994); idem, Samuel at the Threshhold: Selected Works
of Graeme Auld (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004).
fact that Chronicles often stresses the theme of centralization in places

where Kings does not, even to the extent of creating a contradictory
story (for example, contrast 2 Chron. 17.6 with 20.33). Nevertheless, in
both Kings and Chronicles, the theme of temple centralization occurs
infrequently, usually as part of a summary description of a king’s career,
and it is not the primary point of the story.
Each king’s worth is evaluated by the narrator of 1–2 Kings, and one
element of that evaluation is whether the king closed the ‘high places’
(a reference to religious shrines or temples). If a king failed to close the
high places, the narrator dismisses him as a bad king. If the king closed
the high places, centralizing worship in the capital city of Jerusalem,
the narrator deems him a good king. Oddly, the storyteller(s) failed to
be consistent about the nature of these high places. Most of the time,
a high place is presented in the text as a temple or shrine in which the
god Yahweh was worshiped (for example, 1 Kgs 3.2–4; 15.14; 22.44
[English 22.43]; 2 Kgs 12.4 [English 12.3]; 14.4; 15.4, 35; 16.4; 18.22;
23.8–9). In a few places, the narrator implies that the high places were
shrines to other gods and not Yahweh (1 Kgs 11.7–8; 2 Kgs 23.13;
perhaps 1 Kgs 14.22–4; 2 Kgs 17.9–12). Either way, the narrator seems
to hate the high places and expects any righteous king to obey the
commandment of Deuteronomy 12.
Using this simple process of evaluation, the narrator of 1–2 Kings
condemned some kings of Judah but gave qualified approval to most
(1 Kgs 3.2–4; 11.7; 14.23; 15.14; 22.44 [Eng. 22.43]; 2 Kgs 12.4 [Eng.
12.3]; 14.4; 15.4, 35; 16.4; 18.4; 21.3; 23.5). For example, King Ahaz
(also called Jehoahaz I) is condemned for various sins, including his
participation in sacrifices on the high places (2 Kgs 16.1–4), but King
Amaziah received a positive judgment in spite of his failure to close the
high places; instead the author attributes to Amaziah a piety that is based
on a direct quotation from the book of Deuteronomy (2 Kgs 14.1–6).
Clearly, a king can be evaluated for sins or righteous acts apart from this
question of temple centralization. Nevertheless, the commandment of
Deuteronomy 12 remains a recurring theme in the judgment of almost
every king.
Without exception, the narrator of 1–2 Kings condemned the kings
of the northern kingdom because their first king departed from worship
at Jerusalem and built twin temples with golden calves at Dan and
Bethel (1 Kgs 12.29–32; 13.33–4). According to 1–2 Kings, every
king of Israel walked in the pathway of Jeroboam I so that the people
sinned at the high places (2 Kgs 17.21–3). The narrative’s treatment

of Jeroboam’s golden calves at Dan and Bethel is clever. The report
that Jeroboam built two rival temples permits the reader to dismiss
Jeroboam as evil because Deuteronomy 12 demands one, and only
one, centralized temple. As we have seen, however, from a historian’s
viewpoint, ancient Dan was probably not an Israelite city when this
first king of Israel lived. Therefore, if Jeroboam built any temple with
a golden calf, it was likely a single temple in Bethel just north of
Jerusalem, and it would have been a single, perhaps centralized, place
of worship. Therefore, the invention of Dan was a clever piece of fiction
designed to slander Bethel’s temple by insinuating that it could not have
conformed to Deuteronomy 12’s commandment.38
Only twice does a ruler in Jerusalem receive unqualified praise from
the narrator. The first is King Hezekiah, who is declared righteous
because he closed the high places and removed several sacred objects
from, apparently, the Jerusalem temple (2 Kgs 18.3–4). The narrator
opines that ‘there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah
after him, or among those who were before him’ (2 Kgs 18.5). As
a result, says the narrator, ‘Yahweh was with him’ so that Hezekiah
‘prospered’ (18.7). This assertion is contradicted immediately by the
tale of Hezekiah’s folly in which his rebellion against Neo-Assyria cost
the king a fortune and many human lives (2 Kgs 18.7, 13–16), but the
narrator adds the fictional tale in which Yahweh comes to Hezekiah’s
aid against the Neo-Assyrian invaders (2 Kgs 18.17–19.37). The brutal
bloodshed and the fate of cities such as Lachish (mentioned in passing
in 2 Kgs 18.17) are treated with silence, and the tale from Hezekiah’s
death to the end of 2 Kings implies (without explicitly stating) that
the Neo-Assyrian Empire had been vanquished by Yahweh and never
returned, which is, of course, false.
The second unqualified proclamation of a righteous king in Judah is
the story of Josiah. This king, we are told, renovated Solomon’s temple
in Jerusalem and, in the process, discovered an old scroll that had been
hidden in the building (2 Kgs 22.3–11). It was the book of the Torah,
according to 2 Kgs 22.8, though it is not clear which book is meant
by that vague label. After reading this scroll, Josiah is said to have
38 Noll, ‘City of Dan’, p. 148; cf. idem, ‘God Among the Danites’, p. 21. See also,
H. Motzki, ‘Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Stierkultes in der Religionsgeschichte
Israels’, VT 25 (1975), pp. 470–85 (475–6).
undertaken sweeping religious innovations in Judah. A new covenant

was made, the minor gods of the Jerusalem temple were purged, the
Passover was celebrated for the first time in centuries, the high places
outside Jerusalem were closed (2 Kgs 23.1–24). Moreover, a proph-
etess named Huldah predicted that the ‘curses’ recorded in the scroll
would ultimately destroy Jerusalem, but that good King Josiah would
die in peace (22.14–20). Later in the story, Josiah traveled to Megiddo
to encounter Pharaoh Neco II of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, who killed
Josiah (23.29–30), an ironic death during a time of peace. Nevertheless,
the narrator assures us that there had never before been a king as
righteous as Josiah (2 Kgs 23.25; compare Deut. 6.5, and contrast 2
Kgs 18.5, in which there were no kings after Hezekiah who had been as
righteous as he had been!).
The biblical narrative’s consistent complaint that the high places
were not closed, even under the policy of most ‘good’ kings, seems to
be a tacit admission that the policy commanded by Deuteronomy 12
was rarely, if ever, enforced. Most researchers believe the reason for
this is quite simple. Most kings of Israel and Judah failed to obey the
command to have only one place of worship because that commandment
did not yet exist in their lifetimes.
Almost all researchers have noted that significant portions of
Deuteronomy’s religious rhetoric, such as its intolerantly exclusive
covenant between the patron god and the people of Israel (Deuteronomy
13), as well as its emphasis on blessings for obedience and curses for
disobedience (Deuteronomy 28), were dependent upon Neo-Assyrian
royal vassal treaties.39 In other words, the religious concepts promoted
by Deuteronomy were modified from the imperial policies imposed on
Israel and Judah by kings such as Tiglath-pileser III, Esarhaddon, and
Ashurbanipal. Therefore, the earliest version of Deuteronomy could
have been composed no earlier than about the 730s bce and might be
39 K. Radner, ‘Assyrische tuppi adê als Vorbild für Deuteronomium 28,20–

44?’ in Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke, pp. 351–78; P. Dion, ‘The
Suppression of Alien Religious Propaganda in Israel during the Late Monarchical
Era’, in B. Halpern and D. W. Hobson (eds), Law and Ideology in Monarchic
Israel (JSOTSup, 124; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), pp. 147–216; M. Weinfeld,
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1972), pp. 59–157. See also C. Koch, ‘Zwischen Hatti und Assur:
Traditionsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu den aramäischen Inschriften von
Sfire’, in Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke, pp. 379–406.
as late as a generation or so after the reign of Ashurbanipal (668–627

bce). If this reasoning is correct, then Deuteronomy 12 and all related
texts can be no earlier than about the time of King Hezekiah, the first
of the two kings who receive unqualified praise for their centralization
policies. Many researchers place the composition of Deuteronomy 12
during the reign of Josiah, the second king to receive unqualified praise.
From these biblical texts, almost all researchers today have accepted
some variation of two interlocking historical hypotheses. Each of these
is a distinct idea and, in theory at least, a researcher could accept one
without a need for the other. In reality, it is rare to find discussion of one
hypothesis without some reference to the other.
First, most researchers believe that portions of the Bible that seem
to be associated with Deuteronomy were composed at one time by
a single scribe or a small group of scribes.40 This scribe is called the
Deuteronomistic Historian. If he is conceptualized as a small group
of scribes, they are called the Deuteronomistic School. Sometimes
scholars invent a series of labels with which to refer to this scribe or
this school. A single Deuteronomistic Historian is called Dtr. If there
are several scribes, they receive superscripts such as Dtr1 and Dtr2, or
DtrG, DtrN, and DtrP.
These scribes are, of course, purely hypothetical. Nevertheless, each
time a researcher discusses one of them, he or she suggests a specific
person living at a specific moment in time and writing to persuade an
ancient reader of specific (usually religious) truths. The basic idea is
that this scribe or school venerated the book of Deuteronomy and inter-
preted all people and events in light of this book.
According to hypothesis, the Deuteronomistic Historian(s) composed
portions of the book of Deuteronomy as well as the earliest draft of
the narrative that is now known as the books of Joshua, Judges, 1–2
Samuel, and 1–2 Kings. By hypothesis, the core of Deuteronomy
40 The classic work is the 1943 thesis of M. Noth, now available in English as
The Deuteronomistic History (trans. J. Doull et al., JSOTSup, 15; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1981). For recent discussion with ample bibliography, see T. Römer
and A. de Pury, ‘Deuteronomistic Historiography (DH): History of Research
and Debated Issues’, in A. de Pury, T. Römer, and J.-D. Macchi (eds), Israel
Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research
(JSOTSup, 306; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2006), pp. 24–142;
T. Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical
and Literary Introduction (London: T&T Clark International, 2007).
Figure 39. Neo-Assyrian Emperor Ashurbanipal (668–627 bce), whose royal

vassal treaties might have been the model for the composition of Deuteronomy
(usually, though not always, defined as chapters 12–26) existed prior to

Dtr. Because he venerated that text, Dtr added a prologue (portions of
chapters 1–11) and an epilogue (portions of 27–34), inventing the attri-
bution of the book to Moses in the process.41 Likewise, by hypothesis,
some portions of the other biblical books existed prior to Dtr’s decision
to sew them together into a single long narrative; but Dtr was the genius
who created the narrative sequence we now take for granted, in which a
time of conquest (Joshua) is followed by a time of judges (Judges), and
then by a period of monarchy (Samuel–Kings). It was Dtr who, again
according to hypothesis, invented summary speeches for each section
of the narrative. For example, the speech in Joshua 23 is attributed
to Joshua but it is, in reality, pure invention from the pen of Dtr. The
same can be said for a speech of Samuel in 1 Samuel 12, perhaps also
the prophecy of Nathan in 2 Samuel 7, and the speech of Solomon
in 1 Kings 8. Likewise, the narrator’s long summary in 2 Kings 17
is identified as another invention of Dtr. Regardless of which story-
41 The name of Moses never occurs in the core portions of Deuteronomy, defined
narrowly as chapters 12–26 or more widely as chapters 6–26.
world character utters these speeches, they express, by hypothesis, the

doctrine of Dtr.
It must be stressed that this hypothesis identifies an early stage of
composition for the books in question and does not equate these early
drafts with the versions of the books you are able to read in a modern
edition of the Bible. Most versions of the hypothesis suggest, for
example, that the second half of Joshua (specifically chapters 13–22,
probably 24 also) was added after Dtr had completed his narrative.
Likewise, Judges 13–21 are, more often than not, deemed to be a late
addition, and 2 Samuel 21–4 are treated as secondary as well. All
versions of the hypothesis insist that, to the extent that these biblical
books defend a single message, the message was injected into the texts
by Dtr(s). As for other biblical narratives, such as Genesis, Exodus, and
Numbers, some researchers believe these documents were composed
independently from Dtr, and other scholars believe they were composed
after Dtr had completed his work. Researchers also hypothesize that
prophetic books, especially Jeremiah, were revised by one or more
scribes of the Deuteronomistic School (for example, compare Jer. 15.4
with 2 Kgs 23.26).
Each researcher advances a distinctive version of the deuteronomistic
hypothesis. This means that Dtr is a different hypothetical person in
each publication that uses this concept. Also, no one can agree about
when this scribe or these scribes lived. Usually, the thesis assumes that
Dtr lived shortly after the last event mentioned in 2 Kings 25. Others
suggest that the scribe or school of scribes lived long after that last
narrated event, perhaps even several centuries later. Some researchers
argue that Dtr lived as early as the time of Hezekiah or Josiah. In those
versions of the hypothesis, the final chapters of 2 Kings are assigned to
a later scribe. Thus, a hypothetical Dtr1 was the original author and a
hypothetical Dtr2 added the extra chapters at a later date.
The Deuteronomistic History hypothesis has become so commonly
accepted in biblical studies that it has become sloppy.42 Ideas that spread
42 On the many weaknesses of the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis, see these

articles by K. L. Noll: ‘Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic? And Is It a
History?’ SJOT 21 (2007), pp. 49–72; ‘The Evolution of Genre in the Book of
Kings: The Story of Sennacherib and Hezekiah as Example’, in P. G. Kirkpatrick
and T. Goltz (eds), The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and
Cognate Studies (London: T&T Clark International, 2008), pp. 30–56; ‘A Portrait
widely in a population usually become simplistic, losing their grip

on much of the subtle reasoning required to invent them. Therefore,
academic publications frequently include references to ‘deuterono-
mistic’ authors or editors that are poorly defined or not defined at all. In
many cases, the hypothesis has been gutted of any substance, so that the
entire biblical narrative in the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings is identified, without qualification, as the
Deuteronomistic History. If this is the case, the hypothesis has lost any
explanatory value. The reason the hypothesis existed in the first place
was to explain why portions of these books express basic themes that
do not appear in, or are contradicted by, other portions of these books.
The second hypothesis arising from these portions of biblical books
has to do with the two kings who receive unqualified approval in the
book of 2 Kings: Hezekiah and Josiah.43 According to hypothesis, one
or both of these kings discovered or, perhaps, invented the core portion
of Deuteronomy (approximately chapters 12–26, though some versions
of the hypothesis differ). By publicly promoting this newly discovered
or invented ‘old’ book, the king was able to embark on an ambitious
religious innovation. The primary goal of this royal policy was to close
Yahweh shrines outside Jerusalem and to centralize worship in the
capital city. In some versions of the hypothesis, a prophet such as Isaiah
or Jeremiah supported or opposed the royal policy. In other versions of
the hypothesis, these prophets are not discussed.
of the Deuteronomistic Historian at Work?’ in K. L. Noll and B. Schramm

(eds), Raising Up a Faithful Exegete: Essays in Honor of Richard D. Nelson
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), pp. 73–86; ‘Presumptuous Prophets
Participating in a Deuteronomic Debate’, in M. J. Boda and L. M. Wray Beal
(eds), Prophets and Prophecy in Ancient Israelite Historiography (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, in press); ‘Is the Scroll of Samuel Deuteronomistic?’ in C.
Edenburg and J. Pakkala (eds), Is Samuel Among the Deuteronomists? (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Leterature, forthcoming).
43 The hypothesis is associated with a wide variety of researchers, a classic example
being F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 274–89, whose hero is
Josiah. For a recent defense of the thesis that stresses Hezekiah, see I. Finkelstein
and N. A. Silberman, ‘Temple and Dynasty: Hezekiah, the Remaking of Judah
and the Rise of the Pan-Israelite Ideology’, JSOT 30 (2006), pp. 259–85. See
also the recent summary by D. Noël, ‘Le temple de Jérusalem et les sanctuaries
tribaux’, in C. Lichtert and D. Nocquet (eds), Le Roi Salomon: Un heritage en
question. Hommage à Jacques Vermeylen (Le livre et le rouleau, 33; Brussels:
Lessius, 2008), pp. 57–86.
The hypothesis tends to be vague about why a king would desire

temple centralization.44 Temples that were built or maintained by kings
were a source of prestige and propaganda. The divine patron owned
the region over which his or her temple presided. As a general rule,
ancient patron gods did not voluntarily cede lands, which is what the
closing of a temple would have proclaimed to most of the populace
even if the royal propaganda tried to give the temple closing an alter-
native meaning. Just as significantly, a temple was a center for royal
administration and tax collection, so the closing of a temple might lead
to the loss of control and revenue. Although Deuteronomy 16 demands
periodic pilgrimage to the centralized temple, attempts to enforce such a
law and compel villagers to travel to the central shrine would be, at best,
partially successful, and much revenue would slip through the king’s
fingers. In sum, the hypothesis that a king of Judah pursued a policy of
temple centralization does not make sense. As a result, scholarship has
resorted to extremely hypothetical, sometimes far-fetched, suggestions
for this policy.
A common argument in favor of a royal centralization policy suggests
that these kings had imperial designs on the territory that had been the
kingdom of Israel until Sargon II dismantled that kingdom. This version
of the hypothesis focuses especially on King Hezekiah. The transfor-
mation of Samaria-Israel into a Neo-Assyrian province took place in the
years following 722 bce, just a few years before Hezekiah came to the
throne of Judah. The city of Jerusalem experienced a huge population
increase either in the late eighth century or in the early seventh (the
excavations do not permit precision on the date).45 Perhaps Hezekiah
44 This is a weakness at the foundation of the hypothesis that its supporters

appear to ignore. For discussion, see K. L. Noll, ‘Deuteronomistic History or
Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment)’, JSOT 31 (2007), pp. 311–45
(327–33); D. Edelman, ‘Hezekiah’s Alleged Cultic Centralization’, JSOT 32
(2008), pp. 395–434 (424–9).
45 Jerusalem’s stratum 12, its peak population prior to the Hellenistic era, displays
pottery compatible with the late eighth and seventh centuries bce, as well as
samples of the lĕmelek jar handles usually associated with King Hezekiah. For
discussion, see D. Ussishkin, ‘Sennacherib’s Campaign to Philistia and Judah:
Ekron, Lachish, and Jerusalem’, in Amit et al. (eds), Essays on Ancient Israel,
pp. 339–57 (350). N. Na’aman argues cogently against an influx of refugees
from Samaria-Israel on the grounds that Neo-Assyrian policy was not thwarted
so easily and it is unrealistic to attribute the massive building projects associated
invited the Israelites to renew their ‘old’ allegiance to Jerusalem

(probably a fictional ‘old’ allegiance), as 2 Chronicles 30 would have
us believe, resulting in an influx of immigrants from the north. This
hypothesis does not conform easily to our knowledge of Neo-Assyrian
policies in newly formed provinces. Also, the short time available to
King Hezekiah prior to the war against Sennacherib in 701 bce makes
it unlikely that the city’s growth derived from Israelite immigrants.
It is more reasonable to attribute this massive building process and
related population increase to the decades after 701 bce, when the
Neo-Assyrian government had reasons to sponsor such growth in
pursuit of its own military and economic interests in the region.
An alternate version of the imperial-ambitions hypothesis focuses on
King Josiah, who is alleged to have expanded Judah’s borders during
the 620s bce, as he watched his Neo-Assyrian lord’s grip on power
slip away. This version of the hypothesis tends to ignore the reality
that Egypt’s Twenty-sixth Dynasty moved into the vacuum created by
Neo-Assyria’s demise, as reflected in the epigraphic and archaeological
record and alluded to in 2 Kgs 24.7. In either version of the imperial-
ambitions hypothesis, featuring Hezekiah or Josiah, the king closed
temples outside Jerusalem in order to win the allegiance of people
who had previously looked to a Yahweh temple in the city of Bethel or
Samaria or, perhaps, Shechem.
The hypothesis is weak. It is likely that an imperial policy inviting
northerners to abandon their temples and look toward Jerusalem would
alienate as many as it attracted. In any case, the catastrophic failure of
the king (Hezekiah’s disastrous war and Josiah’s humiliating death)
suggests that any imperial ambition was delusional and too short-lived
to have given birth to a religious viewpoint that, by hypothesis, shaped
substantial portions of the Hebrew anthology.
Other hypotheses about why a king might introduce temple centrali-
zation have been proposed. Some of these are elaborate but difficult
to test on the basis of available evidence. For example, Hezekiah
with Jerusalem’s growth to the short period available prior to the war of 701 bce.
See N. Na’aman, ‘When and How Did Jerusalem Become a Great City? The Rise
of Jerusalem as Judah’s Premier City in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries BCE’,
BASOR 347 (2007), pp. 21–56 (31). For general discussion of Jerusalem, see
A. G. Vaughn and A. E. Killebrew (eds), Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology:
The First Temple Period (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).
might have desired to dismantle the power of local clans, whose

local religious shrines (the high places) had been a source of prestige
and political clout that the king could not tolerate.46 Other suggested
explanations for a centralization policy are more soberly based on
knowledge of the political and military realities of the era, but do not
logically require any appeal to Deuteronomy 12 and related texts. For
example, one hypothesis focuses on the fact that Hezekiah planned to
rebel against Sennacherib. He needed to protect sacred objects and raw
resources from capture or defilement by the enemy. To that end, this
hypothesis suggests, Hezekiah reorganized his administration to prepare
for invasion. Part of the reorganization was the closing of temples
outside Jerusalem and the diversion of personnel and cultic equipment
to the capital in preparation for siege warfare.47
In sum, two hypotheses emerge from the biblical books of
Deuteronomy through 2 Kings. One hypothesis suggests that this
literature derives from an earlier, shorter narrative composed by a scribe
or school of scribes who venerated the core portions of Deuteronomy
(the Deuteronomistic History). The second hypothesis posits a royal
policy of temple centralization that took place either in the late eighth
century (Hezekiah) or the late seventh century (Josiah), or both. In some
versions of the hypothesis, the literature was produced, at least in part,
as public propaganda designed to persuade the elites and commoners
of the region to accept or support royal centralization policy. However,
no one who advances this claim of publicly proclaimed propaganda has
attempted to provide a supporting argument that addresses the obvious
question: how would such a propaganda program have been publicly
disseminated in a predominantly illiterate, poorly educated, agrarian
society?48
The key issue, not yet discussed but worthy of emphasis, is that
neither hypothesis depends upon archaeological data. These two
hypotheses derive from, and are wholly dependent upon, a particular
process of Bible interpretation. Any appeals to archaeological data are
46 B. Halpern, ‘Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE: Kinship
and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability’, in Halpern and Hobson (eds), Law
and Ideology, pp. 11–107.
47 L. K. Handy, ‘Hezekiah’s Unlikely Reform’, ZAW 100 (1988), pp. 111–15.
48 K. L. Noll, ‘Was There Doctrinal Dissemination in Early Yahweh Religion?’
BibInt 16 (2008), pp. 395–427.
purely secondary glosses on a hypothesis already fully formed from the

biblical texts.
The archaeological data do not support the hypothesis that a king of
Judah pursued a policy of temple centralization. A number of researchers
disagree with me. They have tried to interpret several key archaeological
excavations as evidence in support of King Hezekiah’s temple-central-
ization project.49 Two excavations are frequently invoked as part of this
thesis: Beer-sheba and Arad, both in the Negev Valley (see Figure 33).
Also, the Shephelah’s city of Lachish plays a role in this discussion.
Beer-sheba, Arad, and Lachish were destroyed by Neo-Assyrian
troops in the eighth century bce, and almost everyone associates those
destructions with Sennacherib’s devastation of Judah in 701 bce. Prior
to the destructions, all three cities were part of Jerusalem’s borderland
fortification system and appear to have included within their walls a
temple dedicated to the god Yahweh. This is, of course, a violation
of Deuteronomy 12, but if that text had not yet been composed in the
eighth century, no one would have perceived these temples as impious
structures. In any case, the temple at Lachish has not been located, but
Neo-Assyrian depictions of cultic objects being removed from the city
after its capture by Sennacherib suggest that the temple was still in use
when Hezekiah lost the war in 701 bce.50
The temple at Beer-sheba has not been located, but remnants of a
large stone altar were recovered in secondary context (see Figure 40).
In ancient times, the altar had been dismantled and its stones reused as
49 For advocates of this approach, see Finkelstein and Silberman, ‘Temple and
Dynasty’; Z. Herzog, ‘The Fortress Mound at Tel Arad: An Interim Report’, Tel
Aviv 29 (2002), pp. 3–109 (51–72); A. F. Rainey, ‘Hezekiah’s Reform and the
Altars at Beer-sheba and Arad’, in M. D. Coogan, J. C. Exum, and L. E. Stager
(eds), Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology
in Honor of Philip J. King (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994),
pp. 333–54.
50 L. E. Fried, ‘The High Places (bāmôt) and the Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah:
An Archaeological Investigation’, Journal of the American Oriental Society
122 (2002), pp. 437–65 (444–8). See also these articles by N. Na’aman: ‘The
Abandonment of the Cult Places in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah as Acts of
Cult Reform’, UF 34 (2004), pp. 585–602; ‘No Anthropomorphic Graven Image:
Notes on the Assumed Anthropomorphic Cult Statues in the Temples of YHWH
in the Pre-Exilic Period’, UF 31 (1999), pp. 391–415; ‘The Debated Historicity
of Hezekiah’s Reform in the Light of Historical and Archaeological Research’,
ZAW 107 (1995), pp. 179–95.
Figure 40. A reconstructed sacrificial altar from Beer-sheba, Iron Age II
building blocks in other structures of the city. Although supporters of

the thesis that Hezekiah was responsible for dismantling this altar point
to these reused stones, the stratigraphy of the site does not support their
interpretation.51 The two strata in which the reused stones were found
date to the middle and late decades of the eighth century. Therefore,
the stratum in which the altar was in use must have been the city that
51 Edelman, ‘Hezekiah’s Alleged Cultic Centralization’, pp. 419–20. ‘Strata III

and II in Tel Beersheba represent the same town, with minor changes during its
lifetime, and their pottery is identical’, Na’aman, ‘Abandonment of Cult Places’,
p. 594. Edelman correctly observes that the widely dispersed reuse of the altar
stones suggests that the dismantling of this structure took place quite a while
earlier (p. 420). The latest possible date for the altar’s ritual activity is stratum
IV, but I am inclined to think the altar had been taken out of use in stratum V and
its sacred status had been long forgotten before the stones were used as building
blocks in III/II. In any case, there is a clear break between stratum IV and strata
III/II, and these should be thought of as different cities, unrelated to one another.
Hezekiah’s Beer-sheba already lacked this altar when it was built, whether his
city possessed other sacred installations or not.
existed in the ninth century or, at the latest, the early decades of the
eighth. From this observation, it follows that if the altar was dismantled
on royal orders, the king in question lived more than one human
generation before Hezekiah came to the throne (perhaps Azariah? 2 Kgs
15.1–7). The reuse of the altar’s stones in other building projects also
began prior to Hezekiah’s reign, even if this reuse continued in his day.
Moreover, the reason for dismantling this altar is not known. Until the
temple from which this altar came has been located, it is premature to
conclude that the dismantled altar indicates the permanent termination
of a temple as well.
The temple at Arad has been found and fully excavated, but the
stratigraphy of this site is extremely controversial (see Figure 41).
A consensus has formed around the hypothesis that the temple was
built in the early eighth century (by Azariah, perhaps?) and that it was
dismantled just a few years before Sennacherib devastated the city
in 701 bce. According to this hypothesis, Hezekiah dismantled the
temple’s ritual furniture with plans to rebuild them after the war.52 If this
is correct, then Hezekiah did not pursue a policy based on Deuteronomy
12, but was protecting the sacred site from capture and defilement
by the enemy.53 The failure to rebuild the temple after the war might
suggest that deuteronomistic centralization became a royal policy in
the aftermath of Sennacherib’s invasion, though it obviously does not
demand such an interpretation.
However, the hypothesis that the Arad temple was dismantled prior
to the war of 701 bce is weak. The eighth-century pottery and stratig-
raphy are complex and controversial, and the relationship of the temple
to the eighth century and Hezekiah’s policies has not been settled. Some
have argued that the temple was not built until the seventh century,
after Hezekiah’s war with Sennacherib, and that it remained in use until
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Arad and Jerusalem in 586 bce.54 Although
that thesis no longer has a following, the argument that the temple was
destroyed by warfare remains cogent and is not yet ruled out. Another
interpretation of the excavation suggests that the temple was built prior
52 Herzog, ‘Fortress Mound at Tel Arad’, pp. 65–7.

53 Thus supporting Handy, ‘Hezekiah’s Unlikely Reform’.
54 D. Ussishkin, ‘The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad’, IEJ 38 (1988), pp.
142–57.
to Hezekiah’s time, remained in use through the war of 701 bce, and
was taken out of use during the reign of King Manasseh.55
In my view, the hypothesis that now appears to be most compatible
with the data argues that the temple at Arad remained in use until the
city was destroyed by Sennacherib in 701 bce.56 Photographs of the
excavation in progress indicate that the structure lay under a layer of
destruction by fire. Complete pottery vessels were found, intact, on the
floor of the precinct, suggesting that the area was still in daily use when
the city was destroyed. The researchers who had thought the temple
was dismantled prior to destruction were partially correct. A portion
of the sacred area had been renovated and two incense altars had been
taken out of use and reused as building stones in a new section of wall.
Nevertheless, the temple and its altar remained in use until 701 bce. In
this interpretation of the data, the Arad temple unequivocally refutes the
hypothesis that Hezekiah pursued a policy of temple centralization.
When all the data are taken as a whole, the thesis that seems most
compatible with those data is that multiple temples were maintained by
the kings of Judah, and the disappearance of a temple always resulted
from a loss of jurisdiction, not a royal policy. So, for example, the temple
at Lachish ceased to exist because Sennacherib dismantled it, not because
any king followed a policy based on Deuteronomy 12 and related texts.
Likewise, Beer-sheba’s altar was dismantled when the city was termi-
nated. When a temple was not rebuilt after destruction, it suggests that
the king in Jerusalem no longer had political jurisdiction at that city. For
example, if the Arad temple was not rebuilt after the war of 701 bce,
it suggests that Judah’s jurisdiction over the Negev Valley was strictly
controlled by the Neo-Assyrian imperial administration. This was not
King Manasseh’s pious decision to centralize Yahweh’s worship. By
the late period, when Josiah took the throne, it is probable that he ruled
over a region too small for multiple Yahweh temples, so there was no
need to pursue a policy of centralization. Therefore, if Deuteronomy 12
was composed during this period of time, it might be little more than a
religious rationalization for facts on the ground: it explained why Yahweh
had chosen to be defeated by outsiders and reduce his jurisdiction to one,
55 E. A. Knauf, ‘The Glorious Days of Manasseh’, in L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Good

Kings and Bad Kings (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), pp. 164–88
(184–8).
56 Na’aman, ‘Abandonment of Cult Places’, 588–92.
and only one, city.57 A probable hypothesis is that Deuteronomy 12 and

related texts were composed in the late Persian or early Greco-Roman
era. As we shall see in Chapter 10, at that time Jerusalem was the center
of a tiny province and political circumstances permitted Yahweh one,
and only one, temple within that province.
In sum, the thesis that a king of Judah pursued a policy of temple
centralization is not compatible with the data and not coherent as a
hypothesis. The suggestion that portions of Deuteronomy through
2 Kings were composed by a Deuteronomistic Historian is merely
possible, but it is nothing more than an interpretation of biblical
literature. The hypothesis lacks external control for evaluation.58 To the
extent that external data can be brought to bear, this Dtr always disap-
pears into thin air. Although these two hypotheses remain popular in
mainstream biblical scholarship, they have little merit and should be
abandoned.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed the one period in the ancient past in which the
biblical narrative echoes the narrative constructed from archaeological
and epigraphic data. Clearly the Hebrew scribes had access to sources
that provided reliable information about the era we call the Iron Age II
(900–586 bce). We have seen, as well, that the texts and the primary
data tell two different stories and one does not prove the other. In every
57 Noll, ‘Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate?’ pp. 330–1. E. Bloch-

Smith writes, ‘Over a thirty-five-year period, the Assyrians devastated fortified
cities from Dan to Beer-sheba. Ergo, cultic centralization in the capital city,
which was probably the only major political and administrative city left standing,
was the most feasible and logical response. Largely by process of elimination,
Jerusalem emerged as the de facto cultic center’; Bloch-Smith, ‘Assyrians Abet
Israelite Cultic Reforms: Sennacherib and the Centralization of the Israelite
Cult’, in Schloen (ed.), Exploring the Longue Durée, pp. 35–44 (35). See also
Edelman, ‘Hezekiah’s Alleged Cultic Centralization’, p. 245.
58 Lack of external control has been stressed by R. Coggins, ‘What Does
“Deuteronomistic” Mean?’ in L. Schearing and S. McKenzie (eds), Those
Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 22–35 (26); as well as S. B. Parker,
‘Ancient Northwest Semitic Epigraphy and the “Deuteronomistic” Tradition
in Kings’, in Witte et al. (eds), Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke, pp.
213–27 (213).
Figure 41. The inner room of the temple excavated at Arad, Iron Age II. Note the
two stone pillars in the rear, sacred objects prohibited by Deut. 16.22
case, a historian has no choice but to construct a hypothesis that, he or

she hopes, is as fully compatible with the evidence as possible. Our
examples from the city of Dan and the book of Deuteronomy demon-
strate how difficult hypothesis construction can be. The best hypothesis
inevitably derives from research that avoids retrospective politics and
attempts to find answers to the question: who were these ancient people,
and what were their lives like? Good history is rarely oriented to the
present, but focuses on the past for the sake of the past.

Amit, Yairah, et al. (eds), Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A
Tribute to Nadav Na’aman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006).
Auld, A. Graeme, Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s
Kings (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994).
Barstad, Hans M., History and the Hebrew Bible: Studies in Ancient Israelite and
Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
Becking, Bob, From David to Gedaliah: The Book of Kings as Story and History (Orbis
Biblicus et Orientalis, 228; Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2007).
Cross, Frank Moore, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
Finkelstein, Israel, and Amihai Mazar, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating
Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (ed. Brian B. Schmidt; Atlanta:
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s
New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free
Press, 2001).
Grabbe, Lester L., Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?
(London: T&T Clark International, 2007).
—(ed.), Good Kings and Bad Kings (London: T&T Clark International, 2005).
—(ed.), ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (JSOTSup,
363; London: T&T Clark International, 2003).
Isserlin, B. S. J., The Israelites (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).
Kuhrt, Amélie, The Ancient Near East, c. 3000–330 bc (Vol. 2; London: Routledge,
1995).
Na’aman, Nadav, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction
(Collected Essays, vol. 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005).
Noth, Martin, The Deuteronomistic History (trans. Jane Doull et al., JSOTSup, 15;
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981).
Pury, Albert de, Thomas Römer, and Jean-Daniel Macchi (eds), Israel Constructs Its
History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research (Sheffield: Sheffield
Römer, Thomas, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical,
and Literary Introduction (London: T&T Clark International, 2007).
Williamson, H. G. M. (ed.), Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford:
Chapter 9
Varieties of R eligious Experience and Canaanite Gods
Introduction
Chapter 6 defined a ‘god’ as an invisible supernatural agent who
possesses a human type of mind and is deeply concerned about the
very things that deeply concern us. A god’s characteristics result from
a combination of two factors: our brains, which are by-products of the
survival strategies that evolved in the species Homo sapiens, and the
circumstances in which we find ourselves, social, political, economic,
and ecological. Chapter 6 explained how these factors combined in
ancient times to produce a common religious strategy called henotheism,
in which a supreme god functions as king who rules over the gods and
humanity (as in Deut. 10.17).
North Americans and Western Europeans conceptualize a god in
ways that frequently differ from the divine patron of the ancient Near
East. Many in the modern West do not fear attacks by roving hordes
led by warlords, and the majority are no longer farmers and shepherds
striving to survive in an agriculturally marginal land. Not surprisingly,
the god-concepts of the modern world reflect this modern environment.
The well-educated, comfortably middle-class people who enjoy relative
security, full refrigerators, and electronic social media prefer a super-
natural agent who is attentive to their quest for meaning in life, a moral
purpose, greater understanding of the natural universe, and ‘spiritu-
ality’ (however that vague word might be defined).1 Participation
in organized religious structures has been declining rapidly because
even the most zealously religious among us define words like faith or
1 S. Bruce probes the ways in which the word spirituality has come to disguise
secularism and give it the appearance of religiosity in Bruce, Secularization: In
Defence of an Unfashionable Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),
pp. 48–9, 54–6, 100–19.
spirituality as beliefs and practices freely chosen and purely private, a

definition that did not exist among the majority in ancient times.2 For
the ancients, the operative religious words were submission and obser-
vance, and participation was anything but freely chosen and purely
private.
In contrast to the modern religious quest for meaning or purpose in
life, the royal voice who prays to Yahweh in Psalm 144 is concerned,
almost exclusively, with survival. First, this king is concerned with
military victory and, second, he hopes for abundant crops and farm
animals, as well as successful nurturing of the community’s youth, so
that his people might survive in an uncertain future. If any spirituality is
expressed in Psalm 144, it is an extremely pragmatic variety of religious
consciousness, in which the continued existence of the community is
all-important even as the individual is dismissed as an empty breath
and passing shadow. The god this psalmist envisions is a powerful one,
whose intervention into the human realm results in volcanic eruptions,
astounding changes in the weather, and victory in battle. Even if these
images were intended metaphorically, the hope expressed is that ‘our
god’ will spill the enemy’s blood so that ‘our people’ will survive.
Psalm 144 represents the most common variety of religious experience
in ancient Canaan: a plea for survival in the face of an uncertain future.
Because the ancient past is a foreign land, we must set aside our
modern assumptions about a god if we hope to explore this now-dead
culture. We need to explore the Bible’s henotheism (or, in some cases,
2 The frequent proclamations of the death of the secularization hypothesis are

premature. All available data suggest the gradual implosion of religious organiza-
tions in the face of modernity. For general discussion, see Bruce, Secularization,
and P. Zuckerman, Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012). Evidence suggests that a nightmare for any religious
organization is the friendly atmosphere of a government that provides consti-
tutional protection of religious freedom. First, this legal protection imposes
a definition of religion that undermines every religious leader’s capacity to
maintain authority: democracies define religion as beliefs and practices that are
freely chosen and purely private. Second, the protection of religious freedom is,
by definition, also a guarantee of the individual’s right to freedom from religion.
For discussion, see B. L. Berger, ‘Law’s Religion: Rendering Culture’, in
R. Moon (ed.), Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (Vancouver: University
of British Columbia Press, 2008), pp. 264–96. For an excellent case study in the
same volume, see L. E. Weinrib, ‘Ontario’s Sharia Law Debate: Law and Politics
under the Charter’, pp. 239–63.
9. Varieties of Religious Experience and Canaanite Gods 317
monolatry) in its original Canaanite cultural context so that we can

clarify the extent to which it reflects common Iron Age religious
experience. Understanding the gods they invented helps us to under-
stand the people who invented these gods.
Varieties of Religious Commitment in the Ancient World

Religion is a social phenomenon. From a theoretical perspective,
religion happens when two or more individuals interact with one another
using a shared set of concepts about an alleged ultimate reality as a
basis for constructing a community ethos. In less theoretical language,
a religion involves a group of people who identify a set of gods as real.
They participate in rituals and acts of reverence before these gods. And
they use the ideas associated with the gods to explain to themselves
the conditions of their own lives. If the religion is monotheistic, the
definition remains the same, but it involves one god who wears many
hats, a kind of divine jack-of-all-trades, instead of many gods who each
specialize in one aspect of daily life.
Every individual in the ancient Near East experienced religion at
three levels: the family, the local community, and the state. Because
many villages were tiny, often significantly fewer than 100 people, the
family and community were virtually identical for a large proportion
of the population. For most people, the state-sponsored religion as
described in Chapter 6 was the least immediate aspect of religious life.
An illiterate farmer with no connection to the royal bureaucracy might
believe in the existence of the patron god and place hope in that god
during times of crisis, but other gods were likely to have played a more
integral role in daily experience.
The gods were called on to guarantee fertility of the crops, flocks, and
human wombs. Ancestral gods were called on to protect the family and
guarantee property rights. Therefore, daily religious rituals for families
and villages were located in two places in particular: in the home and at
the family or village tomb or gravesite. Not infrequently, archaeologists
find religious shrines in the home, consisting in most cases of one or a
few terra-cotta figurines and associated ritual pottery. Evidence for the
feeding of the dead has been found at tombs. Some portions of the Bible
suggest that elites attempted to intervene in, regulate, or even outlaw
some of these local and family devotions, such as mourning rites for
the dead (Lev. 19.27–8; Deut. 14.1; 18.10–11; Ps. 106.28; Isa. 8.19–20;
57.6–9; 65.4). Archaeological data to be discussed in this chapter

suggest that any such attempts were largely unsuccessful, which is why
elite scribes expressed their frustration in caustic sarcasm: ‘Your gods
have become as many as your towns, O Judah!’ (Jer. 11.13). In fact, the
data suggest that the gods far outnumbered the towns of Judah. It would
not be surprising to discover that the ancestral gods outnumbered the
people in many of the smaller villages.
Even though the Bible was created by elites and for elites, some
portions of it might reflect religious values shared by all tiers of society.
For example, a book such as Genesis appears to be an anthology of
gathered folklore, some of which contradicts other portions in the same
scroll or passages from other scrolls. The book of Proverbs, especially,
contains an eclectic collection of pithy sayings, short poems, and
sometimes caustic observations that were gathered from all walks of
life. Many of these proverbs express the pragmatic wisdom shared by
urban dweller as well as village farmer:
Six are these that Yahweh hates,
Nay, seven disgust his soul:
Arrogant eyes, deceptive tongue,
Two hands shedding innocent blood,
Heart plotting its wicked will,
Impatient feet running to evil,
A false witness producing lies,
An inciter of family fights. (Prov. 6.16–19)
As this passage suggests, everyday wisdom was pragmatic, sometimes

artistically articulated, and, from a modern perspective, not always
politically correct. For example, a young lad was advised on erotica in
highly metaphorical language:
May your fountain be blessed,
and find joy in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe, graceful goat,
may her two breasts satisfy you always.
In her love, may you be intoxicated continually. (Prov. 5.18–19)
Or practical counsel on marriage could be stated more bluntly: ‘A gold

ring in a pig’s snout is a gorgeous woman lacking sense’ (Prov. 11.22).
Raising crops in an agriculturally marginal region is hard work, and
common wisdom reflects that ethos: ‘The door turns on its hinge and
the lazy man on his bed’ (Prov. 26.14). Likewise, a small population that
depends on a subsistence economy cannot afford the errors of a foolish

person in their midst: ‘As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats
his folly’ (Prov. 26.11).
When generalizing about religious experience among ancient people,
it is necessary to avoid constructing caricatures. Many researchers
suggest that religion in ancient times permeated every aspect of life at
every level of society, resulting in an endemic sense of the sacred that
gave meaning to even mundane activities, a view that is easily refuted
by the evidence. One must avoid the common fable of the pious ancient
who walked about in a perpetual state of sacred awe. Religion was a
part of every social level, but it was experienced in most cases as a set of
social obligations, and one should hesitate to assign depth of meaning,
or to assign words like faith or spirituality, to those obligations unless
evidence points in that direction.
Not every inhabitant of Iron Age Canaan was personally religious
and, among the religious, varying degrees of commitment to a pious life
can be discerned. A few ancient people enjoyed social circumstances
similar to those that contribute to increasing secularization in our day:
more education combined with multicultural interaction (including
travel and ease of communication). Among the aristocracy, a few
were able to purchase a rigorous education and sometimes even travel
abroad. Some of these elites never traveled, but literacy brought them
into contact with other cultures through the ‘international’ literature that
we know, from archaeological excavation, circulated widely among
elites. These environmental factors raised consciousness and expanded
intellectual possibilities for a tiny intellectual minority.
Most of the writings that scribes produced in their day jobs fulfilled
the needs of others, especially kings and other elites, but a small body
of literature, perhaps intended for education or for use during leisure
hours, preserves a glimpse into the philosophical orientation of the
scribes themselves. Some of this literature echoes the prevailing pieties
of the patron-god religion (for example, Prov. 16.10–15; 24.21–2; 25.2–7;
31.1–9). Other texts undermine these pieties or, at least, express a sophis-
ticated level of intellectual and emotional ambivalence toward them (Eccl.
8.2–4; 10.20). The biblical book of Job appears to be a sarcastic satire
openly attacking traditional patron-god religion. If it is not as radical as I
suggest, it is at least a biting critique that calls into question some of the
conventional religion’s most obvious errors, such as the notion that a god
mechanically rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked.
The almost stream-of-consciousness literary style of Qoheleth (also

known as Ecclesiastes) fluctuates between affirmations of conven-
tional piety and passages that seem to call this piety into question. A
similar work, badly damaged, was recovered from the ruins of ancient
Mesopotamia and is sometimes called the Babylonian Ecclesiastes. This
excerpt questions the notion that the gods reward faithful humans:
They walk on a lucky path those who do not seek a god,
Those who devoutly pray to a goddess become poor and weak.
In my childhood I investigated the mind of the god,
In humility and piety have I searched for the goddess.
And yet, a corvée without profit I bear like a yoke;
The god brought me scarcity instead of wealth.3
For his part, the Bible’s Qoheleth declares that humans are beasts and
share the fate of all beasts (Eccl. 3.18–21). Because he rejects belief in
life after death, Qoheleth concludes that, whether or not piety provides
reward in this life, devout service to a god is ultimately and eternally
pointless:
One fate arrives for all, for the righteous and for the evil,
for the good and for the bad, for the clean and for the unclean,
for the one who offers sacrifice and the one who refrains from such
offerings.
As the good, so also the sinner,
the one who swears an oath and the one who avoids an oath.
This is an evil in all things done under the sun,
that one fate is for everyone. (Eccl. 9.2–3a)4
From ancient Mesopotamia, a pessimistic scribe echoes Qoheleth’s

sentiments, saying, ‘Climb the mounds of ancient ruins and walk
about. Look at the skulls of late and early men. Who among them is an
evildoer, who a public benefactor?’5
When they reject belief in life after death, Qoheleth and his Babylonian
colleague echo the majority viewpoint in the Jewish Bible. Only a few
3 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from J. A. Wilson,

‘Observations on Life and the World Order’, in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near
Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1955), pp. 431–40 (439).
4 The Masoretic Text is damaged slightly and can be corrected with the assistance
of the Greek.
5 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from Wilson, ‘Observations
on Life’, p. 438.
late biblical glosses affirm life after death; most portions of the Jewish
Bible ignore this possibility or explicitly reject it. It was Christianity
and Talmudic Judaism that constructed belief in eternal life and then,
through creative misinterpretation, found ‘evidence’ for it in the Jewish
Bible (for example, Mk. 12.18–27). But Qoheleth seems to go further
than mere rejection of an afterlife. He rejects trust in a god and takes
comfort in an attitude of indifference that seems almost secular:
If a man were to father one hundred,
And the years of his life are many,
And great are the days of those years,
Yet his desire is not saturated with pleasure,
Or there is no burial for him,
I say: better is a stillborn than he! (Eccl. 6.3)
Literature of this kind could not have been intended for the illiterate
masses, but was the preserve of those with the educational foundation
necessary to let the mind wander in less conventionally pious direc-
tions. Qoheleth was not the most radical among them, for he at least
believed in the existence of the god that he was not inclined to worship,
or was inclined to worship in only a perfunctory manner. Apparently
some among the intellectual elites were more radical, perhaps as openly
atheistic and scornful of religion as outspoken atheists in our time.6 We
know of these ancient radicals because the pious among the scribes
derided their freethinking.
A diatribe against elitist freethinkers occurs twice in the Bible.
Psalms 14 and 53, which are nearly identical, scoff at those who say in
their hearts, ‘There are no gods.’ The poem continues with a condem-
nation of all who lack ‘knowledge’ of Israel’s god. But the poet admits
that this patron god has been, at best, lax in fulfilling his duties toward
the holy city of Zion. A reader of the psalm is justified to conclude that
the scoffers might not have been as deluded in their skepticism as the
poet implies.
Common English translations of Psalms 14 and 53 illustrate an
error in modern scholarship about ancient religion. Many English
translations render the line ‘there are no gods’ with ‘there is no god’, a
singular where the Hebrew original more naturally expresses a plural.
The plural is a reasonable translation because the ancient author of the
6 For example, R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).
poem lived in a henotheistic culture; in that environment, a non-believer

was one who rejected all the gods, not just one of them. Indeed, from
the non-believer’s viewpoint, a monotheist is nothing more than a
failed atheist, a person who has jettisoned all but one imaginary being.
Therefore, if Psalms 14 and 53 attack a group of people who actually
existed in Iron Age Jerusalem, these skeptics almost certainly said
‘there are no gods’.
As was noted in Chapter 6, the biblical anthology includes many
references to minor gods, goddesses, divine messengers (angels),
cherubs, seraphs, and so forth. Only in rare instances do the Hebrew
scribes seem to have been reluctant to acknowledge the existence
of these supernatural agents, so there is little reason to believe that
the author(s) of Psalms 14 and 53 believed in the existence of only
one god.7 However, modern scholarship has been uncomfortable
with the idea that the Bible is not monotheistic, a reluctance born
of modern religious sensibilities that are irrelevant to understanding
who the ancient authors were. This failure is seen in a startling way
by the standard modern Jewish translation of Ps. 14.1 (and 53.1),
which pretends that the atheist is an internally conflicted believer:
‘The benighted man thinks, “God does not care”’.8 An aggressively
inaccurate translation of this kind illustrates the length to which some
modern scholars will go to make ancient scribes conform to modern
religious sensibilities.
7 Long ago, M. Smith observed that even passages that sound, to the modern
reader, like affirmations of an exclusive monotheism were conventional henothe-
istic flatteries directed toward any god who happened to be worshiped at the
moment. In other words, the ritual formulae of, say, Isa. 45.5–7 and its parallels,
as well as the alleged monotheism of the late glosses (Deut. 4.35, 39; 2 Sam.
7.22; 1 Kgs 8.60; 18.39; and 2 Chron. 33.13) are not unequivocal data in favor of
an emerging biblical monotheism, especially since these are isolated short texts
within an anthology that otherwise assumes the existence of many supernatural
agents. See M. Smith, ‘The Common Theology of the Ancient Near East’, JBL
71 (1952), pp. 135–47 (137–40).
8 Translation from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures; The New JPS Translation
according to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1985); Pss. 14.1; 53.1 (pp. 1120, 1168).
Varieties of Canaanite Gods

The names of the Canaanite gods and their positions in the divine ranks
differed from place to place and from generation to generation.9 Even
in one place at one time, there were inconsistencies. For example, the
priests of Ugarit, a Late Bronze city in northern Syria (see Figure 2),
maintained lists of the gods and lists of offerings to the gods, but these
lists do not entirely correspond to one another.10 The myths of Canaan
were in perpetual flux as well.11 At Ugarit, for example, variant versions
of the same story about the gods can be found among the texts of
contemporary scribes.
This diversity is not surprising. There were no organized religious
institutions beyond the state-sponsored patron-god religions, and even
the religion of the state did not require an orthodoxy (a set of defined
‘correct beliefs’) except with respect to maintaining the population’s
loyalty and payment of taxes. Priests taught ritual torah on an ad hoc
basis (Hag. 2.11–13), but there was no attempt to disseminate a coherent
and consistent set of myths, rituals, and doctrines.12 Among the illiterate
masses, the textual versions of religious lore remained unknown.
In spite of the constant fluctuation among them, a few features of the
gods were stable throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. Above all, the
concept of divine patronage as discussed in Chapter 6 was a constant.
Another constant was a hierarchy among the gods that reflects, like
a mirror, the hierarchy in human society. Among humans, there was
royalty in the first rank, aristocracy in the second rank, free commoners
third and, at the bottom of the social pyramid, slaves. Among the gods,
the divine patron held top rank, sometimes sharing this status with
a divine spouse or a co-regent. Beneath the patron god, there were a
few extremely significant gods, usually associated with aspects of the
cosmos, such as sun and moon, as well as vital aspects of life, such
as love and war. In the third rank were the many gods of daily life,
9 Portions of this discussion are based on K. L. Noll, ‘Canaanite Religion’, RC 1

(2007), pp. 61–92.
10 D. Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2002), p. 12.
11 M. C. A. Korpel, ‘Exegesis in the Work of Ilimilku of Ugarit’, in J. C. de Moor
(ed.), Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 86–111 (93).
BibInt 16 (2008), pp. 395–427.
who specialized in specific skills, such as metalworking and aspects

of agriculture. Among these minor gods were divine ancestors and
household gods. At the bottom of the divine pyramid were minor gods
called messengers (angels) and a few monstrous divine beings.
The highest god of Canaan was El, who was sometimes known
as ’el-qoneh-’eretz, which means ‘El, creator of Earth’. A damaged
ostracon found in Jerusalem, from the Iron Age II, offers a blessing
in the name of ’el-qoneh-’eretz, and the man mentioned in 1 Sam. 1.1
had a name based on this divine epithet, ’el-qānāh, usually rendered
Elkanah in English (see also Gen. 14.19, 22).13 El was an elderly god
who oversaw his creation with wisdom and benevolence. At Ugarit, El’s
divine wife greeted her husband with these words, ‘Your decree, O El,
is wise, you are wise for eternity!’ The same Ugaritic text declares that
El lived at the place where the sources of freshwater rivers flow to Earth
(compare Gen. 2.10–14; see also the god’s casual stroll in this location
as described in Gen. 3.8).14 The method by which El created the world
differs from myth to myth. Sometimes El created by word of mouth
(compare the god of Genesis 1), at other times by forming creatures from
clay (compare Gen. 2.7), and in some instances by having sexual inter-
course with his goddess, Asherah (which has no parallel in the Bible).15
A few epigraphs from the Iron Age suggest that El merged with a god
called Baal into a single deity, though this is not certain. One of these
inscriptions was found in a Negev trade-route oasis of the Iron Age II,
apparently operated by officials working for the kingdom of Samaria-
Israel. The text is severely damaged, but the part that we can read seems
to equate the ‘name of El’ with the god ‘Baal’ in poetically parallel lines:
When El shines forth . . .
The mountains melt . . .
To bless Baal in the day of war,
For the name of El in the day of war.16
13 For the ostracon from Jerusalem, see G. I. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions:
Corpus and Concordance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 70;
see also P. D. Miller, ‘El, Creator of the Earth’, BASOR 239 (1980), pp. 43–6.
14 M. S. Smith, ‘The Baal Cycle’, in S. B. Parker (ed.), Ugaritic Narrative Poetry
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 83–180 (127–8).
15 M. C. A. Korpel, ‘Asherah Outside Israel’, in B. Becking et al. (eds), Only One
God? Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah
(London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 127–50 (130).
16 For the text, see Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions, p. 82.
On the basis of this kind of evidence, some researchers believe that

El decreased in popularity during the transition from the Bronze
to the Iron Ages.17 According to this hypothesis, the dominance
of Baal-type gods in the Iron Age suggests that Baal (especially
in his manifestation as Baal-of-the-Sky) had usurped El’s position
as highest of the gods and as the most common divine patron in
Canaan. There is evidence to support this hypothesis. For example,
in Philistine Ekron, Baal had appropriated El’s wife Asherah.18
Nevertheless, in a few parts of Iron Age Canaan, El continued to be
significant. A religious shrine in the Jordan Valley, called Deir Allah,
yielded a fragmentary inscription featuring El and a group of gods
called the Shaddai gods. It seems probable that this combination of
El and Shaddai gods can be correlated to the Bible’s memory of an
Iron Age god called El-Shaddai (for example, Gen. 35.11; Ezek.
10.5).19 The Bible’s equation of Canaanite El with the god of Israel
demonstrates that El had not entirely lost his significance for at least
some Iron Age Canaanites (Gen. 33.20; Exod. 34.6; Num. 24.8; 2
Sam. 22.32; Isa. 8.8, 10, etc.).20
El’s wife had several names, but usually she was called Asherah (1
Kgs 15.13; 18.19; 2 Kgs 21.7; 23.4). She gave birth to 70 gods, and
she nursed the human royal heir at her divine breast. The ancient root
of Asherah’s name probably meant ‘place’, and she was also called
17 H. Niehr, ‘The Rise of YHWH in Judahite and Israelite Religion: Methodological

and Religio-Historical Aspects’, in D. V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph of Elohim:
From Yahwism to Judaisms (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 45–72;
Korpel, ‘Asherah Outside Israel’.
18 S. Gitin, T. Dothan, and J. Naveh, ‘A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron’,
IEJ 47 (1997), pp. 1–16; and S. Gitin and M. Cogan, ‘A New Type of Dedicatory
Inscription from Ekron’, IEJ 49 (1999), pp. 193–202.
19 H. Lutzky, ‘Shadday as Goddess Epithet’, VT 48 (1998), pp. 15–36. For the text,
see J. A. Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ‘Allā (Chico, CA: Scholars Press,
1980).
20 Some researchers prefer to read every biblical instance of the divine name El
as though it were a generic designation of deity, equivalent to biblical ’elohim
(‘god’ or ‘gods’). An ancient speaker of Hebrew realized that the singular of
’elohim is ’eloha, not ’el. Even when ’el should be rendered ‘god’, the ancients
recognized its relationship to the Canaanite high god: an ’el is one who partakes
of, or derives from, or is in some sense a manifestation of, the high god El (for
example, the sons of divinity, or sons of El with enclitic mêm, in Ps. 29.1).
Qudshu (‘holy place’).21 It is possible that Asherah emerged as the

personification of El’s temple or holy presence. At Late Bronze Ugarit,
Asherah was called ‘the grace of El, the support of El, the peace of El’.22
In much later Jewish tradition, the holy presence of the Jewish god had
a special name and significance, the Shekhinah, which was possibly
a remnant of ancient Canaanite tradition; it is not impossible that the
Christian ‘Holy Spirit’ had a similar ancestry.
In spite of her relationship to the high god, Asherah enjoyed her own
independent status. At Philistine Ekron, for example, storage jars in the
sacred precinct were designated ‘for Asherah’ and ‘holy according to
the statute of Qudshu’.23 Also at Ekron, a temple inscription mentioned
a goddess that might be Asherah. The same excavation reveals that the
temple of Ekron received taxes identified as offerings to both the god
Baal and the human king. All these data suggest that the city honored
a divine pair: Asherah, who bore several names, and Baal. The female
held primary authority, having revealed statutes, or divine law. The
reference to Qudshu’s statutes from Ekron mirrors the biblical concept
of Yahweh’s Torah from Jerusalem (Isa. 2.3//Mic. 4.2).
Asherah was depicted in many ways, including as a goddess who
stood on the back of a lion and as a ‘tree of life’ with an ibex standing
on each side of the tree. At Ekron, where Asherah was worshiped,
archaeologists found an image of a goddess who stands on a lion, and
a Negev trade-route oasis with inscriptions mentioning Asherah also
produced an image of a tree flanked by ibexes, above a lion.24 In many
Canaanite religions, a female deity was represented by a wooden pole or
a stylized tree, and a male deity was represented by a large stone pillar.
21 For dissenting voices, see B. Margalit, ‘The Meaning and Significance of

Asherah’, VT 40 (1990), pp. 264–97; I. Cornelius, The Many Faces of the
Goddess: The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Goddesses Anat, Astarte,
Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500–1000 BCE (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2004).
22 Pardee, Ritual and Cult, p. 22. Pardee’s translation is ‘the grace of El, the solidity
of El, the well-being of El’.
23 Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh, ‘Royal Dedicatory Inscription’; and Gitin and Cogan,
‘New Type’.
24 A. Golani and B. Sass, ‘Three Seventh-Century B.C.E. Hoards of Silver from
Tel Miqne-Ekron’, BASOR 311 (1998), pp. 57–81 (71); J. M. Hadley, The Cult
of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000), pp. 152–4.
In the Bible, the large stone pillar for the male god is a positive religious
symbol (for example, Gen. 28.18; 35.14; Isa. 19.19). However, the
book of Deuteronomy outlaws both the male pillar and the female pole
(Deut. 16.21–2; the pole is called an ‘Asherah’). The book of Jeremiah
ridicules both by reversing their symbolism, treating the stone pillar like
a ‘mother’ and calling the wooden pole ‘father’ (Jer. 2.27). In spite of
Deuteronomy’s prohibition and Jeremiah’s ridicule, the divine symbols
of pillar and pole seem to have been common to Israelite and Judahite
religion, as the Bible and archaeology attest. For example, an Iron Age
excavation in the fortified city of Arad demonstrates that stone pillars
were part of a temple that, according to an ostracon found at the site,
might have been called ‘the house of Yahweh’ (see Figure 41).
Archaeological data demonstrate that Asherah was a vital part of
worship for inhabitants of Judah and Israel during the Iron Age II. A
common artifact in domestic settings was a female figure presenting
her breasts (see Figure 42). For example, each typical household in the
city of Mizpah contained one or two of these figurines.25 This goddess,
who represents the blessings of fertility and divine compassion, was
an ancient religious image that can be found throughout Canaan. The
figurines found in Iron Age Judahite and Israelite settings were stylized
so that the upper half is a woman and the lower half is a pillar or tree
trunk, perhaps a combination of the goddess and her symbol as ‘tree of
life’. Because the Bible makes occasional references to Asherah images
in the Jerusalem and Samarian temples (for example, 1 Kgs 15.13;
16.33), many researchers believe that the household figurines echoed
an aspect of state-sponsored religion in Judah and Samaria. Just as
Asherah lived in the king’s royal temple, so also she made her home in
each household.
The Negev trade-route oasis mentioned previously is one of several
excavated sites that produced Iron Age inscriptions mentioning both
25 A. J. Brody, ‘ “Those Who Add House to House”: Household Archaeology

and the Use of Domestic Space in an Iron II Residential Compound at Tell
en-Nasbeh’, in J. D. Schloen (ed.), Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in
Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 45–56
(53). For background, see R. Kletter, ‘Between Archaeology and Theology: The
Pillar Figurines from Judah and the Asherah’, in A. Mazar (ed.), Studies in the
Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan (JSOTSup, 331; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 179–216.
Figure 42. Fragment of a common type of household goddess figurine

Yahweh and Asherah.26 Large ceramic storage jars, now badly damaged,
preserve artwork depicting worshipers and gods (see Figure 43).
Associated with these drawings are the following two blessings:
1. [Damaged text], the king, says: ‘Speak to [damaged text] and to
Yoasah [damaged text], “I have blessed you [plural] by Yahweh of Samaria
and by his Asherah”’.
2. Amariah says: ‘Speak to my lord, “Have you peace? I have blessed
you [singular] by Yahweh of Teman and by his Asherah. May he bless you,
and may he keep you; and may he be with my lord [the king].”’27
In the first of these inscriptions, a king blessed a group of people,

invoking the name of Samaria’s patron god and his Asherah. The second
inscription, found on a separate ceramic jar, might have been a response
to the first. A person named Amariah blessed his lord, perhaps the king
of Samaria, invoking the name of the local region’s patron god and his
Asherah. (Some researchers prefer to translate these blessings differ-
ently: ‘I have blessed you to Yahweh . . . and to his Asherah’ in each
case.)
The inscriptions demonstrate that, like many gods and goddesses
in the ancient Near East, Yahweh was known in local manifestations,
one at Samaria, another in Teman. The Bible also speaks of Yahweh of
Zion-Jerusalem (Ps. 135.21; Amos 1.2//Joel 4.16 [English 3.16]) and
Yahweh of Hebron (2 Sam. 15.7–8).28 Throughout the ancient world,
these local manifestations of a god were conceptualized as distinct gods,
in this case multiple Yahwehs. Probably the original purpose of the
confession called the Shema, found in Deut 6.4, was to deny these local
manifestations in favor of a single, universal concept of deity: ‘Hear,
26 For recent discussion and bibliography, see B. B. Schmidt, ‘The Iron Age Pithoi
Drawings from Horvat Teman or Kuntillet ‘Ajrud: Some New Proposals’,
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 2 (2002), pp. 91–125; for related
discussion and bibliography, see J. H. Brotien, ‘Asherah and Textiles’, BN
134 (2007), pp. 63–77; G. Gilmour, ‘An Iron Age II Pictorial Inscription from
Jerusalem Illustrating Yahweh and Asherah’, PEQ 141 (2009), pp. 87–103.
27 Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions, p. 81.
28 The Hebrew Vorlage to the Old Greek of 2 Sam. 15.8 should be preferred: ‘I
will serve Yahweh in Hebron’. For discussion and bibliography, see P. Hugo,
‘The Jerusalem Temple Seen in 2 Samuel according to the Masoretic Text and
the Septuagint’, in M. K. H. Peters (ed.), XIII Congress of the International
Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Ljubljana 2007 (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), pp. 183–96 (193).
O Israel, Yahweh, our god, is one Yahweh’. In this sense, the book of
Deuteronomy represents a minority religious viewpoint among ancient
worshipers of Yahweh.
The Negev inscriptions offer blessings in the name of Yahweh and
‘his Asherah’. A few researchers have denied that this is a reference to
a goddess on the grounds that biblical Hebrew never uses a grammatical
phrase such as ‘his Asherah’ or ‘his/her Yahweh’. On grammatical
grounds, this argument has no merit; personal names were used in
this kind of grammatical construction, even if the Bible does not
preserve an example. Also, many ancient inscriptions refer to a god and
‘his’ goddess, so there is nothing unusual about this grammar or the
relationship of the goddess to her husband (a husband was the owner of
his wife in ancient Near Eastern culture).29
Combined with the artistic representations of the goddess, these
inscriptions are consistent with the hypothesis that Yahweh had a
divine wife in Samaria and Teman. A similar inscription from a tomb
between Hebron and Lachish, a region under the political jurisdiction of
Jerusalem, suggests that Yahweh of Jerusalem was married to Asherah
as well.30 This inscription reads: ‘Uriah, who is rich, wrote this. Being
blessed is Uriah by [or ‘to’] Yahweh. From his enemies, by [or ‘for’] his
Asherah, deliver him!’ These data are consistent with the book of Kings,
in which biblical authors acknowledge (even though they disapprove)
that state-sponsored religion often included worship of Asherah (1 Kgs
15.13; 16.33; and elsewhere).
In the book of Jeremiah, people are accused of having worshiped
a ‘Queen of the Sky’ (Jer. 7.18). In Jeremiah 44, a dispute breaks
out about why the city of Jerusalem had been defeated in battle. One
faction declared that Yahweh punished the sinners who had worshiped
the Queen of the Sky and other gods; another faction insisted that
military defeat occurred because people had stopped worshiping the
29 C. A. Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic

Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), p. 71.
For discussion of the grammar and comparative texts, see M. Dietrich and O.
Loretz, Jahwe und seine Aschera: Anthropomorphes Kultbild in Mesopotamien,
Ugarit und Israel; das biblische Bilderverbot (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1992),
pp. 98–101; P. Xella, ‘Le dieu et “sa” déesse: l’utilisation des suffixes pronom-
inaux avec des théonymes d’Ebla à Ugarit et à Kuntillet ‘Ajrud’, UF 27 (1995),
pp. 599–610.
30 For the text, see Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions, p. 106.
Queen of the Sky. Both factions were incorrect. Devastation was caused
by ancient imperial politics of conquest. But the pertinent question
in this discussion is: who was the Queen of the Sky? A variety of
historical hypotheses have been advanced, and Asherah is one of several
candidates (other candidates being the Canaanite goddesses Anat or
Astarte, and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar). In any case, the story
again illustrates that, even though biblical writers disapproved, many
worshipers of Yahweh also worshiped his divine wife.
Among the many artworks associated with the inscriptions naming
Yahweh and his Asherah are two monstrous figures that appear to be
bovine (see Figure 43). These figures probably represent a common
minor god called Bes, who was always depicted as an ugly divine
being with animal traits and an elaborate headdress. Bes was extremely
common in ancient Egypt and Canaan. In many cases, the Bes image
was used to depict a variety of deities and not just Bes.31 Quite a
few researchers who have studied the Bes figures in Figure 43 have
concluded that they depict one male and one female deity (assuming
that the appendage between the legs of each figure is a tail and not a
penis). Because the images are closely associated with a blessing in the
name of Yahweh and his Asherah, the hypothesis that this is a drawing of
Yahweh and his wife has become common. A few researchers continue
to dispute this hypothesis. Given the evidence available, the hypothesis
is not established beyond doubt, but it is a reasonable conjecture.
Why was the goddess so popular? Many researchers have speculated
on the appeal of a female deity for both men and women in an ancient
agrarian society. Because the gods were constructed in the image of
humans (not vice versa, as Gen. 1.26–8 suggests), the divine realm was
half female, and the nurturing role of a goddess who presents her breasts
appealed to people who struggled for survival in a harsh environment.
Throughout the ancient Near East, goddesses played an integral role
in state-sponsored religions and, to the extent that evidence can be
adduced, were popular among common people as well. In particular,
Asherah seems to have been popular among Canaanite people because
she manifested the most attractive traits of her husband, El. She was his
presence in worship and she bestowed his wisdom on human devotees:
Asherah, ‘the grace of El, the support of El, the peace of El’.
31 Z. Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches

(London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 388–9.
Figure 43. Faint painted images on this broken storage jar depict divine beings.
Above them is an inscription mentioning Yahweh and his Asherah
Much later, biblical writers seem to have demoted Asherah, but they
did not get rid of her. Instead, they transformed her into a personi-
fication of divine wisdom, especially in Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24.
Asherah’s image as a ‘tree of life’ did not disappear either. Wisdom
is symbolized as a tree of life in Prov. 3.18, and Asherah might even
be present in the biblical garden of Eden (Gen. 2.9). Even after her
demotion, the memory of Asherah’s earlier divine status was preserved
in the Bible. A priest listed in 1 Chron. 25.2 is named Asarelah, literally
‘Asherah is goddess’.32 Thus, enshrined as she is in the Bible, Asherah
calls out continuously, seeking those who would be wise (Prov. 8.1–21)
and proclaiming her role in creation (Prov. 8.22–31). She pitches her
tent among the Jews and is incarnate in the Torah (Sirach 24). The
Christians seem to have modeled Jesus after her as well (Jn 1.1–5, 14).33
The god who seems to have rivaled El for supremacy was Baal,
god of the storm and provider of fertility (see Figure 25). His actual
name was Hadad or Adad (which meant ‘thunder’), but his title Baal
32 M. Dijkstra, ‘I Have Blessed You by YHWH of Samaria and His Asherah: Texts
with Religious Elements from the Soil Archive of Ancient Israel’, in Becking et
al. (eds), Only One God? pp. 17–44 (40).
33 M. D. Coogan, ‘Canaanite Origins and Lineage: Reflections on the Religion of
Ancient Israel’, in P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride (eds), Ancient
Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1987), pp. 115–24.
(which meant ‘lord’) was just as common. Baal, who is sometimes

called Baal-of-the-Sky, is said to ride the clouds through the sky and
his thunderous appearance can cause earthquakes. He was one of the
most popular gods of Canaan, which is not surprising in an agricultural
society dependent upon the rainy season over which Baal ruled. An
Ugaritic myth equated Baal with the agricultural calendar, saying that
Baal dies for part of each year and is resurrected in the spring when
the rains bring new life. Because Baal was a young, strong deity, many
kings identified with this god, and Baal was the patron god in many
cities.
Although a few biblical authors hated Baal and disapproved of
anyone who honored this god (for example, Jer. 7.9), many biblical
texts describe Yahweh, god of Israel, as Baal. For example, the
imagery associated with Yahweh in Psalm 29 is the traditional imagery
associated with Baal, and many researchers regard this psalm as an
old Canaanite hymn in which the name of Baal has been erased and
replaced with Yahweh. Likewise, the Yahweh in Psalm 18 who rides a
minor god called a cherub and has smoke pouring from his nostrils as
he hurls lightning bolts at Earth is Baal by another name. In a polemical
poem against worship of Baal, the prophet Hosea admits that his own
god Yahweh functions exactly as a typical Canaanite Baal (Hosea 2).
From these biblical texts and many others, it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that the biblical god is a typical Canaanite Baal with a few
trace elements of El remaining here and there.
The distinction between Baal and Yahweh remains unclear even
when biblical authors try to clarify it. For example, a story in 1 Kings
18 describes a champion of Yahweh named Elijah who challenges the
followers of Baal to a contest. An altar is built for each of these two
gods, and a miracle from the sky ‘proves’ that one god is real and the
other is not. The story is illogical on two levels. First, the book of
Deuteronomy insists that any miracle on behalf of a god other than
Yahweh is false testimony and the miracle worker should be executed
(Deut. 13.2–6 [13.1–5 in some English versions]). That commandment
renders the contest of 1 Kings 18 moot, for if the god Baal proved his
existence by working the proposed miracle, his followers would be
subject to execution anyway. But the story is illogical on a second level
as well. The two gods in 1 Kings 18, Yahweh and Baal, are assumed by
everyone in the story to be identical. Both are invisible agents from the
sky who possess humanlike minds and take a keen interest in human
worship. Given that Baal was a title meaning ‘lord’ and that Yahweh is
frequently depicted as Baal in the Bible, the contest of 1 Kings 18 is a
trivial dispute over a title. It is certainly not a dispute over the character
of the god. In the story, Yahweh responded with a miracle, but the reader
might feel that Baal was wiser for ignoring this pointless challenge to
his divine honor.
If there is any doubt that the biblical god is Baal, Psalm 20 has put
that doubt to rest. An alternate version of this psalm was recovered
from ancient Egypt (see Figure 44).34 Although portions of the Egyptian
manuscript are damaged and the language is difficult to read, the poem
appears to be a hymn to an Egyptian god, Horus, who is equated with
the Canaanite god of the moon and with Baal or Baal-of-the-Sky, the
god of the temple in the city of Bethel, just north of Jerusalem. By
comparing these two poems line for line, it is apparent that each derives
from a common original; many lines use the same words in the same
grammatical structures. Here we have direct evidence for the process by
which an old poem was altered by two later scribes, working indepen-
dently of one another. The extent to which the two poems remain
parallel is the extent to which the scribes did not alter their source-text.
The differences between the poems are the result of one scribe, or
both, altering the original. In other words, this evidence supports the
hypothesis that a biblical poem praising Yahweh was, in its prebiblical
draft, a hymn praising Canaanite Baal.
In myths found at Late Bronze Ugarit, Baal battles two of his divine
siblings, Mot and Yamm. Together, these three brothers symbolized the
three natural realms. Baal ruled the sky and Yamm ruled all bodies of
water. Yamm means ‘Sea’, and his alternate name was Nahar, which
means ‘River’. If Baal, as god of storm and thunder, was a source of
violence and fertility, Yamm, as god of the seas, was a source of pure,
uncontrollable chaos. The battle in which Baal defeated Yamm resulted
in the creation of the world as we know it. This battle is remembered in
biblical poetry in which the biblical god plays the role of Baal, such as
Job 26.5–13 and Ps. 74.12–17. Some researchers believe this was the
34 For discussion of this text and bibliography, see Zevit, Religions of Ancient
Israel, pp. 668–78. My translation differs slightly from that of Zevit. See also
S. P. Vleeming and J. W. Wesselius, ‘An Aramaic Hymn from the Fourth Century
B.C.’, Bibliotheca Orientalis 39 (1982), pp. 501–9.
Figure 44. Psalm 20 and a hymn to Horus (Baal)

myth that became the source of the exodus story, in which Yamm (the
sea) is split in half by Yahweh (see Isa. 51.9–10).35
The name of Baal’s other brother and opponent, Mot, means ‘Death’.
He ruled the earth and, most significantly, the realm of the dead, which
is where all living beings eventually reside for eternity. Mot is the
opponent that slays Baal so that Baal must spend a few months each
year in Mot’s chambers, to be reborn in the spring. The Bible remembers
this Canaanite myth and puts it to use in Isaiah 25 (especially 25.7–8).
Although everyone eventually resides with the god Mot, Canaanites
did not conceive of the realm of the dead as ‘life after death’. With few
exceptions, Canaanites did not think much about a possible afterlife
of any kind. For example, most portions of the Jewish Bible (the
Christian Old Testament) are silent on the issue of life after death and,
on the rare occasion that the topic surfaces, the routine assumption
appears to be that death is annihilation (for example, Isa. 38.10–12)
or eternal silence in the realm of Sheol, a fate that awaits all persons,
good and bad (Isa. 5.14; 14.9–20; Ezek. 32.17–32, etc.). A few biblical
passages seem to affirm life after death for ordinary humans, but most
researchers view these passages as symbolic expressions of hope for a
restored community, not resurrected individuals (for example, 1 Sam.
2.6; Isa. 52.13–53.12; Ezek. 37.1–14; Hosea 6.2; 13.14; perhaps also
Isa. 25.7–8; 26.19). In some instances, the Hebrew text is corrupt, and
that corruption, though basically meaningless, has been interpreted as
though it speaks of an afterlife (for example, Job 19.25–6). Unequivocal
affirmation of life after death, but only for some people and not for
everyone, occurs in a Greco-Roman era composition (Dan. 12.2;
perhaps also Isa. 25.7–8; 26.19).
Baal’s wife, who was also his sister, was Anat. She was a mighty
deity who saved Baal from defeat at the hands of Mot. In a vivid poetic
passage from Ugarit, Anat’s character as goddess of war is stressed. She
butchers soldiers on the battlefield, wades in their blood, and adorns
herself with their body parts: heads hung on her back, palms attached to
her sash. In spite of her violence, Anat was a young, sexually appealing
goddess. Any soldier of renown was called a ‘son of Anat’ (see Judg.
3.31). Some researchers suggest that Anat’s personality was created by
the soldiers who were her devotees. Military prowess and sexuality are
35 C. Kloos, Yhwh’s Combat with the Sea: A Canaanite Tradition in the Religion of
Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1986).
foremost in the minds of young males who make up the majority of the
soldiers in any king’s army.36 In the Bible, the prophet Jeremiah was
from a small town named for several manifestations of this goddess:
Anathoth (literally ‘Anats’; Jer. 1.1).
There were other cosmic gods, too many to describe in detail.
Baal’s father was Dagan, god of grain. The Bible suggests that some
Philistines worshiped Dagan (spelled Dagon in 1 Samuel 5). The god
who ruled the moon was Yerach and the god of the sun was Shamash (or
Shemesh, or sometimes Shaphash). In the Bible, the name of the town
of Jericho means something like ‘Moon City’ and another town is called
Beth-shemesh, ‘temple of Shemesh’. The god of dawn was Shahar and
the god of dusk was Shalem. The city of Jerusalem gets its name from
the latter: yeru-shalem means, very roughly, ‘May Shalem establish’ or
‘foundation of Shalem’. The evening star, the planet Venus, was called
Astarte (the Bible renders this name Ashtoreth). Like Anat, Astarte
seems to have represented both love and war and, during the Greco-
Roman era, the two goddesses became merged into a single deity called
Atargatis. In the Bible, one of the gods who served in Yahweh’s royal
court was called ‘the Adversary’, in Hebrew ‘the Satan’ (Job 1–2; Zech.
3.1; also compare 2 Sam. 24.1 with 1 Chron. 21.1). Much later, during
Greco-Roman times, this god was reconceived as an evil being who
opposed the good Yahweh, but in the Iron Age he was just one among
many members of Yahweh’s entourage.
Resheph was a god of pestilence and the guardian of the gate to the
underworld, where Mot ruled. Resheph was worthy of worship so that
he would not inflict pestilence on humanity. In the Bible, Yahweh is
accompanied by his ally, Resheph, in a poem that presents Yahweh
as thunderous Baal (Hab. 3.5). At Ugarit, Resheph bore a title that
seems similar to Yahweh’s title in the Bible: Resheph Sabai meant
‘Resheph-of-the-Army,’ and biblical Yahweh Sebaoth means ‘Yahweh-
of-the-Armies’ (1 Sam. 4.4; Isa. 31.4; Jer. 6.6; Amos 5.27, etc.).37 The
divine army was equated with the stars of the night sky, the ‘heavenly
host’ in many English translations (Judg. 5.20; Isa. 34.4; Job 38.7;
36 N. Wyatt, ‘The Religion of Ugarit: An Overview’, in W. G. E. Watson and

N. Wyatt (eds), Handbook of Ugaritic Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 529–85
(541).
37 Pardee, Ritual and Cult, p. 215.
Lk. 2.13–14). A brief myth in Josh. 5.13–15 describes the hero Joshua
meeting the god who commanded Yahweh’s army.
The divine army was part of the lesser-ranked gods of the henothe-
istic divine realm, which also included a vast number of utilitarian
gods. Utilitarian gods ruled over practical aspects of life, such as crafts-
manship, agriculture, and household activities. Household gods were
extremely common and the Bible calls them teraphim. These gods could
be small (Gen. 31.19, 34–5) or large (1 Sam. 19.13, 16). Some biblical
authors did not like the teraphim and condemned them (Zech. 10.2),
but other biblical authors seem to have accepted them as part of normal
religious practice.
It is probable that biblical writers who mention the teraphim also
have in mind the goddess figurines mentioned previously, as well as that
monstrous little fellow known as Bes (see Figure 45). Experts debate
who Bes was and what role he played, but that he was common and
popular is beyond doubt. As mentioned, the image of Bes sometimes
represented another god (such as Yahweh, perhaps), but Bes as Bes
might have been popular because his ugly features could scare away
evil. Bes was a guardian protector of the household and, especially, of
women during childbirth.
Also among the gods of minor rank were dead ancestors, which
included dead kings as well as deified heads of household (almost
always males).38 They could be called ’elohim (gods) or sometimes
repha’im (‘healthy ones’ or ‘healing ones’). In Ugaritic texts, these
dead humans enjoyed the company of the other gods in the realm of
the dead, a privilege not shared by most humans, who simply ceased to
exist at death. In the Bible, the dead prophet Samuel is an ’elohim (god)
in 1 Sam. 28.13, which is translated incorrectly as ‘spirit’ or ‘ghostly
form’ in a few English Bibles. These gods were venerated at family
tombs, where they received offerings of food and wine, which is why
politically dominant males desired to be buried with their ancestors in
the tomb and not at some remote location (compare 1 Kgs 2.10 and
11.43 with Jer. 22.18–19). If Deut. 26.14 is a fragment from the state
religion’s law code, families were not permitted to feed their ancestors
with the portion of their crops that was required for the patron god (the
38 K. van der Toorn suggests that the dead ancestors were numbered among the
teraphim; see van der Toorn, ‘Currents in the Study of Israelite Religion’, CR:BS
6 (1998), pp. 9–30 (15).
Figure 45. Among the teraphim were small figurines depicting the god Bes. This
one was found at Dor
state tax; for example, Deut. 14.22–29; 1 Sam. 8.15–17). There does not
seem to have been any royal prohibition against feeding the dead with a
portion of the crops that were not claimed by the patron god.
The lowest tier of deities was occupied by the slave gods, most of
whom held the title of mala’ak, which means ‘messenger’ (Greek:
angelos). These were gods who carried messages between the gods
and brought messages from a god to humans (Judg. 6.11–22; Mt. 1.20).
Sometimes a divine messenger was sent with a specific task to perform
(for example, Num. 22.21–35; 2 Sam. 24.15–16; Mt. 28.2). Another
set of slave gods were the seraphim and the cherubim, whose presence
symbolized royalty. For instance, the biblical god sits enthroned between
two cherubim (1 Sam. 4.4; 1 Kgs 6.23–30), which means that Yahweh is
the king of the gods (see Psalm 97). We know from a variety of ancient
Near Eastern artworks that a cherub (the singular form of cherubim)
had the body of a lion, the head of a human, the wings of an eagle,
and the hooves of a bull (compare Ezekiel 1; and compare the Egypto-
Phoenician version of this type of deity in Figure 34). A seraph was a
snake, or a snakelike being, with wings. The prophet Isaiah sees some
of these gods in his temple vision of Isaiah 6, another passage in which
Yahweh is depicted as a king.
Divine Immanence and Divine Transcendence

The gods described in this chapter, such as El, Asherah, Yahweh, and
Baal, were immanent. That is to say, they did not transcend time and
space, which would have rendered them unavailable to their human
clients. Immanence means that the gods are able to communicate with
humans. Logically, communication is possible only if the god experiences
the passage of time as we do, and this assumption about the gods is why
everyone believed that they could pray to a god and the god would respond
(for example, Psalm 5; Dan. 9.20–23). In many cases, they assumed that
the god could be surprised, delighted, or disappointed by an unexpected
turn of events and even change the divine mind in light of these events
(for example, 1 Sam. 15.10–11; Jer. 26.3). Also, everyone assumed that
gods were bound to three-dimensional space, although the gods can travel
greater distances than humans and at much faster speed. Often, the gods
were ‘up there’ in the sky, watching us, and would have to travel down
to encounter humans (Gen. 11.5; Exod. 3.7–8). In many cases, a god
promised to ‘be here’ among us (Exod. 25.8; 2 Chron. 5.13–14).
Theoretically, of course, every god transcends time and space. The

god can be present everywhere at once, as in Psalm 139. A god with
this capacity contradicts the common god who travels through normal
three-dimensional space (for example, Gen. 3.8; Num. 9.15–23; Psalm
18). Likewise, a god can know the future as easily as the past, as in Gen.
15.13–16. But a god who transcends time contradicts the common god
who reacts to the behavior of people (for example, Gen. 6.5–7; 38.6–10;
Deuteronomy 9). Transcendent god-concepts are logically incompatible
with immanent god-concepts, so people rarely retain both. They unself-
consciously select one and ignore the other, or occasionally switch from
one to the other without noticing that they have done so.39
Transcendent god-concepts make a god seem more godlike, but
immanent god-concepts are useful for daily religion. For example,
the psalmist says to his god, ‘a thousand years are, in your eyes, like
yesterday that has passed’ (Ps. 90.4; 2 Pet. 3.8). This is not a sophisti-
cated religious idea. On a theoretical level, this psalmist’s god remains
bound to time; he merely experiences it at a different pace. But even
this rudimentary level of abstract reasoning played no role in people’s
daily religious experiences. No one in the ancient Near East assumed
that the god hears a person’s prayer a thousand years after the prayer
was uttered, for such a god would have been useless to human needs.
Likewise, a god who knows what will happen a thousand years in
advance seems impressive on a theoretical level but provides no value
in daily life, because people need to know if the crops will grow this
season. For that reason, actual interaction between a god and human
worshipers was like interaction between two humans, one of whom
possessed slightly greater insight than the other. (Exceptions to this
rule of thumb, such as a god who predicts events hundreds of years in
the future, served a limited function that will be discussed later in this
chapter.)
In everyday religion, each god promised to attend human worship,
and that is why temples, shrines, and objects such as statues were
central to ancient religious experience. Periodic divine visitation with
39 I. Pyysiäinen, Supernatural Agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); idem, How Religion Works: Towards
a New Cognitive Science of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2003); P. Boyer, Religion
Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic,
2001).
humanity is called a theophany. It can happen anywhere but, again for

utilitarian reasons, usually happened at designated holy sites (Isaiah 6),
especially during normal worship events (Psalm 134). With respect to
theophanies, biblical authors made the same assumptions as all other
ancient Near Eastern peoples, but they sometimes pretended that their
own views were superior. For example, here and there in the Bible, an
author ridicules the manufacture of divine statues because a statue is
not a god (Deut. 5.8; Isa. 44.9–20; Hab. 2.18–20, etc.), but the ridicule
is unfair and unnecessary. People who made divine statues believed
the statue was nothing more than the place where the god promised to
be immanent, which is exactly what the biblical god promised about
specific buildings, tents, and an object called the Ark (Exod. 40.33–8;
Num. 10.33–6; 1 Kgs 9.1–9).40
Divination: The Most Common Form of Divine Revelation

Communication traveled in two directions between an immanent god,
such as Baal or Yahweh, and the humans who needed their god. One
direction was prayer and the other direction was revelation. If a god is
immanent, then that god is able to hear prayers directed to him or her. (A
transcendent god does not hear prayer because the god transcends time
and space; or a transcendent god ‘hears’ prayer as part of the infinite
whole, which is the same as saying it does not hear prayer.) Most
immanent theisms encourage both formal and informal prayer practices.
Formal prayer usually occurs in groups, particularly during worship
services, but there are exceptions in which individuals perform highly
formalized prayer rituals in private. Informal prayers can take any form
and can be performed at any time.
Revelation is the only means by which a god, any god, can speak
to humans. The word revelation means, quite simply, that the god has
‘revealed’ itself to humans. Although revelation can take many forms,
in the ancient Near East it usually took one of two forms: divination or
prophecy. These were the same everywhere. Textual evidence for them
spans some 2,500 years or more, and the texts were found everywhere
from Egypt to Mesopotamia.
40 A. Berlejung, Die Theologie der Bilder: Herstellung und Einweihung von

Kultbildern in Mesopotamien und die alttestamentliche Bilderpolemik (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).
The first, and the most common, type of divine revelation was
divination. Two key elements enable us to identify this type of
revelation. First, a divination is never initiated by the god; it is always
initiated by humans through ritual activity. Second, in a divination, the
god ‘speaks’ through some symbolic element, object, or animal, but
this symbolic speech is easily translated into a message that can be
expressed in words.
When a king wanted to know the will of his patron god or
goddess, the king would ask the temple priests to perform a divination.
Archaeologists have recovered many examples in which a king wanted
to know whether he should go to war, whether he should appoint a
particular individual to an office or a priesthood, whether he should
send an ambassador to a neighboring country, whether he should give
his daughter in marriage to a named individual, whether the queen
mother would survive her illness, and so forth. For example, the
Neo-Assyrian emperor Esarhaddon empowered his priests to approach
Shamash, the god who rules the sun, with the following questions:
. . . in accordance with the command of your great divinity, Shamash, great
Lord, and your favorable decisions, should [the man who makes] this
query, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, strive, plan and, with his troops, his
[damaged text], his chariots, and his weapons, . . . go across the Euphrates,
to the city of Ashkelon?
If he takes the road and goes, will the man who makes this query,
Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, arrive across the Euphrates and reach the
city of Ashkelon in good health? Will he return alive [from the city of
Ashkelon] and enter [his palace in Nineveh]?
Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it? Does your
great divinity know it?41
The inquiry continued with requests that the benevolent deity might
overlook the trivial errors, disrespectful actions, and inadvertent insults
committed by mere humans. Then the priests ritually slaughtered a
sacrificial ram so that they could inspect the ram’s liver. The condition
of the liver indicated the god’s response to the inquiry and would
determine whether the soldiers of Ashkelon would need to defend
their city against Neo-Assyrian invasion during the coming season of
41 Translation is modified slightly (for easier reading) from I. Starr, with J. Aro and
S. Parpola, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria
(State Archives of Assyria, V; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1990), pp.
94–7 (#81).
military activities. Over the centuries, many rams gave their lives in
service of divinatory rites.
The texts of these Mesopotamian divination rituals survived for our
inspection because they were written on clay tablets. The hundreds
of rituals that we know about are likely to be just a fraction of the
thousands that were performed. For example, in some cases, a clay
tablet survives that asks the god to respond to a question written on a
sealed sheet of papyrus that was, in all likelihood, destroyed immedi-
ately after the ceremony.42 Apparently some of the king’s military plans
were too sensitive for even the priests to see, and so only the god was
permitted to read them.
Durable clay tablets were not used very often in Canaanite cities such
as Jerusalem, and the papyrus that was commonly used by Canaanites
rarely survives thousands of years, but biblical stories suggest that
similar divination took place in the temples of Yahweh. Biblical Torah
describes a priestly garment called an ephod, a ritual garment that had
been worn by priests at the Late Bronze city of Ugarit as well (Exodus
28).43 With the ephod, the priests wore a breastplate in which they
carried small objects called Urim and Thummim (Exod. 28.30; see also
Lev. 8.6–9). From time to time, the Bible tells a story in which a king
or military leader asked the priests to perform divination by manipu-
lating these objects during ritual worship events (for example, 1 Sam.
14.3, 37–43; 23.1–6, 9–13; 28.6; 30.7–8). These stories may or may
not describe real events, but they made sense to an ancient reader who
was familiar with divination rituals, demonstrating that these rituals
were part of the local culture. In other biblical examples, the divination
ceremony seems bizarre to a modern reader. For example, in Numbers 5,
a commandment states that if a woman is accused of infidelity, she shall
be brought to the temple, where the priest will make her drink a cup of
water mixed with holy dirt and sacred ink dissolved from a written oath.
If she was guilty of infidelity, the god was expected to respond to this
ritual magic by ensuring that the woman’s womb becomes diseased and
she experiences bitter pain.
The evidence from the Bible suggests that religious leaders struggled
to maintain a monopoly on divine revelation by prohibiting all forms
of unauthorized divination. This is not surprising, because divination is
42 I. Starr et al., Queries to the Sungod, pp. 138–45 (#129–38).

43 Pardee, Ritual and Cult, pp. 118, 121n. 2.
easy to perform and the diviner can use just about any available objects
as sacred ‘dice’. The priests might have felt threatened if worshipers
discovered that they could bypass these elites and appeal directly to
their god or gods. The Bible’s rhetorical trick is to pretend that some
forms of divination are genuinely Israelite (for example, Deut. 33.8;
Neh. 7.65) but other forms of divination are evil because they are
foreign. So, for example, Deuteronomy 18 prohibits the Israelites from
performing the religious rituals of the ‘Canaanites’, and the list of these
allegedly foreign practices includes ‘divination’ (Deut. 18.10), which is
equated with such practices as sorcery and the consulting of the dead.
Prophecy: The Second Most Common Form of Divine Revelation

The second common method of divine revelation in the ancient Near
East was prophecy. This kind of revelation differed from divination
in two details. First, the message was a direct speech from a human
without the need for ritual manipulation of an object or sacrificial
animal. Second, the god took the initiative by sending a prophet rather
than waiting for someone to ask a question. A variety of data suggest that
people generally trusted divination more than prophecy. For example,
at Bronze Age Mari, a prophet’s message was tested for authenticity by
performing a divination in which a lock of the prophet’s hair or a piece
of the prophet’s garment was manipulated in the ritual.
Although prophecy differed from divination in its details, the line
between the two types of divine revelation should not be drawn too
sharply. Most ancient prophets were employed as part of a temple’s staff.
They were at the call of the kings and ready to perform as the mouthpiece
for the god in a ritual that seems similar to divination. One historian
prefers to call prophets ‘non-inductive diviners’ because the prophet
offered an alternative type of divination, a type that was more flexible
and expressive because it was not tied to the mechanical process of ritual
divination (the prophecy was non-inductive, that is to say, not induced).44
The prophets were believed to be ordinary humans; unlike the kings,
they were not semidivine beings or ‘sons’ of the gods. However, a
44 M. Nissinen, ‘What is Prophecy? An Ancient Near Eastern Perspective’, in J.

Kaltner and L. Stulman (eds), Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near
East; Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon (London: T&T Clark, 2004),
pp. 17–37 (21–2).
prophet received divine revelation directly from a god, which set the
prophet apart from all other people, including kings. Throughout the
ancient world, the prophet distinguished between ordinary human
utterance and speech in the name of the god by performing a socially
recognized pattern of behavior that signaled his or her role as the
mouthpiece for the divine. This behavior might take any number of
forms depending on the traditions in a particular city or region, such as
a mystical experience, a trance, or fits of ecstasy. The ancient texts from
regions as widespread as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia indicate that
the interest a prophet generated never hinged on this behavior, but on
the content of the message.45
Because most documents were produced by royal scribes, it is no
surprise that most of our evidence about prophets involves divine
revelation directed to kings. On occasion, the royal archives include
a prophecy addressed to the people. For example, a Neo-Assyrian
prophet began an oracle announcing the impending victories of the king
by shouting, ‘Listen carefully, O Assyrians!’46 This kind of text is rare,
but this and other incidental data from many parts of the ancient world
suggest that prophecy directed to non-royal individuals and groups was
common.
All the gods who revealed themselves by the prophets express a
similar set of loves and hatreds. These gods concerned themselves with
large matters of state and minute details of daily life. Often, they oversaw
multiple affairs simultaneously. For example, a prophet of Shamash, the
god who rules the sun, sent a message to the king of Mari, a Bronze Age
city on the Euphrates River (see Figure 17).47 In this single message,
the god issued four commands. First, the human king was expected to
send new furniture and a daughter to one of the temples of Shamash,
where the daughter would become a priestess. Second, Shamash issued
instructions for distributing to temples and kings of allied satellite states
the spoils gathered during a recently completed war. Third, this god
45 M. Nissinen, ‘Prophetic Madness: Prophecy and Ecstasy in the Ancient Near

East and in Greece’, in K. L. Noll and B. Schramm (eds), Raising Up a Faithful
2010), pp. 3–29.
46 M. Nissinen, with C. L. Seow and R. K. Ritner, Prophets and Prophecy in the
Ancient Near East (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), p. 119 (#85).
47 Nissinen et al., Prophets and Prophecy, pp. 24–5 (#4).
warned his human king that the king of a neighboring state had been
negotiating deceitfully. And fourth, Shamash demanded that a person
who is identified as the god’s ‘adversary’ be sent to one of the kings of
an allied satellite state. The god (that is to say, the prophet who spoke
for the god) kept his finger on the pulse of daily life at the royal court.
The similarities between the prophets of the ancient Near East and the
biblical prophets demonstrate that the latter were not distinctive, but in tune
with their cultural environment. Yahweh in the Bible displays a person-
ality that is identical to the other gods because the prophets who spoke
for Yahweh were embedded in a social and political network like that of
the prophets of other kingdoms and other gods. In some cases, biblical
prophecy even deals with the same topic, in almost the same words, as
prophecy recorded in the archives of other ancient kingdoms. For example,
a Neo-Assyrian prophet uttered these words against the kingdom of Elam,
a rival to the east of the Assyrian heartland: ‘I will crush Elam! Its army
shall be leveled to the ground.’48 A similar message was announced only a
few generations later by Jeremiah: ‘This is what Yahweh of the Armies has
said, “I am now breaking the bow of Elam, the source of their strength” ’
(Jer. 49.35). Just as the gods of the ancient Near East would, on occasion,
reverse their judgments in light of changing political circumstances, so also
a Hebrew scribe added a later gloss to this judgment against Elam, in which
Yahweh promises to restore Elam’s fortunes at a later date (Jer. 49.39).
Biblical prophecy is so similar to the prophecies of other ancient
royal courts that if a foreign diplomat had been visiting the Jerusalem
king and attended a worship service in Yahweh’s temple, everything
that was announced in Yahweh’s name would have been familiar to
him. For example, a prophetic victory hymn in which the god Ashur,
patron of Neo-Assyria, defends his human king uses the same narrative
plot used by Psalm 18 (which is nearly identical to 2 Samuel 22). Evil
ones have surrounded the human king, who cries out to his patron god,
who in turn hears the prayer and responds with a fierce display in the
sky as he descends to defend his chosen one. Between these two poems,
one written in Akkadian and the other in Hebrew, the name of the god
differs, but the gods’ personalities and activities are identical.49
Like every patron god, Yahweh had no choice but to engage in the
often uncooperative world of real politics. For example, a Bronze Age
48 Nissinen et al., Prophets and Prophecy, p. 129 (#93).

prophecy from a city called Mari, on the Euphrates River, describes

a vision of the patron god Dagan in the divine council, where he
condemns Tishpak, the god of a neighboring kingdom.50 In the Bible,
Yahweh verbally abuses the gods of rival kingdoms using the same
rhetorical tone (for example, Jer. 48.7, 13; 49.1, 3; 50.2; 51.44; compare
Psalm 82). Behind the divine rhetoric of both Dagan and Yahweh stands
a real political world in which these gods will either win or lose on a
genuine, and bloody, battlefield. The divine rivalry was, in reality, a
human political and military struggle. Therefore, the gods are obligated
to treat their divine rivals as real gods, and Yahweh is no exception. An
occasional monotheistic rhetorical flourish does not mask the henothe-
istic doctrine upon which all patron-god religions rested.
Sometimes the gods complained bitterly through their prophetic
servants. The gods were particularly alert to any impropriety in the
temple rituals, because those rituals were their source of honor. For
example, the Neo-Assyrian goddess of Arbela, named Ishtar, complains
that her chosen people have forgotten her covenant, and she exhorts
them to return to that covenant. She also complains about the meager
food offerings in her temple, reminding her king and his people that
it was she who saved them on the battlefield.51 Similarly, Yahweh
complains that his people have forgotten their covenant and gripes
about temple rituals that he believes to be corrupt (Hosea 8; Malachi
1–3).
The prophets were not afraid to challenge their kings in the name of
their gods, even accusing the kings of ethical failings. At Bronze Age
Mari, prophets sometimes championed the oppressed in the courts of
power. A prophet from Aleppo, one of Mari’s allied cities, announced
in the name of Aleppo’s god Adad that the king of Mari risks losing
his throne if he fails to fulfill the god’s righteous will. ‘I – the lord of
the throne, territory and city – can take away what I have given!’ says
Adad.52
The royal bureaucrats who reported negative prophetic messages to
their king also included notes designed to protect themselves in case

51 Nissinen et al., Prophets and Prophecy, pp. 121–4 (#87–88).
52 This and the next two quotations from ancient Mari are from Nissinen et al.,
Prophets and Prophecy, pp. 17–21 (#1).
their king reacted to a prophetic message in an uncharitable way. At

Mari, a bureaucrat wrote these words:
Previously, when I was still residing in Mari, I would convey every word
spoken by a prophet or a prophetess to my lord. Now, living in another
land, would I not communicate to my lord what I hear and they tell me?
Should anything ever not be in order, let not my lord say, ‘Why have you
not communicated to me the word which the prophet spoke to you when
he was demanding your area?’ Herewith I communicate it to my lord. My
lord should know this.
What was the frightening message from the unsatisfied patron god that
this royal bureaucrat forwarded to his king with fear and trembling? It
was this:
Moreover, a prophet of Adad, lord of Aleppo, came with [the man named]
Abuhalim and spoke to him as follows: ‘Write to your lord the following:
“Am I not Adad, lord of Aleppo, who raised you in my lap and restored
you to your ancestral throne? I do not demand anything from you. When
a wronged man or woman cries out to you, be there and judge their case.
This only I have demanded from you. If you do what I have written to you
and heed my word, I will give you the land from the rising of the sun to its
setting, your land greatly increased!”’
This is what the prophet of Adad, lord of Aleppo, said in the presence of
Abuhalim. My lord should know this.
This passage from Bronze Age Mari is nearly identical to several

biblical prophecies that were composed at least a thousand years later.
For example, the prophet Jeremiah is depicted confronting a king of
Judah with these words:
This is what Yahweh has said, ‘Perform justice and righteousness! Deliver
the one who was robbed from the hand of the oppressor! You must not
oppress the immigrant, the orphan, or the widow. Commit no violence!
The blood of the innocent you must not pour out in this place! Indeed, if
you strenuously fulfill this word, then kings who sit for David upon his
throne will enter the gates of this palace, riding in chariots with horses,
they and their slaves and their people. But if you do not obey these words,
I swear by my divine self, says Yahweh, that this palace will become a
ruin’. (Jer. 22.3–5)
Although a millennium separates these prophets, and although each

prophet speaks in the name of his own god – Adad and Yahweh – their
messages are identical. The god gives and the god can take away;
therefore, obey the god’s righteous commandments and bring justice
to the land! This match between the Bible and the prophet who spoke
against the king of Mari is even closer than this initial observation might
suggest.
Not only are the personalities of the gods Adad and Yahweh identical,
the social and political circumstances under which the prophets operate
are identical as well. Just as the prophet of Adad was from a satellite
city, so also Jeremiah was from a satellite village near Jerusalem, called
Anathoth (Jer. 1.1). Just as the royal bureaucrat worried that the king
of Mari might suspect him of treason, so also the royal bureaucrats
depicted in the book of Jeremiah display concern, some choosing to
condemn the prophet for treason and others opting to defend the prophet
before their king (for example, Jeremiah 26, 36, 38).
An even closer parallel is found in the biblical book of Amos, which
describes a man who travels from the subordinate kingdom of Judah
to proclaim a message against the dominant royal house at Samaria
(Amos 1.1). The prophet from Aleppo spoke in the name of a satellite
god, Adad of Aleppo. Amos spoke in the name of Yahweh of Jerusalem
(Amos 1.2). This would have been a satellite god in the eyes of the
king of Samaria, whose god was, as we have seen, Yahweh of Samaria.
The Aleppo prophet threatened the king of Mari over ethical conduct,
and Amos threatened the king of Samaria over ethical conduct (Amos
5.10–12, and elsewhere). The royal bureaucrat who worked for the king
of Mari displayed discomfort with this prophet’s message, as did a royal
bureaucrat, a temple priest in the city of Bethel, who responded to Amos
(Amos 7.10–13).
The bureaucrat who responded to Amos did so with kindness, but
Amos is depicted lashing out at this priest with a gratuitous judgment
against him (Amos 7.10–17). Because religiously motivated readers of
the Bible are accustomed to assuming that the god of the text is always
right and, by extension, the prophet who speaks for the god is always
right, this exchange between priest and prophet is routinely treated as
a case of a corrupt bureaucrat exposed by a righteous prophet. In this
case, the biblical anthology disappoints that interpretation. According
to 2 Kgs 14.25–6, Yahweh did not slay this king with a sword, as Amos
had threatened, but enabled him to expand Samaria’s imperial rule.
Even if the author of Amos 7.10–17 expected the reader to side with
Amos, the biblical anthology undermines the expectation. In light of
the Mari bureaucrats who are so cautious when reporting a negative
prophecy, it is easy to recognize that this priest at Bethel means no harm
and only wishes to protect the prophet from potential royal reprisals.
This is why it is never advisable to assume that a god or that god’s
prophet is correct.
Prophets and Miracle Stories

In some portions of the Bible, prophets are associated with miracles.
This is unrealistic because ancient Near Eastern prophets were not,
generally speaking, known as miracle workers. The biblical portrait
has combined the figure of the prophet with another common figure.
In traditional cultures around the globe (and even now and then in the
modern West), individuals present themselves to their communities
as mediators between the natural realm and a supernatural realm.
Anthropologists call this type of individual a shaman. A shaman
performs ritual magic, which can be defined as a ritual that attempts to
enlist supernatural power.53
In biblical storytelling, there are two types of miracle stories. The
first type is the miraculous great event that, if it had occurred, might
have been witnessed by thousands of people or by all people on Earth.
For example, Moses parts the waters of an entire sea before the eyes of
hundreds of thousands of people (Exodus 14; compare Exod. 12.37–8).
Joshua makes the sun stand still in the sky while two armies battle
(Joshua 10). These tales do not involve a prophet. Although Moses
elsewhere receives the title of ‘prophet’ (Deut. 34.10), in Exodus 14 he
functions as a hero in a narrative fantasy, the ancient equivalent of an
action-adventure film.
The second type of miracle in the Bible is the local event that, if it
occurred, was witnessed by a few people or a small community and
had no impact beyond that local setting. With few exceptions, a biblical
prophet’s miracles were of this local type. For example, Elisha revives
a dead child, purifies poisonous spring water and poisonous soup, multi-
plies loaves of bread, makes a metal object float on water, and so on (2
Kgs 2.19–22; 4.32–44; 6.1–7, etc.). Even Isaiah’s miraculous reversal
53 For entry into this topic, see T. W. Overholt, Cultural Anthropology and the Old
Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996); L. L. Grabbe, ‘Ancient Near Eastern
Prophecy from an Anthropological Perspective’, in M. Nissinen (ed.), Prophecy
in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian
Perspectives (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), pp. 13–32.
of the sun’s shadow is depicted to be a local event very different from

Joshua’s motionless sun (2 Kgs 20.1–11). In the New Testament, Jesus
performs local miracles. He raises a dead child, multiplies loaves of
bread, makes himself float on water, and so on (Mk. 6.32–52; Lk.
7.11–17, etc.). A few biblical stories inflate a prophet’s status, trans-
forming the prophet into a war hero or leader of the Israelite people (for
example, 1 Samuel 7), but such stories are rare exceptions to the usual
biblical portrait of a prophet.
Whether biblical stories about prophets were based on real people
or were creative fictions, the stories assume that the audience assumes
that the prophet was a shaman. In contrast to a fantasy hero bound to a
fictional narrative set in an ambiguous past, a shaman was a flesh-and-
blood human who interacted with real people in ordinary settings. As a
practical matter, a shaman is not able to perform unsolicited miracles. A
shaman is not ‘sent’ to save all the world, to heal and purify everyone. A
shaman is not able to free an entire people from slavery or lead an army
to miraculous victory over enemy troops. Those events are at home in
the realm of folklore, where human imagination knows no limitations.
Because biblical storytellers knew the prophets as ones who performed
the social role of the shaman, the stories they told about the prophets
reflect the local setting that is the natural home of the shaman. If a god
desired to perform the great events that happen in folklore, such as
rescuing 600,000 people from slavery in Egypt, the shaman would be
out of his element. It is interesting to note, in this regard, that Moses
plays a peripheral, perhaps useless, role in the events of Exodus 14.
Yahweh does all the work while Moses merely waves a stick in response
to divine command. The tale of Exodus 14 does not attempt to depict a
real event, therefore the miracle can be as grand as human imagination
permits, so grand that it dwarfs the role of a mere mortal like Moses.
By contrast, the real human shaman responds to those who seek magical
services on an individual basis. This is why biblical prophets perform
local miracles.
Did the local miracles described in prophetic biblical tales actually
occur? Did Elisha and Jesus really feed many people with only a few
loaves of bread, or revive dead children? The same questions can be
asked of the tales so common in many traditional societies, where
the shaman is often said to have done these things. All cultures share
a tendency to exaggerate and invent. The only rational option is to
assume that a story of this kind is fictional unless there is unequivocal
evidence to support it. However, anthropologists have witnessed ‘faith

healings’. These are not miracles. In a faith healing, a person with a
severed limb does not grow a new one. But the brain has the capacity,
within biological limitations, to heal the body, and sometimes a ritual
experience is sufficient to set the brain to work. Also, the body can be
shocked into revivification, as when medics use cardiac defibrillation to
treat a person having a heart attack. When Elisha performs the elaborate
ritual of 2 Kgs 4.32–7, the narrator seems to be describing actions
designed to shock or stimulate a body toward resuscitation. Even if one
assumes that the story is not a reliable account of a real event (which is
the most reasonable assumption), the tale might reflect the real expec-
tations of ancient people who were accustomed to interacting with a
shaman.
If success is to come to any shaman in any culture, it usually requires
three elements: the shaman must be able to discern what is possible
under the circumstances, must hope for a little good luck, and must rely
on the participants’ goodwill and willingness to believe in the power of
the supernatural. On these elements, the reputation of the shaman stands
or falls. So it was with the so-called prophets whose legendary tales
have been assembled in portions of the Bible.
Prophets and Visions of the Future

An aspect of divine revelation that is frequently miscomprehended is
fortunetelling. Today, many people assume that the task of a prophet is
to foretell what will be. This idea was not unknown to the ancient world
(for example, Isa. 44.7–8). However, there are significant nuances that
are usually overlooked in the modern popular conception.
Every prophet in the ancient Near East, including every biblical
prophet, was doing three things with every announcement of a divine
revelation. First, the prophet was interpreting current events, or events
that had taken place in the recent past. Second, the prophet interpreted
this current situation in light of the teachings or doctrines associated with
the god in whose name the prophet spoke. That is to say, if the prophet
spoke for Yahweh, the prophet interpreted current events as a continu-
ation of the kinds of activities Yahweh had performed in the past. But
if the prophet spoke for Ishtar of Arbela, the prophet interpreted these
same events as a continuation of the activities of Ishtar. Third, each time
a prophet interpreted current events as a message from a god, it was the
prophet’s goal to persuade his or her audience about how they should act
in the immediate future. The prophet was not speaking merely to entertain
or amuse. She or he wanted you, the hearer of this divine message, to
change your life and to do it right now. Never did a prophet speak in the
name of a god without doing all three of these things simultaneously.
From a philosophical perspective, any prophet who announced the
future assumed that the future was contingent upon the present moment.
A prophetic speech is constructed to imply or explicitly express an
if-then scenario: if you continue to behave as you are now behaving,
then this will be your fate. By implication, if you change your behavior,
then another future could be yours. This if-then prophetic message is
the standard type of prophecy in the Bible, as well as in most immanent
theisms the world over. Consider this biblical example:
Hear this, O heads of Jacob, and leaders of Israel’s house!
Those who abhor justice, and make straight paths crooked!
One building Zion with blood, Jerusalem perversely!
Zion’s chiefs, taking bribes, issue judgments.
Her priests, taking money, teach.
Her prophets, taking silver, divine.
And upon Yahweh they depend, saying,
‘Is not Yahweh in our midst? No evil will enter upon us!’
Therefore, on your account,
Zion, like a field, will be plowed!
Jerusalem, heaps of rubble, shall become!
The temple mount will be heights of forest! (Mic. 3.9–12)
In this example, the prophet obviously disapproves of the behavior he

is describing. He believes (whether accurately or not) that the people to
whom he is speaking have corrupted justice and religion. Toward the end
of the prophetic diatribe, a ‘therefore’ clause announces the future. But
this future is contingent on the present moment. If these people heed the
message and change their behavior, they might avoid their announced
fate (see Jer. 26.17–19). This is not a prediction, but a warning. It is not
unlike the fictional tale by Charles Dickens in which Ebenezer Scrooge
is confronted by the Ghost of Christmas Future, who shows Scrooge
his own future. Scrooge responds by asking, ‘Are these the shadows of
the things that will be, or are they shadows of the things that may be,
only?’54 Biblical prophets are like the Ghost of Christmas Future.
54 C. Dickens, A Christmas Carol (New York: Scholastic Star Edition, 1962), p. 109.
This desire to change behavior in the present moment is why many

prophets in the ancient Near East made predictions about short-term
future events. Prophets did not proclaim what was to be the case five
or ten generations after the prophetic utterance. They announced an
event to take place tomorrow, next week, next year, or, at most, a few
years into the future. In rare cases, they might venture a guess about
circumstances a generation or so from their own time, but this is about
as far into the future as any of them ever tried to gaze. It would have
been impractical and unnecessary to try anything more ambitious. Even
written prophecies were never composed for later generations, but for
contemporary eyes. If a prophetic text survived longer than one gener-
ation, it was certain to be either reinterpreted or rewritten or both.
This is also why a prophet who announced a future event and was
incorrect could retain his or her reputation as a genuine prophet. The
errors of a prophet could be devastating but they did not undermine
people’s belief in prophecy as authentic revelation. For example,
prophets at Bronze Age Mari announced, in the name of Dagan, that
the king of Babylon was evil and would be punished by Mari’s troops
on the battlefield, but it was Mari’s king who was defeated by the king
of Babylon.55 The scroll of Ezekiel includes multiple divine announce-
ments against the city of Tyre because Ezekiel expected the king of
Babylon to defeat Tyre (Ezekiel 26–8). When Babylon failed to defeat
Tyre, Ezekiel added an announcement that Yahweh was giving Egypt
to Babylon as a compensation prize (Ezek. 29.17–20). But even that
prediction was incorrect. Likewise, Jeremiah announced that Babylon
would invade Egypt successfully and he, too, was incorrect (Jer.
46.13–24).
Belief that prophets were able to foresee long-future events is a
misconception that derives, in part, from a small collection of books
that seem like prophecy but are entirely different from prophetic books.
In particular, the book of Daniel has confused many people, as has the
New Testament book of Revelation. The second half of Daniel offers a
series of visions in which Daniel and an angel take a tour of the future
(Daniel 7–12). A similar plot unfolds in the book of Revelation, but
the human hero is called John of Patmos. Daniel and John see bizarre
monsters and angelic beings who symbolize real kingdoms and even
individual kings. In Daniel’s case, the angel is able to tell Daniel, in
55 Nissinen et al., Prophets and Prophecy, pp. 44–7 (#19–22).

great detail, specific events that will take place hundreds of years after
Daniel’s lifetime. In John’s case, the symbolic visions detail current
events and claim to present what will happen ‘soon’ (Rev. 1.1–3).
Some researchers label this kind of literature apocalyptic. An apoca-
lyptic text claims to be a prophecy, but it is a fake prophecy. The
apocalyptic narrative was composed after the events described had
taken place. The author invented a hero of the past to see the vision
of the future, and this vision is narrated using future-tense verbs. This
literary technique is called vaticinia ex eventu, which means ‘proph-
ecies after the event’. In some cases, a careful reader of an apocalyptic
narrative can determine exactly when it was composed. The point in
the narrative when the prediction of events becomes inaccurate is the
moment when the author ceased describing the past and began making
predictions. For example, in the book of Daniel, the prediction becomes
inaccurate at Dan. 11.40–45, leading most researchers to conclude that
the book was composed in the 160s bce, just prior to the death of the
king described in this section of Daniel’s vision (King Antiochus IV,
who died in 164 bce).
The goal of an apocalyptic text differed from the goal of traditional
prophecy. The prophet interpreted current events in light of a tradition
about a god in order to persuade the audience to change their behavior
in the present moment. By contrast, the apocalyptic text has been
composed for faithfully obedient followers of the god who might be
tempted to abandon their commitment. Current events are interpreted
to maintain, not change, the reader’s pious behavior. Perhaps current
events seem to undermine the god’s authority. Perhaps events of the
past suggest that the god is weak or nonexistent. The apocalyptic text
suggests that, no matter how bad the situation might be, ‘our god’ knew
this would happen all along. That is why the symbolic visions detailed
real events that would have been known to the original readers. The
seer of the vision reassures these readers that the events were part of
‘our god’s’ plan. All ‘we’ need to do is remain faithful through even the
worst conditions, trusting that ‘our god’ will preserve ‘us’ to the final
culmination of the divine plan (Daniel 12; Revelation 22).
The image of prophets as fortunetellers remains popular today because
of a common Christian claim (rejected by Jews) that ancient Jewish
prophets predicted the arrival of Jesus Christ. If the Christian claim
were true, these ancient prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, predicted
events that did not come to pass until about 600 or 700 years after the
predictions were made. This is what the New Testament claims (for
example, Lk. 24.26–7; Rom. 1.2; 1 Cor. 15.3–4). One New Testament
author even states that the Jewish prophets were not serving ‘themselves’
– that is to say, they were not serving the immediate situation in their own
days – but rather they were serving the Christians who lived hundreds of
years later (1 Pet. 1.10–12). It is no surprise that non-Christians reject
these claims. The so-called predictions of Jesus are, at best, deeply
ambiguous and do not necessarily have a single person in mind. In
almost all cases, the original passage is easily understood as a prophetic
message about people and events at the time of writing.
Although the New Testament’s treatment of prophecy is misinter-
pretation, the authors of the New Testament were not liars. They were
using a method of interpretation that was common in Greco-Roman
times, when it had become fashionable to pretend that ancient literature
had been composed as veiled predictions of events that were coming
true in the author’s time. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, a number of
documents of this type are called pesharîm. Just like the New Testament
writers, the authors of pesharîm interpreted books such as Habakkuk
and Nahum as though these ancient prophets had seen visions of
specific events hundreds of years after their own time. And, just like
the New Testament, these pesharîm are not convincing to any neutral
observer. In many cases, the New Testament and the pesharîm even
treat texts that are not prophecies as though they were prophecies. For
example, the Gospel of Mark’s description of the death of Jesus (in
Mark 15) borrows a few details from Psalm 22, but that psalm is not a
prediction of anything. It is a typical ancient lamentation, a type of song
that was sung by worshipers in many ancient Near Eastern temples.
Conclusion
The religions of ancient Canaan and Israel were not exotic or other-
worldly. These people were not spiritual people living with eyes of faith.
They were farmers, shepherds, skilled and unskilled laborers, kings, and
slaves. Even the religious specialists among them, such as priests and
prophets, did not rely on esoteric knowledge that transported them to
mystical realms. These people lived in an agriculturally marginal land
that was indifferent to their presence, and they needed the guidance of
gods who understood the precarious existence they faced every day.
Their religious experiences reflected their material reality.

Albertz, Rainer, and Bob Becking (eds), Yahwism after the Exile: Perspectives on
Israelite Religion in the Persian Era (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003).
Becking, Bob, et al., Only One God? Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration
of the Goddess Asherah (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
Boda, Mark J., and Lissa M. Wray Beal (eds), Prophets and Prophecy in Ancient
Israelite Historiography (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012).
Bodel, John, and Saul M. Olyan (eds), Household and Family Religion in Antiquity
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
Collins, John J., The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic
Literature (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998).
Day, John (ed.), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (London: T&T Clark, 2007).
—Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (London: Sheffield Academic Press,
2000).
Edelman, Diana V., and Ehud Ben Zvi (eds), The Production of Prophecy: Constructing
Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud (London: Equinox, 2009).
Floyd, Michael H., and Robert D. Haak (eds), Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts
in Second Temple Judaism (London: T&T Clark, 2006).
Grabbe, Lester L., Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice
from the Exile to Yavneh (London: Routledge, 2000).
Keel, Othmar, and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in
Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).
Lemche, Niels Peter, The Old Testament between Theology and History: A Critical
Survey (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008).
Nissinen, Martti (ed.), Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian,
Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000).
—with contributions by C. L. Seow and R. K. Ritner, Prophets and Prophecy in the
Ancient Near East (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).
Overholt, Thomas W., Cultural Anthropology and the Old Testament (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1996).
Pardee, Dennis, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2002).
Chapter 10
The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods
Introduction
With hindsight, one can see that the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Neo-Babylonian army in 586 bce was not an end, but a beginning.
After the Judahite people lost their monarchy and its patron-god religion
so typical of Iron Age Canaan, they were in a position to take up the
fragmented traditions of the past, reflect on them, and create something
new and distinctive: the Bible. The 700-year period from the sixth
century bce to the early second century ce was the era in which the
Jewish Bible gradually emerged. Although most portions of this Bible
speak about the periods we know as the Late Bronze Age to the Iron
Age II, we have seen that the anthology’s memory of those centuries is
vague, at best. The Bible’s real home is the period that began after 586
bce. In other words, the Bible is an anthology of literature designed to
both preserve fragments of a lost past and reflect on these fragments,
interpreting them from a new present moment – the ‘now’ that was
experienced by the scribes of the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and Greco-
Roman eras.1
The Neo-Babylonian Period (586–539 bce)

Hindsight may tell us that the fall of Jerusalem was a beginning,
but to those who experienced that devastation, it was certainly an
end, a bloody and excruciatingly painful end. The biblical book of
Lamentations expresses that pain more eloquently than any historian
could hope to do. Or one might turn to Psalm 137’s haunting words to
experience the event from the inside:
1 T. L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and
Archaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992), p. 421.
By the rivers of Babylon,

there we sat,
sat and wept,
as we thought of Zion.
Upon the trees in her midst
we hung our harps.
For there they asked us,
our captors, for words of song,
our tormentors, for joyfulness.
‘Sing for us a song of Zion!’
How can we sing
the song of Yahweh
upon alien soil?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand be forgotten.
May my tongue cleave to my palate,
if I fail to remember you.
If I don’t lift Jerusalem
above my greatest desire.
Remember, Yahweh, the Edomites!
On the day of Jerusalem,
those shouting ‘Strip!’
‘Strip her to the foundations!’
Daughter Babylon, devastator!
Blessed be he who repays you
your payment you paid to us!
Blessed be he who seizes, smashes
your babies on the rock!
To one who lives comfortably, insulated from the brutality of war,

the pain of loss, the alienation of captivity, the first half of this poem
is lyrical, lush, lovely – and spoiled by the vindictiveness of the last
part. But to one who has experienced this devastation, the poem hangs
together as a single harmony, the soprano and the bass, a glimmer of
consolation in the face of a blank, bleak future.
From the perspective of Neo-Babylon, Judah was pacified and trans-
formed from an unruly vassal kingdom into a quiet and useful province.
The leaders of Jerusalem, who had been the cause of all the troubles in
the view of the Babylonians, were deported from Palestine to Babylon.
These were the wealthy, educated, elite class of Jerusalem and not the
10. The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods 361
poor, uneducated, agrarian commoners. The latter stayed where they

had always been, in the highlands of Judah.2 When historians speak or
write of the Babylonian Exile (a common phrase in the scholarship),
they are describing the event from the viewpoint of a minority, not
from the perspective of most Judahites. However, since that minority
were the ones who possessed the means to record their experience (as in
Psalm 137), it is no surprise that both the Bible and many history books
view the matter through their eyes.
The Bible is an artifact of privilege. It was composed by and for the
elite minority who were the leaders of Judahite society. Indeed, the
tone of many passages betrays the class conflict that took place after
586 bce, as the exiles in Babylon tried to cling to their former status
and sought ideological justification for viewing themselves as the true
people of their god in contrast to the ‘people of the land’ who had not
been deported. The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example, contain
passages contrasting the piety of the exiles to the allegedly perverse
state of those who remained in Judah (for example, Jeremiah 24;
Ezekiel 8–11). Sometimes the polemical excess of such texts makes it
difficult for a historian to know whether their content accurately reflects
the lives of the people being described.
The people not mentioned by the Bible are known to us only from
excavations and surface surveys in Jerusalem and the surrounding
regions. From the perspective of a farmer living in the Judean highlands
after the war of 586 bce, life did not worsen and may have improved.
When the kings of Judah reigned as vassals of foreign powers, the
commoners were, in effect, double taxed, paying to feed the local
nobility and the Neo-Babylonian authority. Under the newly constructed
provincial system, taxation was imposed from only one source. Also,
many of the commoners had been tenant farmers working land owned
2 The Bible gives witness to a gradual solidification of prejudice by the Judahites

who were deported against those Judahites who were not deported. Jeremiah
52 reports that a few thousand Judahites were deported by the Babylonians,
but the similar story in 2 Kings 24–25 inflates the numbers, implying that all
of Jerusalem and many others were taken to Babylon. Later, the author of 2
Chronicles 36 implies that every survivor of the war went into exile. This gradual
exclusion from the story of those who had been left in Judah reflects the attitude
of the Golah group who wrote the texts now included in the Hebrew anthology.
They wrote their less articulate opponents, ‘the people of the land’, out of the
story.
by elites who lived in Jerusalem. With the deportation of those elites,

ownership of the land seems to have fallen to the tenant farmers (2 Kgs
25.12; Jer. 39.10).
Life for the elites in exile was not physically oppressive either. It
was certainly painful emotionally to be wrenched from their homeland
and deported to a faraway land, and no doubt the horror of the war and
the loss of loved ones remained a bitter memory. But Neo-Assyrian
and Neo-Babylonian policies of deportation were not designed to
inflict terror on those who were deported. Quite the contrary, the policy
of deportation was pragmatic. The assumptions behind that policy
can be understood if one adopts, for a moment, the viewpoint of the
Mesopotamian imperial powers. The imperial lord had been compelled
to attack and capture city X because city X rebelled against the empire.
Why did city X rebel? The city rebelled because its leadership organized
the masses into a hostile force. Therefore, if the city leadership were
removed, the commoners would become passive. There would be
peace. Moreover, the city leadership consisted of the best and the
brightest of that land. It would be tragic to destroy that talent, which
could be useful in another part of the imperial realm. In that place, these
formerly rebellious leaders would constitute a minority, would not be
able to organize a rebellion, and would instead devote their talents to
productive activities. In short, from the imperial perspective, depor-
tation was a humane solution to the problem of civil warfare. (To see
this policy from the exile’s point of view, read Jeremiah 29.)
From data recovered in Mesopotamia, it would seem that many
of the deported Canaanites maintained their ethnic identities in the
foreign land. One residential quarter in Babylon housed a group called
Ashkelon and another Gaza.3 Likewise, several epigraphic discov-
eries in Mesopotamia reveal that people from Judah maintained their
language and identity in their new homes.4 The existence of the Bible
also testifies to this ethnic solidarity. The Hebrew anthology derives
from scribes who seem to have identified themselves with the Golah,
3 D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 455–6.
4 For example, see A. Lemaire, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Millennium
B.C.E. in the Light of the Epigraphic Evidence (Socio-Historical Aspects)’, in
S. E. Fassberg and A. Hurvitz (eds), Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic
Setting (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), pp. 177–96 (188).
a word that designates the people who had been exiled to Babylon and
whose descendants later returned to Jerusalem.5 These people retained
the worship of Yahweh and preserved some ancient writings that would
become the nucleus around which the biblical anthology grew, like a
pearl forming around a grain of sand. Because these people of the Golah
chose to remember themselves as part of a kingdom once called Judah,
they called themselves Judahites, which is the source of the English
word Jew.
Among these elites from Judah, reflection and debate about the
reasons for the destruction of Jerusalem produced a wide variety of liter-
ature now included in the Jewish Bible. From a religious perspective,
the issue concerned divine power. If Babylon had defeated Judah, does
this not imply that Marduk, god of Babylon, had defeated Yahweh, god
of Jerusalem? If so, there was little reason to remain loyal to Yahweh,
for he was a minor and powerless deity. Therefore, the religious goal in
much of the Hebrew literature was to provide a reason to remain loyal
to Yahweh by providing an explanation for the disastrous war. The
anthology seems to be open to any explanation that avoids proclaiming
victory for Marduk.
The majority of the biblical texts blame the victims of the war by
asserting that Yahweh was angered by their sins and permitted this
Babylonian victory as punishment. For example, the following poem,
attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, describes a god who equates religious
apostasy with moral failings and reacts by invoking the disaster that
utterly destroyed Jerusalem:
How can you say, ‘We are wise,
and the Torah of Yahweh is with us’?
But in reality, this deception
false pens of scribes created!
Wise ones have been shamed,
shattered, shackled!
5 There is some uncertainty surrounding the biological relationship between those

who were deported in 586 bce and those who claimed to be their descendants a
few generations later, but it is reasonable to conclude from the biblical text that
at least some of them were biologically related. In any case, it would seem that
all were ideologically committed to this ethnic identity. For discussion of the
textual evidence, see J. Blenkinsopp, Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra
and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009),
pp. 81–5.
See, they rejected the word of Yahweh.

What wisdom do they have?
Therefore, I give their women to others,
their fields to conquerors!
From least to greatest,
each seeks his own cut!
From prophet to priest,
each creates deception!
They tended too lightly
the fracture of my people.6
They say, ‘Peace, peace’,
but there is no peace.
They have been shamed.
They did an abominable thing.
Surely shamed! They know no shame!
Disgraced! They do not know it!
Therefore, they fall with fallen ones.
At their appointed time, they stumble,
said Yahweh. (Jer. 8.8–12)
The theology in this poem is simplistic. Because of an allegedly wicked

group of elites (priests and prophets), this god commands a punishing
war to encompass all, the wicked and the righteous alike. As usual in
an ancient Near Eastern context, the god who speaks in this divine
oracle views women as appropriate property to be manipulated when
shaming and punishing the men who had owned them. Yet the evil
allegedly committed by these elites is vague. The elites treated too
lightly an undefined ‘fracture’ of the people and preached ‘peace’ when
there was no peace. The basic accusation seems to involve little more
than misrepresentation of divine revelation (‘false pens of scribes’). But
divine revelation is a matter of subjective interpretation, so the reader
must make a willful decision to adopt the writer’s interpretation of
the revelation and not the interpretation of those whom the writer has
accused of deceit. The accusations in this poem are compelling only to
the one who is predisposed to find them compelling.
This example, chosen randomly from the pages of Jeremiah, is
representative of the common religious idea expressed in the biblical
6 Read with MT Jer. 6.14 because 8.11 suffered quiescent aleph. Also, a scribe has
inserted ‘daughter’ from a common cliché (‘daughter’ is often rendered ‘poor’ in
English translations; compare Jer. 4.11; 6.26; 8.19, 21, 22, 23 [English 9.1]; 9.6
[English 9.7]; 14.17).
prophets. Commentators have noted that these biblical denunciations

rarely go beyond the kinds of sweeping generalities one encounters
in this sample, which suggests that the scribes who composed these
texts were grasping at straws to explain the inexplicable.7 The biblical
prophets did not know why the Neo-Babylonian tidal wave had engulfed
Jerusalem. They solved their own bewilderment by blaming the victims.
Nevertheless, one of the most striking aspects of the Jewish Bible
is its tendency to include conflicting points of view. In this case, an
alternative viewpoint about why Jerusalem was destroyed is expressed
by a small number of biblical texts. Representative is Psalm 44, which
suggests that Yahweh, and not the victims of the war, should be blamed
for ‘all this’ disaster:
All this has come upon us,
yet, we had not forgotten you!
We were not false to your covenant!
Our heart never deviated,
nor did our steps depart from your path.
But you crushed us,
in the place where jackals dwell!
You covered us,
with deep darkness!
If we had forgotten our god’s name,
or had spread our hands to a foreign god,
wouldn’t our god find this out?
For he knows the secrets of a heart.
But because of you,
they kill us each day!
We are counted as
sheep for slaughter!
Wake up! Why do you sleep, Lord?
Wake up! Don’t cast us off completely!
Why have you hidden your face,
and forgotten our oppressive affliction?
Our life sank down to the dust,
our body joined the earth.
Get up! Assist us!
Redeem us, in accordance with
7 Z. Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches

(London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 509–10. See also one of the few commentaries
to deal with this issue forthrightly: R. P. Carroll, Jeremiah (2 volumes; Sheffield:
Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006).
your promised loyalty!

(Ps. 44.18–27 [English 44.17–26])
The Jewish Bible’s inclusion of conflicting voices, opposing opinions,

creates an anthology of literature that continuously startles its reader.
Perhaps this is the origin of the long Jewish tradition of arguing with
the divine, which still manifests itself in the modern era among Jewish
authors as diverse as Elie Wiesel, Mordecai Kaplan, Martin Buber,
Judith Plaskow, and Irving Greenberg. It even appears in popular Jewish
culture with, for example, the musically religious questions of Paul
Simon and the comical approach of Woody Allen (who said, ‘You see
me as an atheist, God sees me as the loyal opposition’). A lighthearted
saying among Jews expresses this tradition of loyal dissent within the
Jewish community: ‘We have a God in heaven, thank God! But he has a
people on earth, God help him!’8 An early glimmer of that sophisticated
level of religious self-awareness can be found in many pockets of the
Jewish Bible, such as Psalm 44.
The biblical narratives describe the establishment of a provincial
capital north of the smoldering ruin that had been Jerusalem, in a
city called Mizpah (2 Kgs 25.22–6; Jer. 40.1–41.16). Archaeological
research indicates that Mizpah was the region’s primary urban center
from the early sixth century until about the middle of the fifth. This
evidence is consistent with a hypothesis that Mizpah remained the
provincial capital after the Neo-Babylonian Empire gave way to the
Persian Empire (which is implied, though not stated, by Neh. 3.7, 15,
19).9
The tiny province of Mizpah-Judah was overshadowed by its
neighbors. To the west, the former Philistine kingdoms had been
reorganized as the provinces of Dor and Ashdod. The Shephelah
8 The Allen quotation is from W. Allen, director, Stardust Memories, 1980. The
humorous Jewish proverb is from I. Howe, ‘The Nature of Jewish Laughter’, in
S. B. Cohen (ed.), Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1987), pp. 16–24 (17).
9 For entry into the archaeological discussion of this era, see O. Lipschits, The Fall and
Rise of Jerusalem (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005); J. R. Zorn, ‘Tell en-Nasbeh
and the Problem of the Material Culture of the Sixth Century’, in O. Lipschits and
J. Blenkinsopp (eds), Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), pp. 413–47; O. Lipschits, ‘Demographic Changes in
Judah between the Seventh and the Fifth Centuries B.C.E.’ in Judah and Judeans in
the Neo-Babylonian Period, pp. 323–76.
became Idumea. The largest and most dominant province directly

adjacent to Judah was Samaria to the north. Excavations and surface
surveys suggest that the Samarian province, consisting of the Cisjordan
Highlands as far north as the Jezreel Valley, was densely populated and
dominant over the sparsely inhabited region of Judah. Little changed for
the people of this province when the Neo-Babylonian Empire collapsed
and the Persians came to power. In this new situation, taxes were to be
paid to the Persian lord, rather than the Babylonian lord. Otherwise, life
went on without interruption.
The Persian Period (539–332 bce)

The Neo-Babylonian Empire did not last long before a new regime, the
Persians, took over. According to ancient traditions, the Persians had
been subjects of the Medes who lived in the region that modern people
know as northern Iran. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Medes
never became the power that ancient authors, such as Herodotus, claim
them to have been. Nevertheless, they were a significant, if minor, player
in the politics of this era, and they were the first obstacle to Persian
ascent. A Persian king named Cyrus II (559–530 bce) eliminated the
Median king and established a new empire in Mesopotamia. Within a
few years, the Persians ruled all the way to Anatolia, having bypassed
Babylonia in their spread north and west. Then they turned south.
The Persian army defeated the Neo-Babylonian forces at a place
called Opis, just northeast of Babylon, then marched, uncontested,
into the city as the self-appointed liberators of Babylon in 539 bce.
Cyrus launched a vigorous public relations campaign designed to
win the hearts of his new subjects. Part of this propaganda involved a
smear campaign against the memory of the last Neo-Babylonian king,
Nabonidus (555–539 bce). Nothing in the ancient evidence suggests
that Nabonidus was anything but a vigorous and ambitious king who
spent years attempting to extend Babylonian authority over the western
Arabian trade routes. While he was away on these campaigns, the
city of Babylon was ruled by his son, Bel-shar-usur, whom the Bible
incorrectly remembers as Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar in the
folktale of Daniel 5. The propaganda of Cyrus II paints a portrait of
Nabonidus as a wicked and worthless ruler.
In contrast to the alleged impiety of Nabonidus, Cyrus presented
himself to the Babylonian people as the pious chosen one of Marduk,
patron god of Babylon. Like any king in the ancient Near East, Cyrus
relied on religion for legitimacy. As it did for any emperor who ruled
over many peoples and lands, the name of his patron god differed in
various parts of the realm. In Babylon, it was Marduk, but in the city of
Sippar, where the patron god was the moon god called Sin, Cyrus was
the chosen one of Sin. The Persian imperial theology was not compli-
cated: you name your patron god and Cyrus is his chosen agent! During
this era, a common title came to be applied to many of the local patron
gods, ‘the God of Heaven’ (literally ‘the god of the sky’).10 This phrase
appears in biblical texts, where this Persian religious universalism has
been applied to the biblical god Yahweh (for example, Gen. 24.7; Jonah
1.9; Ezra 1.2; 5.11–12; 6.9–10; 7.21, 23; Neh. 1.4, 5; 2.4, 20; Dan.
2.18–19, 37, 44; Ps. 136.26).
The Persian Empire at its height encompassed roughly as much real
estate as the continental United States. It was the largest empire the
Near Eastern world had seen to that time. The Persian kings desired to
make it bigger. Cyrus died fighting for ever more land. He had been a
remarkable soldier whose military tactics and use of speedy marches
and surprise attacks won him a reputation as a conqueror comparable
to a famous Macedonian warrior who would come later, Alexander the
Great. Those who benefited from the success of Cyrus called him ‘the
Great’, though one suspects that his victims had other choice titles in
mind.
Cyrus was succeeded by Cambyses II (530–522 bce), who expanded
Persian frontiers by conquering Egypt. In ancient Greek history,
Cambyses has a reputation as an oppressor and a brute. From surviving
Egyptian evidence, one gets the opposite impression. Cambyses seems
to have respected the sensibilities of the people who lived along the
Nile, conformed his image to the tradition of Egyptian royalty, and
honored Egyptian religious rituals and piety.
Cambyses II died mysteriously and was succeeded by a usurper,
Darius I (522–486 bce). Darius left a legacy of heavy-handed propa-
ganda designed to cover up his treachery in seizing the throne, but the
Persian public was not fooled, and there were numerous revolts, some
10 T. L. Thompson, ‘The Intellectual Matrix of Early Biblical Narrative: Inclusive

Monotheism in Persian Period Palestine’, in D. V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph
of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995),
pp. 107–24.
inspired by outrage at the coup, others inspired by the opportunity to

break away from the Persian overlords during the transitional chaos.
Remarkably, Darius proved to be as shrewd as he was brutal and kept
the empire together, even expanding the borders in a few regions.
Darius I consolidated the empire by establishing a series of admin-
istrative units, each governed by a satrap (a governor) who possessed
complete administrative control but only partial military authority, the
crown retaining direct influence over the military for itself. Palestine
was part of a satrapy called ‘Across the River [Euphrates]’. This satrapy
was subdivided into provinces. At first glance, these provinces appear to
have been relatively autonomous. For example, the province of Sidon
(all of the Phoenician coast to, and including, Dor) was ruled by a
king. But it was not a vassal state in the older sense, because a Persian
provincial governor also resided in Sidon and commanded a Persian
force. Nevertheless, at the provincial level, indigenous elites took
the lead on many fronts. Darius’s administrative excellence created a
number of innovations, such as a network of royal roads, completion of
a canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea (a project that had begun
under Neco II of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty), and one of the earliest
systems of coinage. The Daric coin became the standard in monetary
transactions for almost two centuries.
If Darius could have his wish, he would be remembered not for consoli-
dating the empire and creating an efficient bureaucracy, but for expanding
the empire into Europe. He annexed Thrace and Macedonia, just north of
Greece, and attempted to conquer the Greek city of Athens (see Figure
2). Darius I’s troops lost the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 bce. The
ancient narrative of the war suggests that the Persian king had hoped to
pin down the Athenian army by landing a Persian force at the opposite
end of Attica, the peninsula on which Athens is located. Then, with the
Athenian defenders occupied by that land invasion, Darius planned to
send his navy around the peninsula for a direct attack on the city. The
Athenians won a swift victory at Marathon, marched quickly across Attica,
and defended themselves against the Persian navy. Darius was forced to
retreat. (Incidentally, this event frequently serves historians as the starting
point for the Classical era in Greek history – 490–323 bce – the period
that produced the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well
as the influential philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.)
At his death, Darius had been planning another invasion against
Athens, and that expedition was carried out by his successor, Xerxes
(486–465 bce). Once again, the ancient narrative is one in which the
tiny but committed forces of the Greeks thwarted the massive invasion
of the Persians, this time in a naval battle in 480 at Salamis, just
southwest of Athens. Then fate intervened to end Persian designs on
Greece. An anti-Persian revolt in Babylon forced Xerxes to focus his
attention closer to home. After 480 bce, the Greek Delian League was
able to defend the Aegean, so the Persians never conquered the Greek
mainland.
The middle decades of the fifth century (400s bce) saw political
disturbances that may have had a direct impact on Palestine. The reign
of Xerxes marked a period of unrest in the Cisjordan Highlands, while
revolt was also taking place in Egypt. Unfortunately, no documents
survive to explain what happened in Palestine, but archaeologists have
noted military destruction at numerous sites. Throughout the Persian
Empire, revolts emerged when Artaxerxes I (465–424 bce) came to the
throne. Of significance for Palestine was a revolt in Egypt, abetted by
troops from Athens. With unrest in Palestine just a few years earlier, this
region was sure to come under suspicion as the Persians quelled revolt
to the southwest.
The late fifth century found Persia once again interfering in the affairs
of Greece, and this marked the beginning of Persia’s decline. Sparta and
Athens were fighting the Peloponnesian Wars (433–404 bce), and the next
emperor of Persia, Darius II (423–404 bce), appears to have intervened
several times. His agent was one of his sons, the Persian satrap in Anatolia,
Cyrus the Younger, who ultimately lent his support to Sparta, giving it the
edge needed to defeat Athens. Darius II died that year (404) and Cyrus
the Younger employed Greek mercenary troops to help him fight the new
Persian king, his own brother, Artaxerxes II (404–358 bce). Cyrus the
Younger was killed in the battle and Artaxerxes II retained his throne.
Persian civil war enabled Egypt to gain its independence under a
succession of three short-lived dynasties, the Twenty-eighth, Twenty-
ninth, and Thirtieth (404–342 bce). This was not Persia’s only
misfortune, however. The reign of Artaxerxes II was one of almost
perpetual revolt in one portion of the empire or another. Not surpris-
ingly, the archaeology of Palestine again reveals military destruction,
this time in the Shephelah and the Negev Valley (perhaps around 380
bce). Possibly this is connected to the invasions of the Twenty-ninth
Egyptian dynasty, whose two kings, Nepherites and Achoris, briefly
controlled significant portions of Palestine (390s–380s bce).
A brief renaissance emerged under the next Persian king, Artaxerxes

III (358–338 bce), who managed, after long struggles, to bring Egypt
back under Persian domination. But it was too little too late. At the end
of his reign, internal unrest developed, Artaxerxes III was assassinated,
and an ineffective king reigned briefly before also falling victim to an
assassin (quite possibly the same assassin). By 336 bce, Persia was in
turmoil. An able new king, Darius III (336–330 bce), took the throne,
only to face a much more able man, the Macedonian invader Alexander
III, whom some called ‘the Great’. The great Persian Empire was no
more.
Yehud (Judah) during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods

As we have seen, the kingdom that had been Jerusalem-Judah came to
an end in 586 bce and was replaced by a province with its capital at
Mizpah, just north of Jerusalem (see Figure 33). This province began
as part of the Neo-Babylonian provincial system, but survived to be a
province as well under the Persian Empire. Eventually, Mizpah declined
and came to an end in the middle of the fifth century (400s bce), which
is also when Jerusalem was rebuilt. Throughout this era, the province
was called Yehud, a shortened form of the word yehudah, which means
Judah. Because the evidence is so slim, it is nearly impossible to
construct a narrative history of Yehud, but one can view snapshots of
life in this time period.
During Mizpah’s ascendancy (from 586 to c. 450 bce), Jerusalem
remained uninhabited. Population clustered both north and south of
Jerusalem, in the ‘tribal’ region of Benjamin as well as the region
around Bethlehem. Although Jerusalem was in ruins and its elite
population erased from the archaeological record, the rural popula-
tions appear to have been relatively undisturbed, and the agriculture
of the region continued without interruption.11 Nevertheless, the
kingdom that had been Judah atrophied. The harsher regions of
the Judean desert, east of the Judean highlands, as well as the
11 O. Lipschits, ‘The Rural Settlement in Judah in the Sixth Century B.C.E.: A

Rejoinder’, PEQ 136 (2004), pp. 99–107; see also, R. Greenberg and G. Cinamon,
‘Stamped and Incised Jar Handles from Rogem Gannim and Their Implications
for the Political Economy of Jerusalem, Late 8th-Early 4th Centuries BCE’, Tel
Aviv 33 (2006), pp. 229–43.
Negev Valley to the south gradually became uninhabited once again,

probably because there was no longer a royal administration taking
an interest in these border regions. In the eyes of the provincial
administrators, whose priorities were dictated by the needs of a larger
imperial system, these peripheral areas that lacked natural resources
could be ignored.
The devastation of Jerusalem, a city that had been home to
roughly half of Judah’s population prior to its destruction in 586
bce, altered the region’s profile for centuries. When the city was
inhabited again, about 450 bce or a little later, it was home to a small
population. Estimates are nearly impossible to make (and contro-
versies over the evidence for Persian-era occupation of Jerusalem
continue to rage among the experts), but it is reasonable to say that
this city’s population prior to the Greco-Roman period never rose
above 1,500, and was far fewer in most generations. Throughout
the Neo-Babylonian (586–539 bce) and Persian (539–332 bce)
periods, roughly 90 percent of Judah’s population was rural. In
all probability, this was the intention of the Neo-Babylonian and
Persian imperial administrations. From their perspective, there was
little need for a large, fortified, urban population on this periphery
of the empire, but the agricultural produce from these rural lands
benefited the empire.
Excavations and surface surveys suggest that Mizpah-Judah was only
the first of two stages in Judah’s provincial experience after 586 bce.
After Mizpah collapsed, sometime in the second half of the fifth century
bce, Judah was governed once again by Jerusalem (c. 450–332 bce).
The two periods were markedly different. The earlier period was a time
of relative inertia, with agricultural production the primary, probably
the only, industry.
The second stage, when Jerusalem had become the capital of Yehud,
coincides with a period when the Persian Empire’s relationship to Egypt
became turbulent. Egypt had been part of the Persian Empire from the
520s bce. However, Persian control of Egypt crumbled in the final
decades of the fifth century (450s–404 bce), just as Jerusalem was
being rebuilt. The Persians made constant attempts to reconquer Egypt
in the fourth century (the 300s bce), during which time the province
of Judah, including its arid peripheral regions, began to see a rise in
population. A rebuilt Jerusalem appears to have become a part of the
activities associated with the garrisoning of imperial troops and the
building of public structures, including fortifications at places such as

Lachish, Beer-sheba, and Arad.12
Epigraphic data are few, but those available seem to corroborate
the picture from the excavations and surface surveys. Seals and bullae
(small lumps of clay stamped with the name of Yehud) cluster into
two portions of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods.13 The earlier
cluster represents the time when Mizpah was the provincial capital. A
second cluster of stamps and bullae can be assigned to the late fifth
and fourth centuries bce, when some trace evidence for inhabitation of
Jerusalem has begun to appear and the province of Judah has begun to
experience a general increase in population. The two sets of epigraphs
are quite different in style and suggest a distinct change in provincial
administration.
The second stage, during which Jerusalem was part of increased
militarization in the region, was a period of sporadic warfare as well.
The Persian emperors Artaxerxes II (404–358 bce) and Artaxerxes III
(358–338 bce) used Palestine as a staging ground for periodic incur-
sions through the Sinai Peninsula and into Egypt. Meanwhile, Egypt’s
Twenty-ninth Dynasty invaded Palestine. For a short while, Pharaoh
Achoris (393–380 bce) maintained control of the region. Eventually
Persia was victorious, but it was an empty victory. Persia reconquered
Egypt in the late 340s, just in time to become victim to Alexander the
Great about one decade later. Alexander marched through Syria and
Palestine, entering Egypt as its ‘liberator’ and ruler, in 332 bce. The
Persian Empire crumbled before him during the next few years.
To summarize the archaeological picture, the fate of Jerusalem after
586 bce appears to have been determined by imperial needs. For a
long time, the rulers of Mesopotamia did not need this city and it was
not rebuilt. Eventually, as Persia required greater direct involvement in
Palestine as a bulwark against Egypt, Jerusalem reappeared. The city
12 O. Lipschits and O. Tal, ‘The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah:

A Case Study’, in O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz (eds), Judah and
the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007),
pp. 33–52.
13 O. Lipschits and D. Vanderhooft, ‘Yehud Stamp Impressions in the Fourth
Century B.C.E.: A Time of Administrative Consolidation?’ in Lipschits et al.
(eds), Judah and Judeans in the Fourth Century, pp. 75–94.
would continue to play a role in regional politics after Alexander’s time,

but that tale is beyond the scope of this book.
As Jerusalem was rebuilt in the second half of the fifth century
bce, a Hebrew-speaking and Yahweh-worshiping community already
existed to the north in the province of Samaria. Excavations on Mount
Gerizim reveal a temple dedicated to Yahweh that was first built in the
mid-fifth century, perhaps contemporary with or a little earlier than the
rebuilding of Jerusalem.14 This was the Samaritan temple that would, in
a much later era, create religious strife and violence between Jews and
Samaritans. (Eventually this temple was destroyed by a Jewish king
named John Hyrcanus, around the year 110 bce.) From the archaeo-
logical data and the existence of a distinctive type of Torah manuscripts
among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most researchers believe that the contro-
versies between Jews and Samaritans began in the second century bce,
long after the era discussed in this chapter.15 Nevertheless, the Yahweh
temple on Mount Gerizim, which was large and apparently attracted a
massive following from the province of Samaria, existed already when
Jerusalem was newly built. It is possible that Jewish jealousy of this
temple emerged as early as the Persian era, if the slanderous description
of allegedly ‘false’ Samaritan worship in 2 Kgs 17.24–41 was composed
this early. (It is possible, of course, that this biblical text was composed
much later than the Persian era.)
The Samaritan temple was not the only Yahweh temple in Palestine
in the Persian period. An ostracon from a city called Makkedah in
the Shephelah (not far from Lachish) describes some real estate by
reference to landmarks that mark its boundaries. One of the landmarks
is the ‘House of Yahu’, a reference to a temple for the god Yahweh.16
This temple was active during the late Persian era and may have been
active earlier as well. From these and other data, it is clear that worship
14 Y. Magen, ‘The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount
Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence’, in Lipschits et al. (eds), Judah
and Judeans in the Fourth Century, pp. 157–211.
15 For entry into this topic, see M. Mor and F. V. Reiterer (eds), Samaritans, Past
and Present: Current Studies (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010).
16 A. Lemaire, ‘New Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea and Their Historical
Interpretation’, in O. Lipschits and M. Oeming (eds), Judah and the Judeans in
the Persian Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), pp. 413–56 (416–17).
To my knowledge, the authenticity of this artifact has not been challenged.
of Yahweh was prevalent in Palestine prior to and concurrent with the

emergence of Jerusalem.
However, one should not be tempted to think that a ‘biblical’ variety
of Yahweh worship existed in Persian-era Palestine. This is unlikely
for at least three reasons. First, the anthology we know as the Bible
did not yet exist and many of the books that would later be included
in the anthology were not yet completed. Second, as will be discussed
below, any Hebrew literature already in existence by the Persian era
was not publicly disseminated; that is to say, except for the scribes who
handled the scrolls and perhaps a few other literate elites, no one was
aware of the scrolls’ existence. Third, archaeological data suggest that
the exclusive monolatry advocated by many portions of the Bible had
no impact on Persian-era Jews. This third point is disputed by some
researchers, who have argued that religious artifacts usually associated
with the relaxed henotheism of an earlier era have vanished from the
archaeological record during the Persian era, so Persian Judaism should
be considered either monolatrous or even monotheistic.17 However, this
depends on how one interprets the data. For example, small religious
figurines have been found in the Shephelah (at Lachish and Makkedah),
and some researchers argue that a sufficient number of such artifacts
have been recovered to conclude that worship of Asherah, at least,
continued until the final decades of the Persian era, if not longer.18 Also,
a Yehud coin has been discovered that depicts Yahweh as an anthropo-
morphic god, and other coins depict the Greek goddess Athena. This
suggests that the Jewish elites who struck these coins were not aware
17 E. Stern argues that cult figurines appear everywhere in Palestine except Yehud
and Samaria, and he interprets this as evidence that the Iron Age II ‘pagan’
religion has been replaced by an emerging ‘monotheistic religion’ in these
provinces, in Stern, ‘The Religious Revolution in Persian-Period Judah’, in
Lipschits and Oeming (eds), Judah and Judeans in the Persian Period, pp.
199–205. In my view, Stern’s terms ‘pagan’ (p. 202) and ‘monotheistic religion’
(p. 203) lack precision. His argument is for a shift from relaxed henotheism to
intolerant henotheism, which can also be called functional monolatry.
18 For discussion of the types of finds relevant to the debate, see A. Erlich, ‘The
Persian Period Terracotta Figurines from Maresha and Idumea: Local and
Regional Aspects’, Transeuphratène 31 (2006), pp. 45–59. One example of a
thesis for continued worship of Asherah is H. Niehr, ‘Religio-Historical Aspects
of the “Early Post-Exilic” Period’, in B. Becking and M. C. A. Korpel (eds), The
Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and
Post-Exilic Times (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 228–44 (240).
of, or not inclined to obey, biblical injunctions against divine images or

foreign gods (Deuteronomy 5).19 Biblical Judaism, which can be defined
as the kind of Jewish observance associated with the late-Roman and
medieval eras, had not yet emerged in the Persian period.
The Biblical Depiction of the Persian Era: Problems and Debates

Although most portions of the anthology that would later become the
Jewish Bible began to take shape after 586 bce, the books of the Bible
provide little information about the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods.
For the most part, the scribes were interested in gathering fragments of
a shattered past, some textual fragments and some oral traditions. They
looked backward, almost nostalgically, to the era before Jerusalem fell
to the Babylonians. In some cases, they even pushed literature that was
composed in their own day backward into hoary antiquity. For example,
the book called Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) seems to have been composed
by someone who had contact with the literary traditions arising in the
Persian and Greek worlds, but the text claims to be composed by a ‘son
of David’, so Jewish tradition has attributed it to the legendary King
Solomon. Likewise, most researchers have concluded that portions of
the biblical books attributed to prophets (such as Micah and Isaiah)
also derive from the Persian and Greco-Roman periods but have been
assigned by Hebrew scribes to the era in which the kingdoms of Israel
and Judah existed.
A few narratives in the Hebrew anthology describe events that are
supposed to have taken place during the Persian period. Most of these
narratives are found in four biblical books, but a few stray passages
are found in other places. If every biblical story set during the Persian
period is a reliable account of that era, the Bible’s portrait of Persian
Judaism remains hopelessly incomplete. Unfortunately, reliability is
difficult to assess in these biblical stories.
The primary books that date themselves to the Persian period are
Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah. (The book of Esther dates
itself to a kind of fictional never-time that self-consciously pretends
to be the Persian period.) The material in these books is difficult to
evaluate. Some portions are prophetic announcements and some are
19 D. V. Edelman, ‘Tracking Observance of the Aniconic Tradition through

Numismatics’, in Triumph of Elohim, pp. 185–225.
narratives about people and events, while other portions claim to

be autobiographical memoirs by Ezra and Nehemiah. Occasionally,
Persian kings are mentioned (for example, Darius), though it is not
always clear which kings are meant (because there were three kings
named Darius and the Bible never distinguishes among them).
The biblical portrait of the Persian era begins with a decree from
the empire’s founding father, Cyrus II. Both 2 Chronicles and Ezra
record this decree, in which Cyrus confessed faith in ‘Yahweh, the god
of the sky’ and declared his intention to build a temple for Yahweh
in Jerusalem. This decree permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem
and commanded that royal coffers supply them with silver, gold,
and necessary supplies (2 Chron. 36.22–3; Ezra 1.2–4). In another
version of the decree, Cyrus stipulated the size of the temple and
commanded the restoration of temple furniture that had been removed
by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezra 6.2–5).
The Bible gives the impression that an organized group involving
more than 42,000 people responded to the decree of Cyrus and returned
to Jerusalem (Ezra 2.64; Neh. 7.66). Traces of this massive horde
cannot be found in the archaeological record. The actual population
of Jerusalem and Yehud in the Persian era was extremely small. The
numerical total implied by the list appears to be another example of
ancient literature’s tendency to invent unrealistic numbers for its narra-
tives, but that is not where the list’s lack of realism ends. Although
the decree of Cyrus is assigned by the Bible to about 70 years after
Nebuchadnezzar deported people from Jerusalem (for example, Jer.
25.11; 29.10), the description of the returnees in Ezra 2.1 (Neh. 7.6)
gives its reader the impression that the people who were exiled were
the people who returned.20 In modern history books, researchers usually
gloss over this and instead state that descendants of the exiled people
returned, but that is not what Ezra 2.1 implies. A passage from the
medieval Jewish Talmud demonstrates that readers of earlier ages
understood the literal intention of Ezra 2.1. Bavli Ta’anit 23a quotes
Ps. 126.1 and implicitly evokes Jer. 25.11 and 29.10. The psalm reads,
‘When Yahweh restored those who returned to Zion, we were like those
who dream’. The Talmudic passage interprets this to mean that those
20 This is a point noted by very few researchers. One who takes note of it is
B. Becking, ‘Continuity and Community: The Belief System of the Book of
Ezra’, in Crisis of Israelite Religion, pp. 256–75 (264).
who went into Babylonian exile, like the American fictional character
Rip Van Winkle, slept for 70 years, then woke, and returned to their
homes. The Talmud tells a tale about a Jew of later times who also slept
for 70 years, thus ‘proving’ that this is possible.
Regardless of who, or how many, returned to Jerusalem, the narrative
says these Golah Jews began to rebuild the temple, but local adver-
saries, called ‘people of the land’, frustrated their plans throughout the
reigns of Cyrus and Darius I (Ezra 4.4–5). Eventually, Persian King
Artaxerxes I ordered cessation of all building activities in Jerusalem
(Ezra 4.17–22). Later, a second attempt to build was met with local
resistance, but this time Persian King Darius II supported the building
project and it was completed in the sixth year of that king (Ezra 6.6–15).
Throughout this narrative, two Jewish leaders play a role: Jeshua the
priest and a man named Zerubbabel (for example, Ezra 2.2; 3.2; 5.2).
The narrative has begun in the days of Cyrus and ended with the reign
of Darius II; therefore a literal interpretation of the text implies that
Jeshua and Zerubbabel had been active adults for a minimum of 110
years! If very old people can return to Jerusalem in Ezra 2.1, then the
narrative is being consistent by presenting very old men as the leaders
of the temple-building project. (Compare the equally extraordinary
fiction in Hag. 2.3.)
After this, the Bible reports that King Artaxerxes II sent a scribe-
priest named Ezra to Jerusalem to appoint magistrates and establish
a rule of Yahweh’s law (Ezra 7.12–26). After this tale, a memoir of
Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1–6, 13) asserts that another imperial employee
requested and received permission from Artaxerxes to rebuild the walls
of Jerusalem (Neh. 2.1–8). Nehemiah is said to have been governor
of Jerusalem for 12 years (Neh. 5.14). The narrative places Ezra and
Nehemiah in Jerusalem simultaneously (Neh. 8.9; 12.26), yet their
paths do not seem to cross and they appear to be addressing similar
situations while remaining ignorant of the other’s activities. Both
appear to be established as the governmental leader (Ezra 7.25–6; Neh.
5.14), which seems unlikely if they were contemporaries.
The narratives of Ezra-Nehemiah and other texts pertaining to the
Persian period (such as Haggai) are more complex than this sketch
suggests, but enough has been outlined to illustrate the problematic
nature of these biblical stories. Researchers who desire to treat these
documents as useful sources for Persian-era events must make radical
assumptions about them. For example, readers have observed that
Nehemiah interacts with a priest named Eliashib (Neh. 13.4, 7) and

Ezra is associated with a priest named Jehohanan, son of Eliashib (Ezra
10.6). Therefore, many historians believe that Nehemiah was active
about a generation prior to Ezra and the biblical narrative has telescoped
their activity into a single generation.
One of the most common and most radical revisions of the biblical
narrative among biblical researchers has to do with a single verse,
Ezra 6.15. Since no one believes that Jeshua and Zerubbabel were
active leaders for more than a century, most researchers seek narrative
discontinuities in the story of Ezra 1–6 so that references to a Darius
can be read, in each case, as the same Darius, thus reducing the time
covered by the narrative from about 120 years to about 20 years. This
is an aggressive manipulation of the biblical story, but it is so common
that many influential history textbooks state, quite falsely, that the
Bible dates the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem to the sixth year
of Darius I.21 Presupposing this manipulation of Ezra 6.15, biblical
researchers routinely interpret references to Darius in Haggai and
Zechariah as pertaining to Darius I as well.
The radical strategies that researchers apply to the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah cannot reduce the number of headaches the narratives create.
Each ‘solution’ to a difficulty exposes another difficulty. For example,
because the massive horde of people implied by Ezra 2 (Nehemiah
7) is unrealistic, many interpret this list as a cumulative record of all
returnees over many generations. Superficially, this seems attractive,
but the hypothesis is refuted by the evidence from the dirt. An insuf-
ficient number of human generations between the 530s and 330s bce
existed for more than 42,000 returnees to appear, even if we assume that
each new wave of immigrants displaced the previous group (which is,
of course, an unrealistic assumption).
Similar headaches await the one who tries to treat both Ezra and
Nehemiah as real persons who were active in the Persian period. Even if
one accepts the hypothesis that Nehemiah came first and Ezra followed
21 For example, J. M. Miller and J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2nd edn, 2006), pp. 501, 512, 522;
J. Bright, A History of Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 4th edn,
2000), p. 372; C. and E. M. Meyers, ‘Zechariah, Book of’, in The Anchor Bible
Dictionary, Vol. 6: Si–Z (D. N. Freedman, ed.; New York: Doubleday, 1992),
pp. 1061–5.
Figure 46. King Darius I (522–486 bce). Many biblical scholars credit this king
with permitting the Jerusalem temple to be rebuilt (Ezra 6), but this hypothesis is
weak
a generation later, it remains difficult to fit either man into a narrative

of Persian imperial history. The details of each man’s story bristle with
inconsistencies and implausible implications.
According to his memoir, Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem during the
twentieth year of a King Artaxerxes and returned in the thirty-second
year of that king (Neh. 5.14; 13.6). Which Artaxerxes? Two of the
three kings of that name reigned longer than 32 years, so Nehemiah
could have been active from about 445 to 433 bce or from 384 to 372
bce. A literal interpretation of the Bible favors the latter, in which case
Nehemiah may have arrived in the midst of a war with Egypt’s Pharaoh
Achoris, but the narrative is silent about that. Most researchers ignore
the biblical chronology and assign Nehemiah to the reign of Artaxerxes
I. In this case, Nehemiah certainly arrived not long after Jerusalem
had been rebuilt (according to archaeological data) but long before the
temple was completed according to Ezra 6.15 (the sixth year of Darius
II). Yet Nehemiah’s memoir presupposes the existence of a temple in
Jerusalem. As mentioned a moment ago, researchers usually assume
the Darius mentioned in Ezra 6.15 is Darius I, who reigned long before
Nehemiah’s arrival, thus ‘solving’ this difficulty. That ‘solution’ is, of
course, impossible in light of the archaeological data, which do not
allow any building projects at Jerusalem prior to about 450 bce, and
even after that date the experts remain divided on the nature of the
evidence. To complicate matters, a Greco-Roman Jewish document (2
Macc. 1.18) asserts that Nehemiah built the temple in Jerusalem, which
contradicts the story that Zerubbabel was the temple’s builder in Ezra
5–6. A recent researcher has analyzed a different set of biblical data,

the lists of names in Nehemiah 10 and 12.22 She found that if these lists
are accepted as reasonably accurate, then Zerubbabel and his followers
arrived in Jerusalem no earlier than about 480 bce, and probably after
about 460, which might make Zerubbabel and Nehemiah contempo-
raries, or very nearly so (if Nehemiah arrived in 445 bce). Of course,
this conclusion compels a corollary that the narrative portions of Ezra
and Nehemiah are, for the most part, unreliable.
Ezra is no easier than Nehemiah to fit into a narrative history of Persia.
As noted above, the memoir attributed to Ezra (Ezra 7–10) parallels
many portions of the memoir attributed to Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1–6,
12–13). Generally speaking, most researchers view the Nehemiah
memoir as ‘more credible’ than the Ezra memoir.23 There are many
reasons for this consensus. Among them, one might note that Ezra does
not seem to hold a realistic office or pursue activities that seem realistic
in a Persian imperial context. Sometimes Ezra is a scribe (for example,
Neh. 8.1, 4, 13) and at other times he is a priest (for example, Ezra
10.10, 16). Occasionally he is a high priest, but he does not possess
a believable genealogy (Ezra 7.1–6). Ezra leads a public reading of a
Torah document, but the narrative appears to be a composite of several
unrelated stories and seems more at home in a Greco-Roman setting
(Nehemiah 8–10).24 Jewish writers of the final centuries bce were
aware of someone named Nehemiah, but no Jewish author mentions
anyone named Ezra until much later, during the first century of the
Common Era. Although many researchers continue to speak and write
about Ezra as a real person of the Persian era, others treat Ezra as a
fictional character who has been modeled after the figure of Nehemiah.
Perhaps Nehemiah seemed inadequate for those who needed an origin
story set in Persian times, so they supplemented this layman’s tale with
an invented priest-scribe, who provided a greater aura of holy sanctity
to the narrative.
22 D. V. Edelman, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and
the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005), pp. 13–79.
23 Representative of the mainstream is J. Blenkinsopp, who judges the Nehemiah
memoir ‘more credible’ than the Ezra memoir; see Blenkinsopp, Judaism, p. 108.
24 For example, consider the thesis of J. L. Wright, ‘A New Model for the
Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah’, in Lipschits et al. (eds), Judah and Judeans in
the Fourth Century, pp. 333–48 (346–7).
No matter what solution one proposes to the problems created by

the biblical stories, some of the literary data must be jettisoned as
unreliable. It is easy to see that any judgment about which text is reliable
and which is not reliable will be purely arbitrary. For example, even if
one accepts a mainstream strategy to read every biblical reference to a
Darius as Darius I (522–486), the narratives about a King Artaxerxes
remain unrepentantly uncooperative. Any reference to a king by this
name places this portion of the story after the days of Darius I, when
presumably the temple has been completed (if Ezra 6.15 refers to Darius
I). Yet, in Ezra 4, Artaxerxes commands that construction of the temple
and the city cease because Jerusalem is a city with a reputation for
rebellion. However, in Ezra 7, Artaxerxes authorizes Ezra to establish a
government in the allegedly rebellious Jerusalem that he does not wish
to see built. Then, in Nehemiah 2, Artaxerxes permits Nehemiah to
build a defensive wall in that allegedly rebellious city! If these stories
refer to the same Artaxerxes, his policies appear to be inconsistent. If
these stories refer to different kings by the same name, one must, once
again, jettison portions of the narrative structure. Whether the biblical
Artaxerxes is one king or more, it is not possible to retain all the
information about Artaxerxes if Ezra 6.15 refers to Darius I, as most
researchers want to believe. Any ‘solution’ to the problem will be, given
the available evidence, purely arbitrary.
Many researchers adopt the strategy that the narratives of Ezra and
Nehemiah are fictional, but elements within the narratives, such as
official documents quoted by the narrator or specific persons mentioned
in the story, derive from reliable sources. This strategy is quite similar
to the approach most researchers take with biblical books such as 1–2
Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. We have seen, for example,
that many researchers insist on the existence of a King David in the
tenth century even as they concede that most biblical narratives about
David are fictional. Likewise, most researchers are comfortable with the
idea that a prophet named Isaiah existed even though most of the book
bearing his name dates to many centuries after Isaiah’s time. I have tried
to demonstrate in previous chapters that this kind of strategy is usually
a failure. Likewise, when applied to Ezra and Nehemiah, this strategy
rarely generates a compelling hypothesis.
Among the tales in the book of Ezra, one encounters a series of
passages in which an official or royal document is quoted. The decree
of Cyrus II is quoted twice, with variant texts, in Ezra 1 and 6. Letters
from regional officials as well as official royal responses appear here

and there in the story (Ezra 3–6). The official royal commission for
Ezra is quoted in Ezra 7. Although a handful of researchers continue
to defend one or another of these official documents as genuine, the
consensus moves in the opposite direction. Careful study suggests that
these documents were creative fictions composed by Jewish story-
tellers. One researcher summarized the consensus this way: ‘If the
“Persian documents” of Ezra were to appear as previously unknown
texts on the antiquities market today, they would be promptly labeled
Hellenistic forgeries’.25
Likewise, each person in these biblical narratives has been scruti-
nized to discern relative plausibility, but the results of this research
are largely inconclusive. A leading researcher, for example, dismisses
Ezra as fictional and affirms Nehemiah as a real person, but remains
uncertain about most of the other figures, such as Jeshua the priest and
Zerubbabel.26 Another researcher suggests that Ezra 1–6’s confusing
representation of Persian kings resulted from the reality that this book
was composed during a much later era in which the correct order of
Persian emperors was no longer known.27 After sustained examination,
it is difficult to treat passages in Ezra and Nehemiah that name known
royal figures as reliable accounts of these kings, and that renders the
story’s treatment of persons known only from the Bible even more
suspect.
The alleged decree of Cyrus has been a central focus of discussion for
generations of researchers. The decree appears twice, with a different
emphasis each time. The version in Ezra 1 (see also 2 Chronicles 36)
is written in Hebrew, and the decree of Ezra 6 is in the section of the
book that has been composed in Aramaic (Ezra 4.8–6.18, and 7.12–26).
The former version encourages Jews to repatriate and build the temple,
while the latter specifies the temple’s dimensions, its materials for
25 L. L. Grabbe, ‘The “Persian Documents” in the Book of Ezra: Are They

Authentic?’ in Lipschits and Oeming (eds), Judah and Judeans in the Persian
Period, pp. 531–70 (531).
26 R. G. Kratz, Das Judentum im Zeitalter des Zweiten Tempels (Forschungen
zum Alten Testament, 42; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 93–119. For an
argument that both Ezra and Nehemiah are fictional, see P. R. Davies, ‘Scenes
from the Early History of Judaism’, in Edelman (ed.), Triumph of Elohim,
pp. 145–82 (157–63).
27 D. V. Edelman, Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple, p. 203.
construction, its furnishings, and its function as a place for sacrificial

offerings. The former invokes Yahweh by name, while the latter speaks
of a generic ‘god’. If either version derives from an actual royal decree,
the latter seems more likely to most researchers; but did this decree
come from a Persian emperor or is it a fiction?
Researchers do not agree whether the decree of Cyrus has any basis
in fact. On the one hand, the decree has seemed realistic to many
researchers in light of the public relations program Cyrus is known to
have produced after he conquered Babylon (as discussed above). On the
other hand, these two biblical texts appear to have been composed by
a Jew who imagined what a Persian emperor ought to have said about
the Jewish god and divine temple. Even defenders of the decree rarely
argue that the decree has been preserved in its original form.
In any case, the Jewish tradition appears to have believed that Cyrus
II was their imperial champion. Many Jews of later generations remem-
bered Cyrus as the chosen Messiah of Yahweh. A poet whose writings
are a part of the book of Isaiah has written a hymn in which Yahweh
describes himself as the one who
Speaks of Cyrus, my shepherd:
All that I desire you shall fulfill!
You will say to Jerusalem,
‘You shall be built!’
And to the temple,
‘You shall be founded!’
Thus says Yahweh to his Messiah,
to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped,
to subdue peoples before him:
The garments of kings I will loosen.
To ensure doors open before him,
and gates will not be shut,
I, myself, will go before you!
Mountains I will level,
bronze doors I will smash,
iron bars I will cut through!
(Isa. 44.28–45.2)
Some researchers take this passage as independent testimony that the

Cyrus decree in Ezra 1 and/or 6 is a reliable datum from the early
Persian era. This is reasonable but not compelling. The passage in
Isaiah could be a poetic interpretation of the story in Ezra and not an
independent source.
In sum, there is little reason to believe the biblical books that date
themselves to the Persian era actually derived from that period or
provide much reliable information. Historians have noted that, in
specific circumstances, the Persian authorities could authorize an
individual (such as Ezra or Nehemiah) and provide limited support to
a local temple (as in the decree of Cyrus).28 Other researchers note that
Persian policies were limited, in all cases, to providing the Persians with
what they needed to maintain order and oversee taxation and produc-
tivity.29 They emphasize that local temples throughout the Persian realm
received no special privileges and Persian sponsorship of these shrines
did not go beyond the promotion of Persian legitimacy. Likewise, it is
unrealistic to suggest that a priest or scribe, such as Ezra, might have
been authorized to disseminate a divine law (Ezra 7.25–6) or that a
local temple might have been authorized to overthrow any opponent
(as in Ezra 6.12). Divinely revealed codes, such as the biblical Torah of
Moses, were never a part of the daily operation in a temple. When such
codes were supported by royalty, it was only a public-relations gesture
and not the implementation of a legal code for the law courts or daily
governance.
As suggested in Chapter 3 of this textbook, a reasonable conclusion
from the textual evidence is that the scribes whose writings are now
part of the Bible did not try to construct the past (that is to say, did
not try to write history), but sometimes used authentic sources from
the past as the starting points for their fictional tales. In the biblical
books, there is a handful of material that seems to reflect a realistic
memory of living conditions during the Persian era. For example, an
28 For example, Blenkinsopp, Judaism, the First Phase, pp. 94–7.

29 L. S. Fried, ‘ “You Shall Appoint Judges”: Ezra’s Mission and the Rescript of
Artaxerxes’, in J. W. Watts (ed.), Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial
Authorization of the Pentateuch (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001),
pp. 63–89; L. L. Grabbe, ‘The Law of Moses in the Ezra Tradition: More
Virtual Than Reality?’ in Persia and Torah, pp. 91–113; D. B. Redford, ‘The
So-Called “Codification” of Egyptian Law Under Darius I’, in Persia and Torah,
pp. 135–59; A. Kuhrt, ‘The Problem of Achaemenid “Religious Policy” ’, in
B. Groneberg and H. Spieckermann (eds), Die Welt der Götterbilder (Beihefte
zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 276; Berlin: de Gruyter,
2005), pp. 117–42; idem, ‘Ancient Near Eastern History: The Case of Cyrus the
Great of Persia’, in H. G. M. Williamson (ed.), Understanding the History of
Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 107–27.
archaeologist familiar with the impoverished subsistence agriculture

in significant rural segments in Judah is not surprised to read about
physical hardships, poor harvests, and general poverty in, say, Haggai
1, nor is the yearning for local leaders to create a golden age very
surprising (as in Hag. 2.20–3). Likewise, the book of Nehemiah
records a situation in which the poor were compelled to sell children
and land, or to go into debt-slavery, in order to buy food or pay royal
taxes (Neh. 5.1–19). In such situations, it would have been the wealthy
elites of this society who benefited, being in a position to buy at low
prices from the desperate or to keep tenant farmers in perpetual debt.
Portions of the Torah appear to have been formulated to provide relief
in just these situations (for example, Lev. 25.8–55). However, there is
no evidence that these aspects of the Torah were ever implemented,
and the narrative of Nehemiah 5 is silent about all such Torah texts. In
fact, trace elements in the book of Nehemiah suggest that the Torah as
we know it (that is to say, the five biblical books attributed to Moses)
did not yet exist in the Persian period. For example, Neh. 10.32–33
introduces a temple tax that differs from the temple tax stipulated by
Exod. 30.13. Many researchers have concluded from details of this
kind that the texts now anthologized as the Torah of Moses were not
yet gathered and completed in Persian times. It may be, for example,
that Nehemiah introduced a temple tax in the Persian era and the book
of Exodus modified that tax in a later era, though which later era is a
matter of debate.30
Varieties of Judaism in the Persian Era

We have seen that Jerusalem was restored during the latter half of the
fifth century bce, perhaps as part of Persian imperial concern about
political unrest in Egypt. The Bible is silent about these events and
instead attributes the restoration of Jerusalem to the Yahwistic piety of
Persian kings, such as Cyrus II and Darius II. In contrast to the biblical
story, many historians construct a narrative of Jerusalem’s restoration
under Darius I, though the archaeological data and the Bible seem to
rule out such a scenario.
30 So, for example, A. Lemaire, ‘Administration in Fourth-Century B.C.E. Judah

in Light of Epigraphy and Numismatics’, in Lipschits et al. (eds), Judah and
Judeans in the Fourth Century, pp. 53–74 (59–60).
Regardless of when or under what circumstances Jerusalem was

restored after the Persians came to power, a group of Jews returned to
Jerusalem, for much of the Hebrew anthology that would later become
the Bible expresses ideas associated with the so-called Golah group,
those who identified themselves ideologically as the ones who had
traveled from Babylonian exile to Judah as part of the divine will. From
the texts, it is clear that they thought of themselves as a ‘remnant’ spared
by Yahweh after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II and
brought back to the ‘land of promise’ by divine mercy (for example,
Deut. 30.1–10; Isa. 10.20–22; 11.11–16; Jer. 23.3).
What might seem most surprising to one unfamiliar with ancient
Judaism is the diversity among those who called themselves ‘Israel’
during the Persian period. The Rabbinic Judaism of today had not yet
even begun to appear. The precision of Talmudic tradition was still
centuries in the future. What did appear in Persian times was a variety
of groups called Judahites, Jews, Samarians, or Israelites, each of which
practiced a Judaism that differed from the other groups of that era.
Some of these Judaisms disappeared by Greco-Roman times, and others
would evolve into the Judaisms of the early Common Era.
The Persian period can be viewed as a kind of experimental era,
in which a normative Judaism did not yet exist but the collapse of
old-fashioned divine patronage sparked the creation of new religious
options. We have noted examples of this experimental ethos earlier in this
chapter. One by-product of it was the emergence of an evolving anthology
of writings, but the phenomenon involved far more people than just the
scribes who wrote those texts. Although evidence is scarce, historians can
piece together at least four distinct types of Judaism at this early date.
The first of the four Judaisms in the Persian era is the one most
familiar to us today, exemplified by the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Regardless of whether Ezra and Nehemiah were real persons or
fictional characters, the stories associated with their names present two
Jews who loved the things that became pillars of medieval Rabbinic
Judaism: a Torah of Moses and the city of Jerusalem. In the memoirs,
Ezra and Nehemiah display an intense jealousy as they guard against
the allegedly slack practices of other Jews in or near Jerusalem. They
refuse, for example, to permit Jewish men to marry women from
the neighboring provinces of Samaria, Ashdod, Moab, and Ammon.
Nehemiah even drives from his presence a Jewish priest who had
married into the Jewish family of Sanballat from Samaria (Neh. 13.28).
Figure 47. Every variety of Judaism known to us from Persian times existed
under Persian imperial authority. In that context, texts such as Haggai 2.20–23
expressed an unrealistic hope
The rigidity of an Ezra or a Nehemiah repels some modern readers

(even some modern Jewish readers), but the activity of creating
boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is central to the construction of any
distinct religious or ethnic identity. The construction and maintenance
of an identity sets in motion the emergence of a tradition or heritage
that can survive human generations. A by-product of this construction
is always the artificial category of ‘not-us’ people, those who do not
participate in the maintenance of ‘our’ tradition. If one dislikes the
tactics involved in this process of defining ideological and behav-
ioral boundaries, then one must be willing to sacrifice the tradition’s
continued existence. The boundary constructions associated with Ezra
and Nehemiah have become the foundations on which later genera-
tions of Jews have maintained, reformed, conserved, and reconstructed
Jewish identity.
For Hebrew-speaking exiles living in Babylon in the Persian era, the
process of constructing an identity that enabled the community to remain
a distinct community was crucial to their lives. Many of Judaism’s
most distinctive features in all likelihood became distinctively Jewish
features in Babylon or after the return to Jerusalem. These reinforced
the community’s sense of cohesion, oneness, family. Circumcision,
for example, was not uncommon among many ancient peoples in the
eastern Mediterranean region and is unlikely to have functioned as a
signifier of identity in the Iron Age. It became a distinctive Jewish trait
as many groups abandoned the practice but Jews retained it. They even
invented a tale of origin (Genesis 17) to provide the practice with divine
sanction.
A second type of Judaism can be discerned among the alleged enemies
mentioned in Nehemiah’s memoir, especially Sanballat of Samaria and
Tobiah of Ammon (for example, Neh. 2.10). From documents found
at Elephantine in southern Egypt (to be discussed in a moment), it
appears that the Sanballat family was Jewish, but Nehemiah’s rhetorical
broadsides give the impression that they were not. In Nehemiah’s
worldview, the Sanballats practiced a form of Judaism that could not be
accepted as genuine. Likewise, Tobiah bore a Yahwistic name (tôb-yahu
means ‘Yahu is good’) and, according to the story, had family ties to
the Jerusalem priests. Probably he was a Jew, but he was a governor
in the ‘foreign’ province of Ammon on the other side of the Jordan
from Jerusalem. Data suggest that the family of the Tobiads remained
a powerful presence in Ammon well into Greco-Roman times. It is
impossible to penetrate the murkiness of Nehemiah’s polemical charac-

terizations of these ‘enemies’, but the literature expects its reader to
distinguish between Nehemiah’s ‘correct’ Judaism and these others who
were dismissed as not correct.
Archaeological research perhaps provides a glimpse into this second kind
of Judaism. As mentioned previously, a temple was built in the Samarian
province on Mount Gerizim in the middle of the fifth century bce, about
the time that Sanballat would have been governor of Samaria.31 At this time,
a temple did not yet exist in Jerusalem, as is clear from the archaeological
data and implied by the narrative of Ezra 1–6 (if one accepts that narrative
as relatively reliable information). The floor plan in the Mount Gerizim
temple bears some similarity to the temple described in the biblical book
of Ezekiel 40–48. Inscriptions indicate that the temple was dedicated to the
god Yahweh, and they mention animal sacrifices, a detail matched by the
discovery of butchered bones from sheep, cattle, goats, and pigeons. These
inscriptions date to various times, some much later than the Persian era,
but the earliest of the inscriptions mention the priests Eleazar and Phineas.
These are not references to real persons of hoary antiquity. Rather, they
suggest that the Yahweh-worshipers at Mount Gerizim constructed their
identity on traditional tales associated with these names and not yet with
the names Moses or Aaron (names that might not yet have been invented).
Perhaps the narratives in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy were,
as yet, only in an early and formative stage of construction.
The data from Mount Gerizim suggest that the great crime of
Sanballat’s version of Judaism is that it was not Nehemiah’s version
of Judaism. Sanballat’s type of Judaism would, in a much later era,
become the religion of the Samaritans. In the Persian era, however,
this division is not yet discernible in the data. Nor can we know why
the two became separate and competing religions. Perhaps those who
produced the Nehemiah stories were jealous of the success at Mount
Gerizim, or perhaps they dissented from aspects of the rituals or
31 Y. Magen, ‘Mount Gerizim and the Samaritans’, in F. Manns and E. Alliata

(eds), Early Christianity in Context: Monuments and Documents (Jerusalem:
Franciscan Printing Press, 1993), pp. 91–148; idem, ‘The Dating of the First
Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological
Evidence’, in Lipschits et al. (eds), Judah and Judeans in the Fourth Century,
pp. 157–211; see also, B. Becking, ‘Do the Earliest Samaritan Inscriptions
Already Indicate a Parting of the Ways?’ in Judah and Judeans in the Fourth
Century, pp. 213–22.
narratives associated with that temple. The most likely possibility is

that they disliked Gerizim’s location and wanted to make their own city
of Jerusalem the sacred center of Yahwism. Evidence does not permit
a definite answer to the question, but it is interesting that the priestly
leadership at Jerusalem had contact with a third type of Judaism in the
Persian era, a type that differed from the Ezra–Nehemiah pattern much
more substantially than did the Sanballat–Samarian version of Judaism.
From a small community called Elephantine in southern Egypt comes
evidence for a third Judaism in the Persian period.32 Ostraca from the
470s bce and a set of letters on papyri from the 410s bce provide
glimpses into this community. Apparently, these Jews were biological
descendants of soldiers from Palestine who had served in one of the
imperial armies of the sixth century. They built a temple in Elephantine
as early as the Twenty-sixth Egyptian Dynasty, prior to the invasion
of Cambyses in the 520s bce. The temple was dedicated to Yahu, a
shortened form of the name Yahweh. However, Yahweh was not alone in
this form of Judaism. He was accompanied by a series of divine beings.
Yahu had a wife named Anat-Yahu. Other divine names are compound
forms as well: Anat-Bethel, Herem-Bethel, and Eshem-Bethel. One
might suggest that this version of Judaism originated in the temple of
Bethel, just north of Jerusalem (see, for example, the Bethel foundation
myth in Genesis 28, and recall the discussion of Psalm 20 in Chapter 9).
Among the Jews of Elephantine, there is no trace of the literature that
would become the Bible and no similarity to the Judaism associated
with the names of Ezra and Nehemiah. Among the Elephantine leaders,
a Jew named Yedaniah owned a small library of religious literature that
did not include any text familiar to us from the Bible, but it included an
Aramaic book called the Proverbs of Ahiqar. The Jews of Elephantine
observed something called a Sabbath, but it is not clear whether this day
observed the seventh of each week or the full moon of each month, and
there is no suggestion that the Sabbath involved cessation from work.33
32 For entry (with substantial bibliography), see J. M. Lindenberger, Ancient

Aramaic and Hebrew Letters (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2nd edn,
2003), pp. 41–79.
33 R. G. Kratz, ‘Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch
between Elephantine and Qumran’, in G. N. Knoppers and B. M. Levinson (eds),
The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and
Acceptance (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), pp. 77–103 (82–9).
Likewise, Elephantine Jews observed a feast of Unleavened Bread (often

associated with the holiday called Passover), but a papyrus describing
this ritual differs in several details from biblical descriptions of its
observance. In light of the evidence, ‘there is every reason to believe that
Elephantine’s Passover was an agriculturally based religious observance
not associated in any manner with a story about an exodus from Egypt’.34
Do these details suggest that the Jews of Elephantine were apostates,
‘bad’ Jews who had fallen from the true path? Not at all. The evidence
suggests that this had been the common form of Judahite religion
prior to the invention of the Bible. As one researcher has observed,
Elephantine’s Jews had more in common with Iron Age Israel and
Judah than the Jews defined by biblical stipulations. ‘The Bible is
the exception, not Elephantine.’35 At Elephantine, we come as close
as possible, in the absence of newly discovered evidence, to the way
in which Yahweh religion had been practiced in Palestine during the
Iron Age. There is, of course, no reason to believe that Elephantine
religion was frozen in time. It was not an unchanged relic of the Iron
Age; it almost certainly contained influences from the Egyptian cultural
environment during the decades after these Jews had moved from
Palestine. Nevertheless, the divine couple Yahu and Anat-Yahu had
migrated to Egypt along with these Judahites or, perhaps, Benjaminites.
In light of the radically different kind of Judaism practiced at
Elephantine, it is interesting to note that these Jews were in contact
with the Jews of Jerusalem and Samaria. In the year 410 bce, some
Egyptians attacked and destroyed the temple of Yahu in Elephantine.
The leader of the community, Yedaniah, wrote letters to a variety of
government officials, begging permission to rebuild this temple. Among
the many to whom he appealed were the sons of Sanballat at Samaria,
as well as a governor of Judah named Bagohi. Also, Yedaniah appealed
to a priest in Jerusalem named Jehohanan. This suggests that a temple in
Jerusalem had been built prior to 410 bce. It also suggests that, whether
he approved or disapproved, the Jerusalem priest was aware that a
temple to Yahu had been standing in a small Egyptian community for

BibInt 16 (2008), pp. 395–427 (400).
35 R. G. Kratz, ‘The Second Temple of Jeb and of Jerusalem’, in Lipschits and
Oeming (eds), Judah and Judeans in the Persian Period, pp. 247–64 (248); see
also, Kratz, ‘Temple and Torah’, p. 87.
generations. Persian officials eventually gave the Jews of Elephantine

permission to rebuild their temple but prohibited meat sacrifice in it.
Some researchers believe this prohibition on meat sacrifice reflects the
influence of Jerusalem’s biblical text, Deuteronomy 12. However, this is
speculative and unconvincing. The prohibition on meat sacrifice might
have been deference to local Egyptian religious concerns (the ram was
a sacred animal in Egypt). We cannot know why meat sacrifice was
terminated until more complete evidence comes to light.
A fourth form of Judaism existed during the Persian period and
continued into the Greco-Roman era. It is difficult to say much about
this kind of Judaism because it seems to have existed primarily among
Jews who left no record of their lives or beliefs. Their version of
Judaism can be discerned only by evaluating the writings of elites who
display a passing interest in this religion. In a few cases, one catches a
glimpse in a non-Jewish author who records a tradition about the Jews
that is at odds with almost all other known sources of information.
A late-fourth-century bce Greek historian named Hecataeus of
Abdera (no relation to Hecataeus of Miletus) recorded some traditions
that he seems to have learned from Jews of his day. These traditions
were copied again by a first-century bce author named Diodorus of
Sicily, and Diodorus is our source. The complex process of trans-
mission permitted corruption of details, and many historians dismiss
this evidence as useless. Such dismissal might be reasonable, given
the nature of the source. Nevertheless, several features in the material
attributed to Hecataeus are intriguing.
The Jews who informed Hecataeus apparently believed in a Moses
who led the Israelites into Canaan and founded the city of Jerusalem.36
There is, of course, no reason to place any credence in such a tale; it
is a fiction. However, a trace of a similar alternate Moses tradition is
preserved in the Bible at 1 Sam. 12.8, where Moses and Aaron are
credited with settling the Israelites in Canaan.37 Because this assertion
flies in the face of the narrative found in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and
Joshua (where Moses and Aaron die before Joshua brings the people
to Canaan), it might represent something that social anthropologists
encounter regularly in traditional cultures, namely, variant versions
of heroic tales about the community’s past. Another example from
36 Davies, ‘Scenes from the Early History of Judaism’, pp. 163–8.

37 G. W. Ahlström, ‘Another Moses Tradition’, JNES 39 (1980), pp. 65–9.
the Hecataeus tradition is the claim that Moses built a temple on the
mountain in Jerusalem, which contradicts the tale about Solomon in 1
Kings 5–8 but might be compatible with a minority tradition preserved
at Exod. 15.16–17, which seems to move directly from migration to
a temple in the promised land. Again, these alternative details have
no claim to reliability (just as the Torah narratives have no claim to
reliability), but they suggest that the traditions about Moses had not
yet reached a singular, authoritative form by the closing decades of the
Persian period.
From these data, it is clear that, although a narrative history of the
Jews cannot yet be written for the Persian period, these centuries saw
a lively process of social and religious evolution taking place among
people who identified themselves as Judahites and Israelites. Prior to
586 bce, the religion of Judah differed in no discernible way from
all other Canaanite patron-god religions. With the deportations to
Babylon, new circumstances generated experimental new forms of
social organization and religious speculation. Ultimately, only two of
the four types of Judaism discernible in the evidence dominated during
the Greco-Roman era, that of the Jerusalem Golah (represented by the
tales about Ezra and Nehemiah) and that of the Yahweh-worshipers in
Samaria, whose temple stood on Mount Gerizim. It would seem that
the Elephantine Jewish community died out and the Jews who favored
alternate Moses traditions exerted little influence. Nevertheless, the
dominant Greco-Roman Judaisms cannot yet be equated with ‘biblical
Judaism’. The latter did not yet exist because a Bible did not yet exist.
The Invention of the Bible

The earliest known biblical texts were composed prior to the Persian
period, though the scribe(s) who created them could not have known
that these writings were biblical texts. These earliest known texts were
recovered by archaeologists near Jerusalem in a tomb at a place called
Ketef Hinnom.38 They are two small pieces of very thin inscribed silver,
each rolled carefully and worn as necklaces by wealthy children. They
date to around 600 bce, just a few years before Jerusalem was attacked
by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
38 G. Barkay et al., ‘The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and
Evaluation’, BASOR 334 (2004), pp. 41–71.
Each Ketef Hinnom inscription is unique, but both include variant

versions of the so-called Priestly Blessing found in the Bible at Num.
6.24–26. The biblical version of this blessing is younger than the Ketef
Hinnom necklaces, and more expansive.39 These tiny silver amulets are
quiet testimony to the process that initiated the creation of the Bible.
During the earliest stages of the Bible’s formation, the scribes did not
plan to create a religiously authoritative anthology of sacred literature.
Rather, they gathered into their anthology the stories, poems, religious
proverbs, and blessings common among the Judahite and Israelite
people. One such piece of traditional lore was this little prayer: ‘May
Yahweh bless and keep you. . . .’
The biblical texts discussed earlier in this chapter are sufficient to
suggest that the earliest stage of the Bible’s evolution took place during
the decades after the Ketef Hinnom necklaces were created. As literate
elites prepared for exile in Babylon, the conversation flowed into textual
production. These exiled scribes apparently had access to some earlier
writings, perhaps fragments from the archives of Jerusalem’s bureau-
cracy in which they, as scribes, had been employed. One can imagine
that the crisis of deportation to Babylon, the disruption and loss that
it entailed, motivated them to raid those archives and gather as much
traditional lore as possible, lest it be lost forever. The sources from
which the Hebrew anthology was constructed were varied: elements
from a royal archive, temple records, public monuments, perhaps
collections of priestly literature or collections of traditional myth and
folklore. The process of gathering seems to have generated a process
of writing commentary on the gathered material, and the commentaries
were included as part of the evolving texts. In this way, each scroll that
39 Both amulets include text that is not paralleled by a biblical text as well as ritual
formulae that appear in various biblical contexts and are best interpreted to have
been common oral formulae (see, for example, Ketef Hinnom I’s ‘the great ’El,
keeping the covenant and the steadfast loyalty to those who love him’, and Deut.
7.9; Dan. 9.4; Neh. 1.5). The second amulet contains a version of the so-called
Priestly Blessing (Num. 6.24–6) and demonstrates that the biblical version is
expansive. The portion of the familiar biblical text that I have placed in brackets
does not appear in Ketef Hinnom II: ‘May Yahweh bless and keep you, may
Yahweh shine his face upon you [and be gracious to you; may Yahweh lift his
face toward you;] and may he give to you peace’. The bracketed portion is a
repetition of the first blessing and reference to the solar ‘face’, and is clearly
secondary.
would eventually become a book of the Bible evolved haphazardly,

as bits of commentary became part of the text and, in turn, generated
additional bits of commentary that also became part of the text.
The same evidence that enables us to date an early stage of the
anthology to the sixth century bce suggests that an earlier stage did not
exist. Even in cases where a scroll includes several texts composed prior
to the sixth century, it is reasonable to assume that the era in which they
were gathered into one scroll is reflected in glosses and commentary.
Therefore, the earliest era reflected rather evenly across the anthol-
ogy’s various scrolls is best viewed as the earliest stage of the gathering
process. Almost every book contains passages that seem to presuppose
the circumstances of deportation in the sixth century bce, and this
tragic event is the earliest memory shared with consistency across the
anthology.
Examples of the Jewish Bible’s recurrent theme of Babylonian
exile can be found almost everywhere, sometimes as incidental refer-
ences (for example, Josh. 23.13; Judg. 18.30; 1 Sam. 12.25; Amos
9.11–15) and other times as dominant elements within the structure of
entire biblical books (such as 1–2 Kings and Jeremiah). The editorial
framework for the book of Deuteronomy makes explicit references
to exile (Deut. 4.25–31; 28.64–8; 29.27–9; 30.1–10; 31.16–22).
Although the book of Isaiah’s first sentence attributes its content to
a prophet who is said to have lived in the eighth century bce, many
portions (arguably most portions) presuppose circumstances during
or after the Babylonian deportation (especially, but not exclusively,
Isaiah 40–66). Another example is the pattern of material in the Torah.
Each of these five books contains sections that scholars identify as
part of a single style of writing, usually labeled the Priestly (or P)
writings. Whether these represent the writing style of a hypothetical
individual scribe or an equally hypothetical school of scribes (or
only a randomly formed collection of texts using a similar style of
composition), one thing is clear: the P section of the Torah seems to
presuppose the circumstances after 586 bce. Like the book of Isaiah,
the Torah was constructed as an anthology no earlier than the sixth
century.
The eclectic nature of the Hebrew anthology, which seems to operate
on the principle that a place will be found for every stray bit of text
no matter how anomalous it might be, suggests that the scribes were
not functioning as historians, but as librarians or antiquarians, people
who wanted to preserve everything that could be preserved.40 This is

why most of the narrative books in the Bible contain discontinuities,
repetitions, and contradictions. The scribes only appear to be telling
a story in a chronological manner. In reality, the ‘chronology’ is an
artificial framework upon which the scribes could hang each bit of lore
available to them (recall that chapters and verses were not invented until
centuries later).41 Several researchers have suggested that these narra-
tives were never intended to be read, but were meant to be selected and
recombined for each reading performance.42 If this hypothesis is correct,
then the scribes who compiled the narratives intended them as creative
fictions or, better, as resources for generating creative fictions.
Today, a common mistake made by readers of the Bible is to assume
that this Hebrew anthology was intended to be religiously authorita-
tive.43 This error is logical. Because the Bible is religiously authoritative
for millions of people today, readers often jump to the conclusion that
it was designed by its ancient authors for that purpose. This logical
reasoning is incorrect. The Persian-period scribes who created the
Hebrew anthology had no idea that they were creating literature that
would one day become religiously authoritative literature.
At least four clusters of evidence indicate that the scribes who began
to anthologize Hebrew literature did not intend their anthology to be
religiously useful. It became religiously useful over time as readers
chose to find religious value in the material. Later, this religiously
useful anthology gradually became religiously authoritative. The entire
process, from initial anthology, through a stage of religious utility, and
40 K. L. Noll, ‘The Evolution of Genre in the Hebrew Anthology’, in C. A. Evans

and H. D. Zacharias (eds), Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality, Part
1, Thematic Studies (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), pp. 10–23;
Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People, p. 389; P. R. Davies, In Search
of ‘Ancient Israel’ (JSOTSup, 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2nd edn,
1999), pp. 124–7.
41 K. L. Noll, ‘A Portrait of the Deuteronomistic Historian at Work?’ in K. L. Noll
and B. Schramm (eds), Raising Up a Faithful Exegete: Essays in Honor of
Richard D. Nelson (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), pp. 73–86 (80).
42 A. F. Campbell, ‘The Reported Story: Midway between Oral Performance and
Literary Art’, Semeia 46 (1989), pp. 77–85; Thompson, Early History of the
Israelite People, pp. 366–72.
43 For discussion, see K. L. Noll, ‘The Kaleidoscopic Nature of Divine Personality
in the Hebrew Bible’, BibInt 9 (2001), pp. 1–24.
finally to a stage of religious authority, seems to have taken centuries to

complete (from the sixth century bce to the second century ce).
The first cluster of evidence suggests that the scribes did not try to
disseminate publicly the texts or their contents during the Persian era.44
The Jews of Elephantine, who were in contact with Jews of Jerusalem
and Samaria, display no awareness of the scrolls or the content of the
scrolls. Moreover, to the extent that the scrolls reflect the religious
beliefs or practices of Persian-era Jews, it is because the scribes have
gathered traditional lore from local communities and not because those
communities were using religious texts to express their beliefs and
practices.45 For example, we noted in Chapter 6 that the biblical texts
commanding a Yom Kippur observance (such as Leviticus 23) reflect
Canaanite religious customs that go back at least to the Late Bronze Age
at Ugarit, centuries before any biblical text was written. The biblical
Yom Kippur texts are elitist attempts to record and preserve descrip-
tions of rituals that commoners had been observing in their own way
for centuries. The narrative framework involving Moses, Aaron, and an
exodus from Egypt is the organizing principle imposed by the scribes,
44 K. L. Noll, ‘Did “Scripturalization” Take Place in Second Temple Judaism?’

SJOT 25 (2011), pp. 201–16; idem, ‘The Evolution of Genre in the Book of
Kings: The Story of Sennacherib and Hezekiah as Example’, in P. G. Kirkpatrick
and T. Goltz (eds), The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and
Cognate Studies (London: T&T Clark International, 2008), pp. 30–56 (34–39); E.
Tov, ‘Some Thoughts about the Diffusion of Biblical Manuscripts in Antiquity’,
in S. Metso, H. Najman, and E. Schuller (eds), Dead Sea Scrolls: Transmission of
Traditions and Production of Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 151–72 (163–7); K.
van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). In his version of the hypothesis, van der
Toorn identifies two stages for public dissemination. The first was a Persian-era
dissemination of the Torah’s content (not the texts), and the second was a
Ptolemaic-era dissemination of various texts. He has provided data to support
the second of these hypothetical stages, but not the first. See van der Toorn,
Scribal Culture, pp. 23–5, 146–9, 248–62, and elsewhere. Everyone cited in this
note is dependent upon insights from N. Lohfink, ‘Was There a Deuteronomistic
Movement?’ in L. S. Schearing and S. L. McKenzie (eds), Those Elusive
Deuteronomistis: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (JSOTSup, 268;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 48–55.
45 Noll, ‘Was There Doctrinal Dissemination?’ pp. 397–8; idem, ‘Did “Scrip-
turalization” Take Place?’ pp. 208–9.
and there is little reason to think that these details had been part of the
Yom Kippur rituals that have been anthologized as Leviticus 16.
Occasionally, researchers argue that a Torah of Moses (roughly
equivalent to our books of Genesis through Deuteronomy) was publicly
disseminated during the Persian period, but there is no evidence to
support the hypothesis. Supporters of this thesis invoke a series of Bible
stories that describe public dissemination of biblical texts.46 For example,
many researchers interpret Nehemiah 8 as a kind of foundational event
for public teaching events, some even suggesting that it anticipates the
invention of the synagogue. This is unrealistic. Nehemiah 8 explicitly
describes a singular and unrepeated event; moreover, the earliest known
synagogues do not appear in the archaeological or literary data until
Greco-Roman times, centuries after the (quite possibly fictional) tale of
Nehemiah 8 is supposed to have taken place. Other researchers appeal to
the commandment for a seventh-year public recitation of Deuteronomy
(Deut. 31.10–13), but social science research suggests that this ritual,
if it was ever conducted at all, would have been useless for effectively
disseminating Deuteronomy’s content over a geographically dispersed,
mostly uneducated, agrarian population.47
If an effective dissemination of Hebrew literature or its contents had
taken place as early as the Persian period, researchers are at a loss to
explain the complete absence of any data from excavations that might
suggest that people were living according to biblical Torah stipulations
prior to Greco-Roman times. It can be demonstrated from excavated
and textual data that people began living according to these standards
in early Roman times, but even then many examples indicate that the
influence of the texts was not yet universal.48 These data undermine
46 For example, van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, pp. 106, 147; D. M. Carr, Writing
on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), pp. 134–9.
47 Noll, ‘Was There Doctrinal Dissemination?’ pp. 409–27.
48 For example, S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640
C.E. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 68–71 and elsewhere.
Particularly interesting is a set of recently published documents from Egypt that
date to the 140s and 130s bce. These documents testify to an autonomous Jewish
community who did not follow biblical teachings with respect to finances. Some
argue that the Jews in these documents who practiced divorce ‘according to the
law’ had the Greek translation of Deut. 24.1–4 in view, but this hypothesis is, at
best, possible. For discussion of these texts by one who disagrees with me, see
the thesis of a Persian-era dissemination. One would have to suggest

that dissemination of the literature, or its contents, took place in the
Persian period but left no trace in the data and was, by some unknown
cause, expunged from Jewish society during subsequent centuries,
only to reappear quite gradually in the early Roman era. Such a thesis
is not credible. The most reasonable conclusion from all available
evidence is that the Hebrew anthology was evolving during the Persian
period, but only a handful of scribes were aware of this; ‘the vast
majority of pre-Hellenistic Yahweh worshippers were never aware of
the anthology’.49
A second cluster of evidence demonstrates that the scribes who
created the Hebrew anthology did not intend to create religiously
authoritative literature. The anthology is eclectic and inclusive. It does
not indicate to a reader which of the variant texts on a topic takes
precedence. For example, the Torah of Moses, defined as the five
books from Genesis to Deuteronomy as we know them today, actually
includes several shorter torah codes. The Covenant Code appears in
Exodus 21–23. The Holiness Code is in Leviticus 17–26. The core of
the Deuteronomic Code appears in Deuteronomy 12–26. The book of
Numbers also contains torah clusters.
The variant torah codes now contained in the Torah of Moses
include many passages that disagree with one another. For example,
Deuteronomy permits profane slaughter of animals away from the
shrine of Yahweh, but Leviticus does not (Deut. 12.13–15; Lev. 17.2–9).
Deuteronomy allows pilgrims to purchase sacrificial animals at the
temple, effectively substituting one animal for another, but Leviticus
forbids this practice, declaring that any such substitution renders both
animals obligatory for sacrifice (Deut 14.24–26; Lev. 27.9–10; compare
also Num. 18.17). Likewise, Deuteronomy permits humans to conse-
crate a firstborn animal for human consumption, but Leviticus insists
that they may not (Deut. 15.19–20; Lev. 27.26; see also Num. 3.13).
Deuteronomy requires a seventh-year debt release, but Leviticus instead
requires a seventh-year agricultural season in which land is to remain
fallow (Deut. 15.1–6; Lev. 25.1–7). These examples can be multiplied,
G. Dorival, ‘New Light about the Origin of the Septuagint?’ in W. Kraus and
M. Karrer (eds), Die Septuaginta: Texte, Theologien, Einflüsse (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2010), pp. 36–47 (43–4).
49 Noll, ‘Evolution of Genre in the Hebrew Anthology’, p. 16.
but the point is that the codes reflect, in each case, a distinct ethos. Many
researchers have made careers from careful comparison and contrast of
these torah codes so that they can construct theological profiles of each
unit within the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy.
Since the ancient scribes who compiled all this material made no
attempt to harmonize the sometimes conflicting elements in these torah
codes, it would seem that the motivation for the Torah’s existence was
preservation, not imposition. The scribes gathered and preserved the
priestly lore of several temples or Jewish communities and made no
attempt to systematize the contents of that lore. It is difficult to sustain
a hypothesis that such a procedure was intended to create religiously
authoritative literature. Once again, the impression is that the scribes
functioned as archivists or librarians, not religious authorities. The
artificial narrative framework into which they inserted the materials
provides a minimally coherent literary filing system, not an authori-
tative ‘history’ of Israelite religion or practices.
A third reason to avoid thinking of the early Hebrew anthology as an
authoritative body of literature during the Persian period is the nature of
the existing ancient manuscripts. Our earliest copies of biblical scrolls
are the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which date to early Roman times,
long after the Persian era (for introduction, see Chapter 2). Among these
manuscripts are thousands of variant readings. Most of these variations
are scribal errors, such as misspellings or accidental loss of a few words
or lines from a text. However, a significant number of the Dead Sea
Scrolls suggest that the scrolls now contained in the Jewish Bible were
still evolving in Roman times.
The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that, even as late as Greco-Roman
times, scribes routinely made editorial changes to texts. This could not
have happened if the texts were believed to have an authoritative status
that scribes could not question. Two versions of Jeremiah, for example,
existed side by side among the Dead Sea Scrolls. One researcher discerns
at least four stages of revision and expansion in the book of Exodus.50
A text that was a source for the tale now contained in Daniel 4 appears
among these scrolls, showing us the process by which this story was
50 E. C. Ulrich, ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Scriptural Texts’, in J. H.
Charlesworth (ed.), The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Second Princeton
Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, Vol. 1, Scripture and the Scrolls
(Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006), pp. 77–99 (95–6).
Figure 48. A scroll from the Dead Sea near Qumran, Greco-Roman period
gradually constructed.51 Another Dead Sea Scroll provides commentary

on a sacred scripture that was a modified version of what we know as
the book of Genesis.52 This suggests that the version of Genesis found
in Bibles today was not yet, during the Roman era, the authoritative
version of this book. These and other examples demonstrate that, long
after the Persian period, the books that would become the Bible had
not yet emerged as an authoritative collection called a Bible.53 Clearly
they could not yet have functioned as religiously authoritative as early
as Persian times.
51 This early draft (4Q242) has King Nabonidus as its protagonist, not the biblical
version’s King Nebuchadnezzar. For discussion, see L. T. Stuckenbruck, ‘The
Formation and Re-Formation of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, in Charlesworth
(ed.), Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 101–30 (104–6).
52 G. Brooke, ‘4QCommentary on Genesis A’, in G. Brooke et al. (eds), Qumran
Cave 4.XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (DJD, 22; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996),
pp. 185–207, plates XII–XIII.
53 The evidence discussed by G. J. Brooke undermines his thesis that the texts
were reworked because they already enjoyed authoritative status; one should
say, rather, that the texts were reworked because readers could not accept the
original texts as authoritative without revision. See Brooke, ‘Between Authority
and Canon: The Significance of Reworking the Bible for Understanding the
Canonical Process’, in E.G. Chazon et al., Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and
Related Texts at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 85–104.
A fourth cluster of evidence also suggests that the Hebrew anthology

existed for a long time before it became a religiously authoritative
body of sacred scripture. Recent research has demonstrated that public
dissemination of the Hebrew scrolls began in the Greco-Roman era.
This research also suggests that the scribes who began to circulate
multiple copies of the various books wanted to place a collection of
prized texts in the hands of Jews who would appreciate this literature as
part of their own sense of ethnic identity.54 The Jews who began to read
this Hebrew literature tell us that it is significant because it is ancestral,
not because it is divinely revealed or inspired.55 Only gradually, as
circulation of the literature increased, do we encounter increasing
evidence that the Jewish readership had begun to treat the literature as
divinely authorized and religiously relevant to their lives.56 By Roman
times, a brisk exchange of the scrolls had begun, and the tendency to
regard the literature as from and about the Jewish god had become
nearly universal.57
Data from the Greco-Roman centuries suggest that readers responded
to the Hebrew anthology in wildly divergent ways. As the scrolls
became available to literate Jews outside the small circle of scribes
who first handled them, these new readers did not yet know what to
make of them. As a result, they experimented with various methods for
treating the literature as religiously useful and, eventually, religiously
authoritative. For example, a second-century bce sage named Jesus
ben Sira is one of the earliest Jews known to have had access to most
(apparently not quite all) of the literature now contained in the Jewish
Bible. As part of his response to this literature, he offers a long poem
in praise of the ‘ancestors’ about whom he has read in these texts (Sir.
44.1–50.24). The poem is awkward because, in many cases, the author
struggles to find a religious message or beneficially pious example in
54 K. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, p. 23–5, 260, and elsewhere.

55 A. van der Kooij, ‘Canonization of Ancient Hebrew Books and Hasmonean
Politics’, in J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge (eds), The Biblical Canons (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2003), pp. 27–38 (30).
56 J. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of
the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
57 For discussion of Roman-era circulation of the literature, see K. van der Toorn,
‘The Books of the Hebrew Bible as Material Artifacts’, in J. D. Schloen (ed.),
Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 465–71.
ancient Hebrew literature that seems ill-suited to the purpose. It is as

though Jesus ben Sira struggles to transform secular Hebrew literature
into sacred Hebrew literature.
It is no surprise that the period after the Persian centuries is the one
that produced an explosion of new Jewish literature, almost all of which
was written in response to the texts contained in the Hebrew anthology
that became the Jewish Bible. Some readers were not satisfied with
the eclectic inclusiveness of the anthology and tried to harmonize or
eliminate the contradictory passages. At times, this resulted in rewritten
versions of the original books.58 For example, the book of Jubilees and
the so-called Temple Scroll, both found among the Dead Sea Scrolls,
have rewritten extensive portions of the Torah of Moses. At other
times, an ancient writer rearranged existing units within a scroll and
added freshly invented units to achieve a greater harmony in the whole.
The so-called Reworked Pentateuch, also found among the Dead Sea
Scrolls, displays this type of harmonization. This explosion of literature
also included many newly composed texts that amount to pious revision
of the original stories. For example, the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs and 1 Esdras each rewrite portions of the Hebrew anthology
to suit the religious sensibilities of Roman-era Jewish readers.
The explosion of divergent responses to the Hebrew anthology
demonstrates that a single definition of the anthology’s message or
purpose did not yet exist during the early Roman era. This remained a
matter of public debate. Certainly, a uniform definition of the Hebrew
anthology as sacred scripture had not yet been achieved, and a variety
of attempts at this definition competed with one another. For example,
it was during the Greco-Roman era that some Jewish authors tried,
for the first time, to transform the narrative portions of the Hebrew
anthology into a systematic history of the Jewish people (Demetrius
the Chronographer, Eupolemus, Josephus). And it was during this era
that some Jewish authors tried, for the first time, to impose systematic
religious philosophies onto the anthology’s diverse religious texts (for
example, Philo of Alexandria). Still other Jews of this era treated the
Hebrew anthology as divinely revealed prophecies, usually ignoring
the literary context from which they extracted each so-called prophecy
that they found useful (for example, the pesharîm among the Dead Sea
58 S. White Crawford, ‘The Rewritten Bible at Qumran’, in Charlesworth (ed.),

Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 131–47.
Scrolls and the frequent tendency of New Testament authors to apply

Jewish texts to Jesus).
Most significantly, research demonstrates that it was only in this late
period, after the Persian era, that the oral traditions that would later be
known as the Oral Torah or the Halakhah (literally ‘the walk’) began
to emerge.59 The Halakhah became, in the hands of the Rabbis of the
Common Era, the basis for living as a Jew. The central idea in the
Halakhah is that the Torah is not in the sky (Deut. 30.11–14; see also
b. Bava Metzi’a 59b) and therefore Jews must decide, as a community,
how to apply biblical teaching to daily life. In other words, for Jews
who follow the Halakhah, Judaism is not submission to a divine patron
who imposes unyielding laws but rather a covenant with a divine
conversation partner whose divine rules are the founding principle from
which a way of life will be constructed by each new generation of Jews.
This Halakhic approach would be the way in which Judaism would
choose to read the Hebrew anthology, now defined as the Jewish Bible,
from Roman times to the modern era. But it was a long struggle. The
Rabbinic Judaism founded upon the Halakhah emerged in the Roman
period, but spread only gradually among Jews. It was not common in
western Europe, for example, until after the fourth century ce.60
The evidence for diverse kinds of Judaism in the Persian era, as well
as the evidence suggesting that the Hebrew anthology did not become
authoritative religious literature until long after the Persian era, reveals
a clear picture in spite of the many unanswered questions about the
lives of Jews during the centuries following 586 bce. Although the
present state of the data will not permit a complete narrative history of
this era, enough is known to understand how and why the Yahweh of
the Iron Age died and a new Yahweh, the Yahweh of the Jewish Bible,
gradually emerged. The Judaism structured around this new Yahweh
was constructed from the fragmentary remains of the Iron Age II during
the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods. Through this process of sifting
and reinterpretation, the Iron Age divine patron gave way, gradually, to
a Roman-era divine conversation partner.
59 M. S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian

Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 83,
98.
60 A. Edrei and D. Mendels, ‘A Split Jewish Diaspora: Its Dramatic Consequences’,
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 16 (2007), pp. 91–137.
Postscript
This book has explored a few aspects of a fascinating world. That world
is dead, fixed, and finished. Its people are lost in the dust, most of their
names forgotten. The desire of the historian is to revive their memory
for a moment, to give them a chance to speak. Among those lost faces
were good people, not-so-good people, and a few villains. They earned
their living from a harsh land that was indifferent to their presence and
often failed to cooperate. They competed with one another, hated one
another, allied with one another, loved one another. My hope is that
this survey has given you a sense for their integrity, their fallacies, their
ingenuity, their fears, and their hope. It is the hope that is most inspiring.
Ancient people are our family members. The ancient world is a legacy,
a gift for the modern world to cherish, protect, and explore. The ancient
past is the heritage of all, the possession of none.

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Origins of Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).
Carter, Charles E., The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and
Demographic Study (JSOTSup, 294; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
Chalcraft, David J. (ed.), Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances
(London: Equinox, 2007).
Crawford, Sidnie White, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids,
Davies, Philip R., The Origins of Biblical Israel (LHB/OTS, 485; London: T&T Clark
International, 2007).
Edelman, Diana, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the
Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005).
Grabbe, Lester L., and Oded Lipschits (eds), Judah Between East and West: The
Transition from Persian to Greek Rule (ca. 400–200 BCE) (London: T&T Clark,
2011).
Knoppers, Gary N., and Bernard M. Levinson (eds), The Pentateuch as Torah: New
Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2007).
Lipschits, Oded, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005).
Lipschits, Oded, and Joseph Blenkinsopp (eds), Judah and the Judeans in the
Neo-Babylonian Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003).
Lipschits, Oded, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz (eds), Judah and the Judeans in
the Fourth Century B.C.E. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007).
Lipschits, Oded, and Manfred Oeming (eds), Judah and the Judeans in the Persian
Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006).
Magness, Jodi, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids,
Mor, Menachem, and Friedrich V. Reiterer (eds), Samaritans, Past and Present: Current
Studies (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010).
Trebolle Barrera, Julio, The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the
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Ulrich, Eugene, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Studies in the Dead
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Watts, James W. (ed.), Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the
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Index of Modern Authors
Adams, M. J. 86, 103 Bruce, S. 315, 316

Ahlström, G. W. 142, 393 Bruins, H. J. 293
Albertz, R. 358, 406 Bunimovitz, S. 162, 170
Alexander, L. C. A. 81
Alt, A. 168 Callaway, P. R. 64
Amit, Y. 313 Campbell, A. F. 397
Arbeitman, Y. L. 286 Carr, D. M. 64, 399
Ardener, A. 100 Carroll, R. P. 365
Arie, E. 288, 289, 292 Carter, C. E. 406
Aro, J. 343 Chalcraft, D. J. 406
Ash, P. S. 227, 258 Chaney, M. L. 169
Athas, G. 295 Chapman, M. 22
Atran, S. 213 Chapman, R. L., III 249
Auld, A. G. 47, 258, 287, 297, 313 Cinamon, G. 371
Clines, D. J. A. 184, 213
Bagnall, R. S. 64 Clinton, B. 91
Banning, E. B. 142 Cogan, M. 57, 190, 325, 326
Barkay, G. 394 Coggins, R. 312
Barstad, H. M. 313 Collins, J. J. 358
Bauckham, R. 82 Coogan, M. D. 332
Becking, B. 313, 358, 377, 390 Cornelius, I. 326
Ben Zvi, E. 358 Crawford, S. W. 404, 406
Berger, B. L. 316 Cross, F. M. 35, 61, 62, 205, 213, 230, 289,
Berlejung, A. 342 304, 313
Bickerman, E. J. 22
Biers, W. R. 64 Dahood, M. 206
Biran, A. 288, 290 Dalley, S. 103, 274
Blenkinsopp, J. 363, 381, 385, 406 Davies, G. I. 230, 324, 329, 330
Bloch-Smith, E. 174, 181, 312 Davies, P. R. 9, 22, 64, 101, 213, 258, 383,
Boda, M. J. 358 393, 397, 406
Bodel, J. 358 Davis, J. 4, 32
Boyer, P. 183, 213, 341 Dawkins, R. 321
Bright, J. 32, 168, 379 Day, J. 289, 358
Brody, A. J. 327 Deacon, T. W. 142
Brooke, G. J. 58, 64, 402 Dearman, J. A. 199
Broshi, M. 38, 261 Dennett, D. C. 142
Brotien, J. H. 329 Dever, W. G. 169, 232
410 Index of Modern Authors
Dickens, C. 354 Görg, M. 138

Dietrich, M. 330 Gottwald, N. K. 169
Dijkstra, M. 332 Grabbe, L. L. 85, 87, 103, 259, 275, 314,
Dion, P. 300 351, 358, 383, 385, 406
Donovan, D. 73 Graham, M. P. 86, 87
Dorival, G. 400 Grahame-Smith, S. 71
Dothan, T. 190, 325, 326 Grant, M. 103
Du Bois, W. E. B. 31 Graves, M. W. 64
Dutcher-Walls, P. 181 Greenberg, R. 371
Edelman, D. V. 213, 305, 309, 312, 358, Haak, R. D. 358

376, 381, 383, 406 Hackett, J. A. 325
Edenburg, C. 256 Hadley, J. M. 326
Edrei, A. 405 Halpern, B. 80, 86, 103, 221, 225, 230,
Ehrensvärd, M. 57 259, 307
Eph‘al, I. 35 Handler, R. 150
Erlich, A. 375 Handy, L. K. 186, 213, 259, 307, 310
Ernst, S. 273 Haran, M. 85, 87, 88
Eynikel, E. 258 Hayes, J. H. 379
Herzog, Z. 235, 238, 242, 243, 246, 247,
Fantalkin, A. 236, 243, 246, 248, 258, 277 248, 253, 308, 310
Faust, A. 153, 167, 169, 171, 172, 173, 181 Hesse, B. 172
Finkelstein, I. 38, 44, 54, 160, 168, Hezser, C. 54
169–70, 172, 181, 216, 233, 236, 240, Higham, T. 246, 253, 259
243, 246, 248, 249, 258, 261, 304, Hirsi Ali, A. 178–80
308, 314 Hoffman, P. 81
Fischer, A. A. 256 Hoglund, K. G. 87
Fisher, C. S. 249 Holladay, J. S., Jr. 232, 290
Floyd, M. H. 358 Howe, I. 366
Foster, B. R. 103 Hugo, P. 329
Franklin, N. 250 Hutchinson, J. 181
Frerichs, E. S. 142
Frick, F. S. 169 Ilan, D. 120
Fried, L. S. 308, 385 Isserlin, B. S. J. 314
Fritz, V. 64, 258
Jaffee, M. S. 54, 405
Genovese, E. D. 31 Janzen, J. G. 63
Gibson, J. C. L. 195 Jason, H. 219
Gilmour, G. 329 Jayyusi, S. K. 240
Gitin, S. 181, 190, 325, 326 Jonker, L. 86
Glancy, J. A. 150 Just, R. 149
Glassner, J.-J. 84, 85, 88, 103
Gmirkin, R. E. 82, 103 Keel, O. 358
Gnuse, R. K. 169 Killebrew, A. E. 160, 169, 181, 240, 259,
Golani, A. 326 306
Goodacre, M. S. 82 Kirkpatrick, P. G. 22, 219
Goren, Y. 35 Kitchen, K. A. 233
Kletter, R. 327 Mendels, D. 405

Kloos, C. 336 Mendenhall, G. E. 169
Kloppenborg, J. S. 81 Meyers, C. 379
Knauf, E. A. 8, 55, 56, 57, 136, 242, 251–2, Meyers, E. M. 379
257, 268, 311 Miller, J. M. 379
Knoppers, G. 87, 406 Miller, P. D. 324
Koch, C. 300 Miller, R. D., II 45
Kohlmeyer, K. 145 Mitchell, S. 188
Kooij, A. van der 403 Moles, J. L. 77
Korpel, M. C. A. 323, 324, 325 Momigliano, A. 103
Kratz, R. G. 383, 391, 392 Monroe, L. A. S. 200
Kugel, J. 403 Mor, M. 374, 407
Kuhrt, A. 126, 131, 132, 142, 199, 314, 385 Moran, W. L. 131, 142
Morris, E. 72
Lehman, G. 38, 176 Morris, E. F. 131
Lemaire, A. 56, 86, 103, 241, 287, 362, Motzki, H. 299
374, 386
Lemche, N. P. 142, 170, 186, 358 Na’aman, N. 6, 9, 41, 47, 80, 85, 86, 87,
Lernau, O. 263 88, 142, 181, 208, 219, 220, 223, 227,
Lesko, L. H. 142 241, 248, 249, 254, 256, 257, 259,
Leuchter, M. 86, 87, 88 277, 278, 279, 281, 305–6, 308, 309,
Levinson, B. M. 406 311, 314
Levy, T. E. 142, 246, 253, 259 Nakhai, B. A. 174, 181, 207
Lindenberger, J. M. 391 Naveh, J. 290, 325, 326
Lipschits, O. 38, 366, 371, 373, 406 Niditch, S. 219
Liverani, M. 259 Niehr, H. 325, 375
Lohfink, N. 398 Nissinen, M. 204, 345, 346, 347, 348, 355,
Loretz, O. 330 358
Lutzky, H. 325 Noël, D. 304
Lyons, D. G. 249 Noth, M. 168, 301, 314
Macchi, J.-D. 314 O’Connor, M. 184

Magen, Y. 374, 390 Oakeshott, M. 33
Magness, J. 407 Oeming, M. 406
Margalit, B. 326 Olmo Lete, G. del 211
Marincola, J. 66, 74, 103 Olson, B. 54
Martin, L. H. 214 Olyan, S. M. 181, 358
Mayr, E. 142 Oppenheim, A. L. 51, 89, 190, 197, 203,
Mazar, A. 171, 173, 181, 222, 232, 237, 208
248, 250, 253, 258, 314 Ornan, T. 183, 290
McCarter, P. K. 201, 222, 223, 226 Overholt, T. W. 351, 358
McDonald, L. M. 64
McDonald, M. 22 Pakkala, J. 286
McKenzie, S. L. 86–7, 221, 259 Pardee, D. 204, 208, 210, 211, 213, 323,
McNutt, P. M. 181 326, 337, 344, 358
Meek, T. J. 193 Parker, S. B. 87, 91, 103, 213, 230, 287,
Meer, M. N. van der 46, 47 312
412 Index of Modern Authors
Parpola, S. 343 Sparks, K. L. 181

Parry, D. W. 61, 62 Stager, L. E. 159, 169, 176
Pfoh, E. 181 Stampp, K. M. 31
Phillips, U. B. 31 Stanford, M. 64
Piasetzky, E. 44, 243, 246, 249 Stark, M. T. 64
Porter, B. N. 213 Starr, I. 343, 344
Pury, A. de 301, 314 Steen, E. J. van der 169
Pyysiäinen, I. 213, 341 Steiner, M. 240
Stephens, F. J. 190
Radner, K. 300 Stern, E. 181, 375
Rainey, A. F. 308 Steymans, H. U. 276
Redford, D. B. 87, 132, 142, 168, 278, 362, Stiles, T. J. 26
385 Stott, K. M. 82
Reich, R. 263 Stuckenbruck, L. T. 402
Reisner, G. A. 249
Reiterer, F. V. 374, 407 Tadmor, H. 276
Rezetko, R. 57 Tal, O. 373
Ritner, R. K. 346, 358 Tappy, R. E. 242
Robinson, J. M. 81 Theis, C. 138
Rogerson, J. 22 Thompson, T. L. 95, 104, 175, 188, 237,
Rollefson, G. O. 142 240, 242, 257, 259, 359, 368, 397
Rollston, C. A. 35, 53, 56, 64, 241, 265, Tonkin, E. 22, 65
330 Toorn, K. van der 54, 65, 338, 398, 399,
Römer, T. 301, 314 403
Rosenthal, F. 197 Tov, E. 63, 64, 398
Rutledge, S. H. 72 Trebolle Barrera, J. 59, 61, 62, 407
Tuckett, C. M. 82
Saley, R. J. 61, 62 Twain, M. 72, 75
Sass, B. 326
Schenker, A. 46, 286 Uehlinger, C. 290, 358
Schmidt, B. B. 329 Ulrich, E. C. 47, 57, 59, 62, 63, 401, 407
Schwartz, S. 399 Ussishkin, D. 41, 44, 160, 240, 241, 246,
Seow, C. L. 346, 358 305, 310
Sharon, I. 254
Sherratt, S. 145 Van Seters, J. 82, 87, 90, 104, 221, 259,
Shortland, A. J. 236 287
Shukron, E. 263 Vanderhooft, D. S. 173, 176, 373
Siddall, L. R. 273 Vansina, J. 91, 104, 153
Silberman, N. A. 54, 258, 304, 308, 314 Vaughn, A. G. 240, 259, 306
Singer-Avitz, L. 235, 238, 243, 246, 247, Veen, P. van der 138
248, 253 Vermeylen, J. 221
Skibo, J. M. 64 Veyne, P. 104
Smith, A. D. 181 Vleeming, S. P. 334
Smith, M. 186, 213, 322
Smith, M. S. 170, 188, 213, 289, 324 Walsch, N. D. 78
Smith, T. B. 29 Waltke, B. K. 184
Sollors, W. 181 Wapnish, P. 172
Watson, W. G. E. 207 Xella, P. 330

Watts, J. W. 407
Weinfeld, M. 300 Yadin, Y. 286
Weinrib, L. E. 316 Yasur-Landau, A. 258
Wesselius, J. W. 334 Young, I. 57
Westermann, C. 184 Yurco, F. 139
Wheeldon, M. J. 77
Whitehouse, H. 214 Zertal, A. 42, 44, 45
Williamson, H. G. M. 314 Zetterholm, M. 54
Wilson, J. A. 138, 320 Zevit, Z. 206, 214, 257, 331, 334, 365
Wray Beal, L. M. 358 Zimhoni, O. 235, 247
Wright, G. E. 168 Zorn, J. R. 366
Wright, J. L. 175, 381 Zuckerman, P. 316
Wyatt, N. 3, 207, 337
Index of Scriptures
Genesis 15.7 92
1 16, 95, 324 15.13–16 341
1.1 74 15.19–21 145
1.6–8 184 16 177
1.26–8 93–4, 331 17 389
2–3 94 20.1–18 93
2.7 94, 324 21.33 296
2.9 332 24.7 368
2.10–14 324 24.10–20 93
2.18–23 94 25 6
3.8 324, 341 26 92, 140–1
3.16 94 26.6–11 93
3.22 94 26.23–5 296
3.24 189 28 391
4.26 92 28.1–2 178
5 96 28.11–22 296
6.5–7 341 28.18 327
6.19–20 93 29–30 177, 179
7.2–3 93 29.1–20 93
7.7 184 30.1–8 8
7.10 184 30.9–11 8
7.11 184 30.12–13 8
9.11 184 31.19 338
9.15 184 31.34–5 338
9.28 184 33.18–20 296
10 6 33.20 325
10.1 184 35.3 296
10.32 184 35.6–7 296
11 6 35.9–15 296
11.5 340 35.11 325
11.10 184 35.14 327
12 140 38.6–10 341
12.6 46 38.21 210
12.6–8 296
12.10–20 93 Exodus
13.18 296 1.11 99, 163
14.19 324 3.7–8 340
14.22 324 4.21 103
6.2–3 135 16.6–10 189

9.12 103 17–26 400
10.20 103 17.2–9 400
10.27 103 19.27–8 317
11.10 103 20.2–5 212
12.37 97 23 180, 211, 398
12.37–8 351, 135 25.1–7 400
14 351, 352 25.8–55 386
14.4 103 26.11–12 183
14.8 103 27.9–10 400
14.17 103 27.26 400
15.1–3 101 27.28–9 200
15.16–17 394
16.35 96 Numbers
20 53 1 135
20.21 296 1.5–15 7
21 150 3.13 400
21–23 400 5 344
22.19 200 5.17 204
22.28–9 212 6.24–6 395
24.8 197 9.15–23 341
25.8 340 10.33–6 342
28 344 13.26 141
28.30 344 18.17 400
30.13 386 20.1 141
32 289 20.22 141
32.1–35 92 21.1–3 141
34.6 325 21.3 200
40.33–8 342 21.14–15 49
21.21–30 141
Leviticus 22.21–35 340
1 210 24.8 325
1.9 208 26.28–32 6
1.13 208 32.8 141
1.17 208 32.13 96
2.2 208 32.34–6 8
3 210 35.1–8 8
3.11 208 36 180
4 212
5.2–3 211 Deuteronomy
5.20–24 211 2.14 141
5.25–6 211 4.25–31 396
7.32 207 4.35 189, 322
8.6–9 344 4.39 322
12 212 5 53, 376
15.13–15 211 5.7–10 188
16 399 5.8 342
416 Index of Scriptures
5.11–18 198 19–25 297

6–26 302 20.17 200
6.4 183 21.10–14 177
6.4–9 197 22.28–9 179
6.5 300 23.15–16 150
6.10–15 198 23.18 210
7.1–5 45 24.1–4 399
7.1–8 198 25.5–10 180
7.2 200 26.1–11 297
7.9 395 26.14 338
7.9–10 197 27 43, 45, 48
7.12–15 198 27.1–10 44
9 341 27.2 47
10.15 197 27.2–3 46
10.17 189, 315 27.2–8 43, 46
10.17–18 190 27.4 45, 46, 47, 48, 63
11 43 27.4–5 44, 45, 46
11.13–28 45 27.4–8 46, 47
11.26–32 43 27.11–13 43, 45
11.29–30 46 27.12–13 7
11.30 46 28 198, 300
12 296–301, 307, 308, 310, 28.64–8 396
311, 312, 393 29.27–9 396
12–26 302, 304, 400 30.1–10 387, 396
12.5 297 30.11–14 405
12.13–14 297 30.15–20 198
12.13–15 400 31.10–13 399
13 196, 300 31.16–22 396
13.2–6 333 33.2 136
14.1 317 33.8 345
14.8 172 34.10 351
14.22–7 297
14.22–9 340 Joshua
14.24–6 400 2.10 200
15 150 3–4 90
15.1–6 400 5 47
15.19–20 400 5.1 47
15.19–23 297 5.6 96
16 305 5.13–15 90, 338
16.1–17 297 5.13–6.27 141
16.21–2 327 6–12 90
16.22 313 6.21 200
17.8–13 297 8 43, 47
18 345 8.1–29 141
18.1–8 297 8.26 200
18.10 345 8.30–32 43, 44, 47
18.10–11 317 8.30–35 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 296
8.33 43, 45 9 268

9 47, 90 9.4 296
9.1–2 47 9.46 296
9.27 297 11.24 189
10 351 12.8–15 96
10.1 200 13–21 303
10.5 141 13.1 96
10.12–13 90, 218 13.3 189
10.16–28 90 13.15–20 296
10.36–7 141 16.31 176
10.40 200 18 286
11.10 100 18.28 287
12.2 141 18.29 100
12.9 141 18.30 396
12.10 141 20.1 287
12.11 141
12.14 141 1 Samuel
13–22 303 1 177
13–24 90 1.1 179, 324
13.24–8 8 1.3–28 296
17.2 6 2.6 336
22.10–33 297 2.22 210
23 302 3.20 230, 287
23.13 396 4.4 337, 340
5 337
Judges 7 352
1.8 92 7.5–10 296
1.12–15 178 7.14 220
1.18 163 7.17 296
1.19 163 8.15–17 340
1.21 92, 163 9–31 215, 268
1.27–36 163 9.11 93
2 199 9.20 176
3.11 96 10.1 215
3.15 9 11.1–11 226
3.31 336 12 302
4–5 268 12.8 393
5 9, 281 12.25 396
5.4–5 136 13.1 222
5.20 337 13.19–21 243
5.30 177 14.3 344
5.31 96 14.31–5 296
6 62 14.37–43 344
6.7–10 62 14.41 61
6.11–22 340 14.50 201
6.19–24 296 15 200
8.28 96 15–16 199
15.3 200 3.2–5 176

15.5 229 3.3 96–7, 225
15.8 92 3.10 216, 230, 287
15.10–11 340 3.29 176
15.12 230 5 215, 282
15.32–3 92 5.1–3 215
15.35 93 5.1–5 215
16 186 5.4 96
16–1 Kings 2 215, 268 5.5 9, 96–7, 238, 251
17 91 5.5–10 226
17.25 176 5.6–9 92
17.54 92 5.6–10 215
18.7 255 5.11 225, 239
18.25–7 172 5.25 239
19–27 215 7 302
19.13 338 7.11–16 186
19.16 338 7.22 322
19.24 93 8 225, 256
21 92 8.1 226
21.11 219 8.1–14 218
22.1–2 185 8.3 223, 230, 257
22.2 220 8.3–8 225, 227
22.20 92 8.6 225
23.1–5 185, 220 8.8 225
23.1–6 344 8.9–10 225
23.9–13 344 8.12 92
25 201 8.13 230, 256, 257
25.2–8 220 8.13–14 228
25.43 201 8.14 225
27.2 219 8.16–18 218
27.8 92 10.1–2 226
27.8–12 197 10.1–5 226
28.6 344 10.6–19 218, 223
28.13 338 10.16 223
29.3–4 219 11–12 200
29.9 219 12 201
30.1 92 12.7b–8 200–201
30.7–8 344 12.8 201
30.26–31 185, 197 12.11 201
31 223, 281 12.14 62
31.11–13 226 12.14–23 201
12.26–31 218, 225
2 Samuel 13.12–13 178
1.18 218 13.37–38 225
2.1–4 215 14.4–7 186
2.4–7 226 14.9 176
2.8–9 222 15.7 96
15.7–8 329 6.1 44, 97, 98, 99

15.8 329 6.23–30 340
16.20–23 201 7.13–14 269
17.11 216, 230, 287 8 302
18.15 96–7 8.12–13 218
18.18 230 8.16 60
18.24–32 96–7 8.60 322
20.15 287 9.1–9 342
20.19 287 9.10–14 269
20.23–6 218 9.15 228, 232, 234, 235, 237,
21–4 303 239, 244, 251
21.19 91 9.15–19 218
22 347 9.16 227, 239
22.32 325 9.16–19 239
23.1–7 186 9.17–19 239
23.8–39 185 9.26 233, 277
24 202, 223 9.26–8 218
24.1 337 9.26–10.13 234
24.2 230, 287 10.11–12 218
24.5–8 223, 286, 287 10.26 269
24.13 198 10.28–9 218
24.15 230, 287 11 228
24.15–16 340 11.3 176
11.7 298
1 Kings 11.7–8 298
1–2 199 11.14–22 228
1–11 215, 236, 256, 269 11.23–5 227
1.15–21 186 11.42 96, 217, 251
2.10 338 11.43 338
2.39 227 12 216
3.2–4 298 12–13 83
3.4–15 269, 296 12.20–21 9
3.4–28 194 12.28–33 92
4–10 257 12.29 288–9, 292, 293
4.2–19 218 12.29–30 286
4.7–19 227–8 12.29–32 298
4.11 282 13.33–4 298
5–8 394 14.19 86
5.1 216, 228 14.22–4 298
5.1–32 228 14.23 298
5.5 228, 230, 287 14.25–6 85, 235
5.6 269 14.25–8 257
5.9–14 194 14.29 86
5.15 239 15.7 86
5.22–5 269 15.13 325, 327, 330
5.26 269 15.14 298
5.32 269 15.16–22 83, 268, 293
15.20 287, 292 10 92

15.23 86 10.18–28 268
15.31 86 10.29 286, 293
16 246, 269, 287 10.32–3 257, 284
16–22 292 11 186
16–2 Kings 10 281, 293 12 35
16.23 96 12.4 298
16.23–4 249, 266 12.18–19 284, 295
16.24 251 13 285, 292
16.27 281 13.3 251, 284
16.29 96, 272 13.10 272
16.31 267 13.14 272
16.32 268 13.14–19 92
16.33 268, 327, 330 13.15–19 292
18 333–4 13.24–5 85, 285, 292, 293
18.18 176 14.1–6 298
18.19 325 14.4 298
18.20–40 296 14.7 256
18.39 322 14.8–14 282
19.15 284 14.15 87
20 292 14.18 87
20.34 292 14.23–5 285
21.27–9 292 14.25–6 350
22 86, 282 14.28 87
22.1–40 282 15.1–7 310
22.4 282 15.1–38 96
22.29–38 292 15.4 298
22.40 292 15.6 82
22.44 298 15.11 82
15.19–20 272, 273
2 Kings 15.29 273, 288, 293–4
1 86, 268 15.30 273
1.17 96 15.35 298
2 83, 94 16 273
2.19–22 351 16.1–4 298
3.1 96 16.4 298
3.4–27 282 16.10–18 208
4.32–7 353 17 302
4.32–44 351 17.3–6 274
4.42–4 93 17.4 274
6.1–7 351 17.7–18 199
8.7–15 284 17.9–12 298
8.18 282 17.21–3 299
8.26 282 17.24–41 374
8.28 282 17.29–34 287
9–10 199, 284 18 41, 48
9.14–28 284, 295 18.3–4 299
18.4 298 3.19 7

18.5 299, 300 10–29 215
18.7 275, 299 18.1 226
18.9–12 274 20.1 206
18.13–16 41, 50, 51, 85, 276, 299 20.5 91
18.14 42, 50 21 223
18.14–16 276 21.1 337
18.17 42, 299 21.2 230, 287
18.17–19.37 41, 42, 275, 276, 299 25.2 332
18.22 298 27.24 86
19.9 278 29.29 86
20.1–11 352
20.10 94 2 Chronicles
20.20 86 1–9 215
21.1 88, 277 5.13–14 340
21.3 298 6.5–6 60
21.3–15 277 8.4 239
21.7 325 11.5–10 275
21.16 277 11.5–12 218
21.19 88 17.6 298
22–3 208 18 282
22.1 88, 186 20.33 298
22.3–11 299 25.11 206
22.8 299 30 306
23.1–24 300 30.5 230, 287
23.4 325 32.1–23 275
23.5 298 33.1 277
23.7 210 33.10–13 278
23.8–9 298 33.13 322
23.13 298 35.20–25 279
23.25 300 36 361, 383
23.26 303 36.22–3 377
23.26–7 199
23.29 279 Ezra
24 97, 98, 279 1 382, 383, 384
24–5 85, 361 1–6 379, 383, 390
24.7 279, 306 1.2 368
24.10–17 85 1.2–4 377
24.12 97 2 379
24.17 280 2.1 377, 378
25 280, 303 2.2 378
25.12 362 2.64 377
25.22–6 366 3–6 383
3.2 7, 378
1 Chronicles 4 382
2.1–2 9 4.4–5 378
3.1–9 179 4.8–6.18 383
4.17–22 378 12 381

5–6 380–1 12–13 381
5.2 378 12.26 378
5.11–12 368 13 378, 381
6 380, 382, 383, 384 13.4 379
6.2–5 377 13.6 380
6.6–15 378 13.7 379
6.9–10 368 13.28 387
6.12 385
6.15 379, 380, 382 Job
7 382, 383 1–2 187, 337
7–10 381 19.25–6 336
7.1–6 381 26.5–13 334
7.12–26 378, 383 38.7 337
7.21 368
7.23 368 Psalms
7.25–6 378, 385 2 195
10.6 379 5 340
10.10 381 14 321–2
10.16 381 14.1 322
18 333, 341, 347
Nehemiah 20 334, 335, 391
1–6 378, 381 22 357
1.4 368 23 79
1.5 368, 395 23.1 79
2 382 24 204–5, 206
2.1–8 378 24.7 204
2.4 368 24.7–10 205
2.10 389 24.9 204
2.20 368 29 333
3.7 366 29.1 189, 325
3.15 366 29.10 184
3.19 366 34 92
5 386 37.4 197
5.1–19 386 42–83 206
5.14 378, 380 44 365, 366
7 379 44.18–27 365–6
7.6 377 46 205
7.65 345 48 205–6
7.66 377 53 321–2
8 399 53.1 322
8–10 381 74.12–17 187, 334
8.1 381 76 205
8.4 381 82 187, 348
8.9 378 87 205
10 381 89 194–5
10.32–33 386 89.20–23 194
90.4 341 6.2–3 189

97 340 8.8 325
97.10 197 8.10 325
104 130 8.19–20 317
106.28 317 9.1–6 193
110 195 10.20–22 387
126.1 377 11.1–12 194
134 342 11.11–16 387
135.21 329 11.13–16 194
136.26 368 14.9–20 336
137 359–60, 361 15–16 194
139 341 19.19 327
144 316 20.1 274
25 336
Proverbs 25.7–8 336
1.1 194 26.19 336
3.18 332 27.1 189
5.18–19 318 31.4 337
6.16–19 318 34 194
8 332 34.2 200
8.1–21 332 34.4 337
8.22–31 332 34.5 200
11.22 318 36–7 275
16.10–15 319 37.11 200
22–4 130 38.10–12 336
24.21–2 319 40–66 396
25.1 194 43.28 200
25.2–7 319 44.7–8 353
26.11 319 44.9–20 342
26.14 318 44.23–8 9
31.1–9 319 44.28–45.2 384
31.24 3 45.5 189
31.10–31 180 45.5–7 322
51.9–10 336
Ecclesiastes 52.13–53.12 336
3.18–21 320 57.6–9 318
6.3 321 58 53
8.2–4 319 60 194
9.2–3a 320 61 193
10.20 319 61–62 195
65.4 318
Isaiah 65.9 9
1.7–8 275
2.1–4 194 Jeremiah
2.3 193, 326 1.1 337, 350
5.14 336 2.27 327
6 340, 342 4.11 364
4.15 286, 288 50.21 200

6.6 337 50.26 200
6.26 364 51.3 200
7.9 333 51.44 348
7.18 330 52 85, 280, 361
8.8–12 363–4
8.16 286, 288 Ezekiel
8.19 364 1 340
8.21 364 8–11 361
8.22 364 10.5 325
8.23 364 16.3 2
9.6 364 20.25–6 212
9.23 197 21.8 198
10.4–11 63 26–8 355
11.13 318 27.17 266–7
14.17 364 29.17–20 355
15.4 303 32.17–32 336
19.5 212 34 199
22.3–5 349 37.1–14 336
22.18–19 338 37.24–8 193
23.3 387 40–48 390
24 361
24.1 85, 280 Daniel
25.9 200 2.18–19 368
25.11 377 2.37 368
26 350 2.44 368
26.3 340 4 401
26.17–19 354 5 367
27.20 85, 280 7–12 355
29 362 9.4 395
29.10 377 9.20–23 340
36 350 11.40–45 356
38 350 12 356
39 280 12.2 336
39–41 85
39.10 362 Hosea
40.1–41.16 366 2 333
44 330 4–5 199
46.2 279 4.14 210
46.13–24 355 6.2 336
47.4 145 6.6 211
48.7 348 8 348
48.13 348 10.14 274
49.1 348 11.1 197
49.3 348 13.14 336
49.35 347
49.39 347 Joel
50.2 348 4.16 329
Amos Malachi
1.1 350 1–3 348
1.2 329, 350
1.4 285 APOCRYPHA
3–4 199 Sirach
5.10–12 350 24 332
5.27 337 44–50 33
6.1–8 266 44.1–50.24 403
6.2 285 44.17 184
7.10–13 350
7.10–17 350 2 Maccabees
8.14 286, 287 1.18 380
9.7 145
9.11–15 396 NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew
Jonah 1.1–17 7
1.9 368 1.2–16 179
1.18–25 195
Micah 1.20 340
3.9–12 354 3.16–4.11 195
4.1–3 194 5.17–48 198
4.2 193, 326 18.20 183
4.5 188 21.1–11 195
6.6–8 211 28.2 340
6.8 197 28.19 183
Habakkuk Mark
2.18–20 342 2.26 92
3.3 136 6.32–52 352
3.5 337 6.35–44 93
12.18–27 321
Zephaniah 15 357
2 198
Luke
Haggai 1.1–4 80
1 199, 386 2.13–14 337–8
2.3 378 3.23–38 7
2.11–13 323 4.14–30 195
2.20–23 386, 388 7.11–17 352
15.11–32 79
Zechariah 24.26–7 357
3.1 337
3.1–5 189 John
9 195 1.1–5 332
10.2 338 1.14 332
14 198 4.1–26 93
Acts 1 Timothy
1.1 81 6.1–2 150
2.32–6 195
16.10–16 81 Hebrews
20.5–16 81 1–2 187–8
21.1–18 81 3–10 212
27.1–28.16 81 11 33
Romans 1 Peter
1.2 357 1.10–12 357
1 Corinthians 2 Peter
7.21–2 150 3.8 341
8.5–6 189
10.20–21 189 Revelation
15.3–4 357 1.1–3 356
19.9–10 189
Galatians 22 356
3.28 150 22.8–9 189
Index
Abraham 4, 6, 135, 140 Artaxerxes I 370, 378, 380, 382

Achoris 370, 373, 380 Artaxerxes II 370, 373, 378, 380, 382
Adad-nirari III 89, 203, 207, 272, 285 Artaxerxes III 371, 373, 382
afterlife see life after death Asa 83, 96, 268
Ahab 262, 267–8, 272, 281, 283, 295 Ashdod 12, 158, 219, 240, 242, 244, 274,
Ahaz see Jehoahaz I of Judah 366, 387
Ahaziah of Israel 262 Asher 8, 175, 228
Ahaziah of Judah 284 Asherah 210, 324, 325–32, 340, 375
Ai 118, 141, 176 Ashkelon 12, 120, 138–9, 158, 242, 274,
Akhenaten 124, 126, 130–1 275, 277, 343, 362
Aleppo 189, 348–50 Ashtoreth see Astarte
Alexander the Great 368, 371, 373 Ashur (city) 10, 113, 114, 115, 278
alphabet (invention of) 113, 118 Ashur (god) 89, 189, 190, 203, 270, 347
Amalekites 92, 200, 223, 225, 229 Ashurbanipal 276, 278, 300–1, 302
Amarna archives 130–1, 133, 220 Assyria 10, 89–90, 98, 127, 233, 261–2,
Amaziah 298 263, 300
Amenophis II 125 conquest of Judah 41–2, 50–2, 275–6,
Amenophis IV see Akhenaten 299, 308, 311
Ammon 15, 223, 225, 226, 229, 256, 261, empire 114–15, 203, 270–80, 300–1,
266, 270, 387, 389 305–6, 362
Amos 350 invasion of Canaan 89, 261, 270–80,
Anat 331, 336–7, 391–2 283–5, 288, 293, 343
ancestor worship 109–10, 317–18, 324, 338 religion of 89, 190, 199, 203, 343, 346,
angels 187, 188–9, 322, 324, 355 347, 348
Antiochus IV 356 Astarte 331, 337
‘apiru 134, 136–7, 220 Atalya (or Athaliah?) 273–4
apocalyptic 356 Athaliah 284
Arad 13, 56, 118, 235–6, 243, 251, 308, Australopithecus 106
373 Avaris 11, 116–17, 121, 123, 127
(non)destruction of 41, 141, 248–9, 275, Azariah 310
310–11 Azitiwada 197
see also temple of Arad
Aram of Damascus see Damascus Baal 189–91, 195, 197, 203–6, 268, 332–6
Arameans 15, 146, 225, 227, 229, 261, 287, related to El 324–6
296 related to Yahweh 204–6, 333–5, 337
Arnon River 15, 229, 282 Baasha 83, 268, 281
428 Index
Babylon 10, 11, 113–15, 263, 355, 370 chronology (archaeological) 15–19,
empire 85, 97, 261, 270, 279–80, 362, 38–9, 97–9, 245–51, 260 see also
367, 371–2 radiocarbon (carbon–14) dating
religion of 187, 190, 192–3, 199, 208, chronology (biblical) 18–19, 44, 95–101,
320 141, 217, 376–86
Babylonian exile 359–67, 378, 387, 389, city gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer
394–6 228, 232, 234–7, 239, 244–5, 251
Bar Hadad 284–5 conquest (Joshua’s) 89–90, 95–103, 168,
Bashan 15, 229 200, 302
Beer-sheba 13, 41, 140–1, 243, 275, copper trade 18, 111, 120, 122, 133, 233,
373 see also ‘from Dan as far as 242–4
Beer-sheba’ (biblical cliché); temple of core-periphery economy 265–9
Beer-sheba Covenant Code 400
Bel-shar-usur 367 cuneiform 49, 113, 118
Ben-hadad see Bar Hadad Cyrus II 367–8, 377–8, 382, 383–4, 385,
Benjamin 8–9, 13, 165, 178, 222, 226, 262, 386
371 Cyrus the Younger 370
Bes 331, 338–9
beth ’ab 176–80 Dagan 189, 337, 348, 355
Bethel (city) 13, 165, 176, 306, 334–5, 350, Damascus 13, 15, 125, 146, 225, 229, 256,
391 272–3
golden calf at 298–9 in the ninth century 242, 272, 283–5
Bethel (god) 335, 391 see also Hazael
Bethlehem 13, 371 Dan (city) 8, 13, 118, 120, 226, 229,
Beth-rehob 225, 229, 256, 283 286–96
Beth-shean 13, 120, 222–3, 226, 229, golden calf at 288–9, 291, 298–9
234 see also ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’
Beth-shemesh 275, 337 (biblical cliché)
Bible 19–22, 95, 359, 363–6, 394–405 Dan (eponym) 8, 286
and archaeology 40–8 Darius I 368–9, 378, 379–80, 382, 386
as artifact of privilege 53–4, 361 Darius II 370, 378, 380, 386
and folklore 94, 146, 268–9, 281 Darius III 371
as history 78–103 Darwin, Charles 105–6
bichrome pottery 156, 159, 160, 161 David 217, 218, 219, 237, 250–1, 255–8,
Bit Humri see Omri (dynasty) 268, 382
‘blame the victim’ (doctrine) 198–200, 202, biblical stories about 62, 91, 197, 200–1,
363–4 215, 220, 221, 222
Byblos 10, 116, 117–18, 120, 146, 265 possible extent of power 223–7, 228,
229, 230, 232–6, 238–9
Cambyses II 368, 391 see also Tel Dan Inscription
Carchemish 125, 146, 154, 279 Day Books 82, 84, 87–8
Carmel (Mount) 12, 13, 125, 156, 159, 160, Days of Awe 211
207 Dead Sea 13, 15, 107, 108
Chalcolithic era 18, 111–12, 117 Dead Sea Scrolls 56, 58–64, 357, 374,
Chemosh 189, 199 401–2, 404
cherubim 340 Deir Allah 55, 158, 325
chronicles (Mesopotamian) 83–8, 274 Demetrius the Chronographer 404
Index 429
deportation (policies of) 261, 361–2, 395–6 ‘from Dan as far as Beer-sheba’ (biblical
Deuteronomic Code 400 cliché) 216, 228, 230, 237, 246, 256,
Deuteronomistic Historian(s) 296–312 287, 294
Dibon 282
Diodorus of Sicily 48, 393 Gad 8–9, 175
divination 342–5 Galilee (region) 13, 132, 164, 165, 174,
Dor 12, 120, 228, 229, 230, 282–3, 366 178, 228, 282
Galilee Lake 13, 15, 107, 139, 225, 229
Ea 204 Gath 13, 146, 219, 226, 240, 241, 242, 275,
Ebal (Mount) 42–8 285
Ecclesiastes (Babylonian) 320 Gaza 12, 138, 146, 229, 242, 274, 276, 362
Ecclesiastes (book of) see Qoheleth Gerizim (Mount) 42–7, 63, 374, 390, 394
Edom 15, 134–6, 225, 228, 242–3, 256, 266 see also temple of Gerizim
Egypt 10–11, 87, 115–17, 154–5, 278, 334 Geshur 225, 229
during Late Bronze Age 123–37 Gezer 13, 56, 138–9, 158, 227, 239, 240,
opposing Babylon 279–80 241, 242, 275 see also city gates at
under Persian rule 368, 370–1, 372–3 Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer
see also Elephantine; Merneptah; Gilead 6–7, 9, 15, 222, 228, 229, 256, 282
Sheshonq I gods 323–40
Ekron 13, 146, 158, 173, 220, 226, 240, ancestral 109–10, 317–18, 324, 338
241, 242 construction of 135, 182–4, 315–17, 323,
and Hezekiah 274–5 331, 340–2
in the seventh century 190, 277, 279, Egyptian 101, 103, 130–2, 154, 334
325–6 ethics of 196–202, 211–12, 320–1
El 136, 170, 189, 324–5, 332 images of 108–9, 288–90, 298–9,
Elephantine 11, 115, 389, 391–3, 398 326–32, 341–2
Elijah 333 Mesopotamian 89, 187, 192–3, 203, 204,
Elisha 93, 351, 352–3 363, 367–8
El-Shaddai 135–6, 325 patron 186–96, 202–13, 323, 346–51,
Ephraim (eponym) 7, 13 368
Ephraim (region) 13, 165, 178, 222 tales about 67, 69, 74, 83, 101, 323
eponymic legend 4–8, 67 Golah 362–3, 378, 387, 394
Esarhaddon 276, 278, 300, 343
Eshmun 189 Hadad 189, 291, 292, 332
ethnic identity 4, 147–57, 170–6, 362–3, Hadadezer of Damascus 284
389, 403 Halakhah 405
Euphrates 10, 125, 223, 228, 343, 369 Hamath 10–11, 225, 229, 272, 274, 283,
Eupolemus 404 285
exodus from Egypt 95–103, 117, 135, Hammurabi 50, 114, 192–4
163–4, 351–2 Hatshepsut 124–5
exile see Babylonian exile Hatti 10, 122, 124, 126–7, 129, 138, 145
Ezekiel 355 Hazael 251, 257, 281, 284–5, 293, 294
Ezion-geber 233, 277 Hazor 13, 100, 120, 121, 132, 263, 282–3,
Ezra 378–9, 379–80, 381–3, 385, 387, 389 285 see also city gates at Hazor,
Megiddo, and Gezer
folklore 4, 67, 90–4, 99–100, 219–20, 318 Hebron 13, 141, 226, 229, 238, 242, 329
Four-Room House 172–5, 177 Hecataeus of Abdera 393–4
430 Index
Hecataeus of Miletus 66–7, 70, 73, 74, 80, Jehoshaphat 96

93, 99 Jehu 92, 283–4, 285, 295
henotheism 188–9, 213, 315, 316, 322, Jeremiah 337, 347, 349, 350, 355, 356, 363
348, 375 Jericho 15, 110, 141, 337
herem 200 Jeroboam I 92, 268, 281, 288, 292, 293,
Hermon (Mount) 13, 15 299
Herodotus of Halicarnassus 67, 69–70, Jeroboam II 285
74–6, 80, 82–3, 90, 99–100 Jerusalem 10–11, 13, 257–8, 311–12, 337,
Heshbon 141 386
Hesiod 74 archaeology of 121, 236, 237–8, 240–2,
Hezekiah 50–2, 275–6, 296, 299–301, 263, 305–6
304–11 as capital 215–16, 226–8, 231, 234,
hieroglyphs 113, 118 244–5, 262
High Chronology 245–51, 254 capture of 52, 85, 92, 235, 275–6, 279
highland villages 164–81, 227 destruction of 280, 310, 359–66
Hiram 225, 295 epigraphs from or near 324, 330, 394–5
Hirsi Ali, Ayaan 178–80 Persian era 371–5, 377, 380–1
historia 66–78, 80–3, 90, 95, 115 symbol 194, 204–6, 326, 376, 382, 384,
history 23–4, 48, 71, 95, 100, 163 387
types of 24–33, 80, 88, 90, 313 vassal city 132, 273–4, 277, 282, 284
Hittite Wars 127 writings from 87, 193, 281, 288, 296,
Holiness Code 400 387, 394–6
Holy Spirit 326 see also temple of Jerusalem
Homer 73, 75–6, 77 Jeshua 378–9, 383
Homo erectus 106–7 Jesus ben Sira 403–4
Horus (hymn to) 334–5 Jesus Christ 107, 150
Hosea 333 as angel 187
Hoshea 273 as gnostic revealer 151
House of David 262, 295 predictions about 356–7, 405
House of Omri see Omri (dynasty) as shaman 93, 352
Huldah 300 traditions about 7, 16, 79, 81, 82, 212
Huleh Lake 13, 121 as wisdom 332
Hurrians 114, 122, 124–5 Jezebel 267, 281
Hurrian Wars 125 Joash of Israel 92, 272, 285, 293
Hyksos Dynasty 116–17, 120, 121, 123 John Hyrcanus 374
John of Patmos 188, 355
Isaiah 340, 356, 382 Joram of Israel see Jehoram of Israel
Ishtar 89, 190, 331, 348, 353 Jordan River 12–13, 15, 46, 107, 121
Issachar (eponym) 175 Joseph (eponym) 7, 9, 13, 117
Josephus 48, 117, 404
Jabbok River 15, 222, 229 Joshua 44, 46, 90, 97–8, 338, 351, 393
Jabesh-gilead 222, 226, 229 Josiah 208, 210, 279, 299–301, 306, 311
Jehoahaz I of Judah 273, 298 Jubilees 404
Jehoash of Israel see Joash of Israel Judah 8–9, 13, 165, 175, 178, 257–8, 262,
Jehoiachin 97–8 277
Jehoram of Israel 96, 262, 295 archaeology of 165, 171, 237–8, 241,
Jehoram of Judah 96, 295 275, 308–12, 327
Index 431
and Assyria 41, 50–2, 273–7, 305 mayors (Canaanite) 132–3, 137
and Babylon 97–8, 279–80, 306, 360–1, Megiddo 9, 13, 118, 120, 125, 229, 282,
362 285
in Persian era 360–3, 366–7, 371–6, Josiah’s execution 279, 300
376–86, 386–94 see also Yehud relation to Samaria 249–50
kingdom of 215, 226, 228, 229, 239, Sheshonq’s stela 248–9, 251
244–5, 269–70 see also city gates at Hazor, Megiddo,
literature of 82, 86–7, 96, 205, 282, and Gezer
298–301, 360–1 Melqart 189
prophets of 199, 270, 318, 349, 350, Memphis 11, 116, 278
363–4 Menahem 273
vassal of Israel 262, 269–70, 282, 284 Merenptah see Merneptah
Merneptah 129, 143, 160, 175, 268
Kadesh (in Syria) 124, 125, 127 and Iron Age I villages 147, 163, 167–8,
Kadesh-Barnea (in the Negev) 141, 276–7 170–1
Ketef Hinnom 394–5 stela 137–42
Kuntillet ‘Ajrud 324, 326, 327, 329, 330, Mesha 199, 200, 281–2
331–2 Mesolithic era 18, 107–8
Messiah 193, 384
Lachish 13, 158, 159–60, 207, 242, 244, Micah 188
263, 373, 375 Middle Chronology 252, 254
destruction of 41–2, 50–1, 275, 299 Midian 6, 233
epigraphs from 56, 207, 275 Migdol 279
see also temple of Lachish mishpachah 178
Lady of Byblos 189 Mitanni 114–15, 122, 124–5, 126, 127
Lake Lisan 107 Mizpah 280, 327, 366, 371, 372–3
Levi 7–8, 9 Moab 15, 225, 229, 244, 256, 261, 266,
Libyan Wars 129 270, 387
life after death 320–1, 336 Moabite stela 199, 281–2
literacy 52–4, 77, 241, 263–5, 307, 319, money 120–1, 186, 207, 354, 369, 375
321 monochrome pottery 156, 157–61
Low Chronology 245–51, 253–4 monolatry 188–9, 316–7, 375
Luke (Gospel of) 80–2, 90 monotheism 130–1, 188, 189, 321–2, 348,
375
Maacah 225, 229, 256 Moses 63, 100, 135, 390
magic 344, 351–3 exodus story 97–103, 117, 181, 211
Makkedah 374, 375 Torah of 302, 385, 386, 398–9, 400, 404
Manasseh (eponym) 6–7, 178 traditions about 79, 351–2, 387, 393–4,
Manasseh (king) 276, 277–8, 311 404
Manasseh (region) 13, 165, 178, 222 Mot 334, 336, 337
Manetho 115
Marduk 187, 189, 192–3, 199, 363, 367–8 Nabonidus 190, 208, 367
Marduk-apla-iddina II 199 Nabopolassar 279
Mari 114, 204 Nahum 278
prophecy at 345, 346, 348–50, 355 Naphtali 8, 178, 228, 282
Mark (Gospel of) 81, 92, 357 Natufian culture 107–8
Masos (Tel) 13, 243 natural selection 105
432 Index
Nebuchadnezzar II 279–80, 310, 367, 377, Philo of Alexandria 404

387, 394 Phoenicia 12, 146, 265–7, 269, 281
Neco II 279, 300, 369 Polybius 67, 70
Negev 13, 41, 107, 134, 287–8, 370, 372 pottery typology 38–9, 41, 42, 253, 310
trade-route oasis 324, 326, 327, 329, 330, Philistine 156, 157–61
331–2 red-slip, hand-burnished 235, 238, 245,
copper trade 122, 233, 243 246–51, 254
see also Arad Tel Dan 288–9, 292–3, 294
Nehemiah 378–83, 386, 388–9, 391 Priestly (or P) writings 396
Neo-Assyrians see Assyria priests 332, 346, 357, 390, 391, 392
Neo-Babylonians see Babylon biblical 7–8, 354, 364, 378–9, 381, 387,
Neo-Hittite(s) see Hatti 389
Neolithic era 18, 107–10 as bureaucrats 192, 206–7, 208, 233, 350
Nepherites 370 as diviners 85, 343–5
New Kingdom 123–9, 134 as educated elites 53, 323
Nile 10, 115–16, 143, 369 royal 203, 207–8, 277
Nineveh 10, 50–1, 52, 278, 343 prophets 53, 215, 284, 342, 345–6, 346–51
Nubia 116, 124–5, 143, 154 biblical 62, 195, 199, 200, 270, 278,
363–5
Omri (dynasty) 199, 246, 257, 262, 281–4, as fortunetellers 300, 353–7, 404–5
287, 293 as miracle workers 351–3
Omri (king) 96, 199, 249, 251, 269 Propliopithecus 106
Oral Torah see Halakhah prostitution 210
Orontes 10, 124 provenance 34–5, 55
ostraca 49–50 Psammetichus I 279
examples 56, 263, 293, 324, 327, 374, Psammetichus II 280
391 Pul see Tiglath-pileser III
Paleolithic era 18, 107, 182 Qoheleth 20, 320–1, 376

Passover 181, 300, 392 Qos 189
patron-client relationships 185–86, 197–8, Queen of the Sky 330–1
200–1, 220, 271, 273 Qumran 15, 58–64
patron gods see gods
Peace of Egypt 126 Rabbah 225, 226
Pekah 273 Rabbinic Judaism 387, 405
Peleset see Philistines radiocarbon (carbon–14) dating 17, 252–4
Per-Ramesses 11, 99, 127 Rameses (city) see Per-Ramesses
Persia 366–71, 372, 373 Ramesses II 99, 127–9, 132, 163
pesharîm 357, 404–5 Ramesses III 154–5, 157–8, 160, 161
Philistia 12, 172, 242, 261, 265, 266, 273 red-slip, hand-burnished pottery see pottery
Philistines 4, 129, 144–5, 154–63, 256, 286 typology
in Hebrew literature 140, 145, 172, 215, Rehoboam 216, 268
219–29, 284, 337 Rehov (Tel) 173, 253
political entity 238, 241, 242, 243–4, Rephaim 145, 338
245, 280, 366 Resheph 337
see also Ashdod; Ashkelon; Ekron; Gath; revelation 94, 193, 208, 342–53, 355–6,
Gaza 364 see also theophany
Index 433
Reworked Pentateuch 404 Shabaka 278

Rosh Hashanah 180–1, 211 Shaddai gods 325
Royal Annals 50–1, 88–9 Shahar 337
Shalem 337
Sabbath 391 Shalmaneser III 271–2, 283–5
sacrifice 42, 45, 202–3, 207–12, 320, 384, Shalmaneser V 273–4
390 Shamash 89, 190, 193, 196, 337, 343,
centralization of 297–8, 393, 400 346–7
for divination 343–4, 345 shasu 134–6, 168, 170
Samaria 13, 258, 263, 265, 306, 330, 374 shebet 178
archaeology of 249–50, 251, 367 Shechem 13, 42–6, 121, 132, 263, 274, 306
and Assyria 272, 273–4, 305, 329 Shekhinah 326
Jehu dynasty 272, 283–4, 324, 350 Shema (Deut. 6.4) 329
Omri dynasty 257, 262, 266–7, 269–70, Shemesh see Shamash
281–2, 327 Sheol 336
in Persian era 367, 374, 387, 389–90, Shephelah 13, 159, 223, 227, 241, 242,
392, 394, 398 245, 263
Samuel 93, 200, 215, 302, 338 attacked by Sennacherib 41, 275–6
Sanballat 387, 389–91, 392 in Persian era 366–7, 370, 374, 375
Sargon II 199, 273–4, 278, 305 Sheshonq I 235–7, 245–51, 254, 257
Satan 337 Shishak see Sheshonq I
Saul 218, 219, 251, 255–8, 268, 281 Sidon 12, 146, 265–7, 275, 283–4, 369
biblical stories about 61, 93, 200, 201, Simeon (eponym) 9, 175
215, 221 Sin (god) 89, 368
possible extent of power 222–3, 226–7, sin (human condition) 181, 190, 198–200,
228, 229 211–12
scribes 52–3, 281, 319–22, 346, 362–3, 375 Solomon 217, 218, 246, 249, 250–1, 257,
and biblical anthology 57–8, 103, 136, 268
218, 230, 394–405 biblical stories about 215, 222, 260, 269,
disinterest in history, 95, 260, 272, 359, 277, 376, 394
376, 385, 396–7 possible extent of power 227–9, 232–36,
and folklore 90–4, 257, 260, 269, 278, 237, 238–9, 244
323, 365 Sukkoth 181, 211
linguistic characteristics of 55, 56, 113, synagogues 54, 203, 399
118, 139
manipulation of sources 6, 8, 46, 48, Tacitus 48, 72
86–7, 96, 97, 100, 206 Taharqa 278
methods of 59–64, 84, 200, 287–8, Talmud 79, 377, 405
334–5, 347 Tel Dan Inscription 262, 290–2, 294–5
viewpoint of, 140–1, 221, 225–6, 228, Teman 136, 329–30
289, 318 temple
see also Deuteronomistic Historian(s) of Arad 308, 310–11, 313, 327
Sea of Galilee see Galilee Lake of Beer-sheba 308–9
Seir 136 of Gerizim 374–5, 390, 394
Sennacherib 41–2, 50–2, 275–6, 306–8, of Jerusalem 298–300, 304, 327, 348,
310, 311 377, 378–9, 390–4
seraphim 322, 340 of Lachish 308, 311
434 Index
of Yahu (Elephantine) 391–3 wisdom 318

of Yahu (Makkedah) 374 divinely revealed 193, 324, 331, 332, 364
temple centralization 296–301, 304–12 Wisdom Literature 83, 88
Temple Scroll 404 women (legal status of) 176, 178–80, 186,
teraphim 338 200–1, 318, 344, 364
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs 404
textual research 48–58, 60–4, 218 Xerxes 369–70
examples 206, 226, 334–5, 336, 395–6,
401–2 Yabneh Yam 276
Thebes 11, 123, 137, 278 Yahu 134–5, 136, 374, 389, 391, 392 see
theophany 342 see also revelation also Yahweh
theophoric names 100, 130, 135–6, 267–8, Yahweh 92, 101, 316, 329, 347, 368, 375,
293 387, 405
Thucydides 67, 70, 81 and Asherah 329–32
Thutmoses III 98, 100, 124–5, 126 divine patron 189–90, 193–6, 204–6,
Thutmoses IV 125 326, 337–8, 340
Tiglath-pileser III 272–3, 274, 276, 288, ethics of 197–8, 199, 200–1, 278
293, 296 myth of origins 136, 140
Tirhakah see Taharqa and prophecy 347–50, 352, 353–5,
Tirzah 13, 263 363–5, 384
tithes 207 related to Baal 333–6
Tob 225, 229, 256 related to El 135–6
Tobiah of Ammon 389 ritual observances 181, 188, 210, 296–9,
Torah 198, 323, 385, 399, 405 344, 395, 400
audience for 53, 54, 387, 401, 404 see also temple
details within 344, 386, 396, 400–1 Yamm, 334, 336
evolution of 63, 198, 326, 374, 386, 394, Yapa (or Yaba?) 273–4
396, 399 Yarmuk River 15, 282
myth of origins 79, 193, 198, 299–300, Yedaniah 391, 392
302, 332, 381 Yehud 85, 371–3, 375, 377 see also Judah
Trojan War 69, 100 Yerach 337
Tyre 12, 146, 227, 239, 265, 283, 295, 355 Yom Kippur 181, 211, 398–9
Ugarit 10, 125, 144, 154, 158 Zakkur, 189, 195, 285
gods of 324, 326, 333, 334, 336, 337, Zerubbabel 7, 378, 379, 380, 381, 383
338 Zion, 205–6, 275, 321, 329
religion of 203–5, 207, 210, 211, 323, in biblical poetry 196, 205, 354, 360,
344 377
Unleavened Bread 181, 392 Zobah 225, 227, 229, 256

Canaan and Israel in Antiquity - K. L - Noll

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50 Bedford Square 175 Fifth Avenue

First published 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, NR21 8NN

The Debate over High and Low Chronologies 245

Varieties of Judaism in the Persian Era 386

Index of Modern Authors 409

Figure 1. The rugged terrain of Judah, south of Jerusalem. 5

Figure 21. Artistic styles on this Philistine bichrome vessel,

Figure 39. Neo-Assyrian Emperor Ashurbanipal (668–627 bce),

Canaan and Israel: An Overview

1 For extensive bibliography related to these controversies, consult K. L. Noll,

2 The phrase ‘Canaanite cultural sphere’ is from N. Wyatt, ‘Royal Religion in

3 For a succinct description of the dynamics involved in using genealogy to construct

Figure 1. The rugged terrain of Judah, south of Jerusalem

because the people involved are related biologically, although subse-

eponyms had altered their relationships. After several thousand years,

‘grandsons’. Biblical scribes explained this anomaly by claiming that

with this hypothesis. For centuries, the regions of Benjamin and

6 For example, P. R. Davies, The Origins of Biblical Israel (London: T&T

The Geography of the Ancient Near East and Canaan

Figure 2. The ancient Near East

as it reaches the Mediterranean Sea. Lower Egypt was divided from

Figure 3. Four zones

Zone 2. The Cisjordan Highlands. The geological backbone of

Figure 4. Ancient Palestine

Chronology of Ancient Canaan

all the names of our days: Tiw(5Mars)-day, Woden(5Mercury)-day,

NAME OF ERA DATES (bce)

the Neo-Babylonian era is sometimes called the Exilic Period by Bible

A Word about the Bible

7 K. L. Noll, ‘The Evolution of Genre in the Hebrew Anthology’, in C. A. Evans

Figure 6. Three modern Bibles

versions of the Bible emerged. Several of these alternatives have

Suggested Additional R eading

Common Bible Translations

Differing Definitions of ‘History’

1 For my purposes, a definition is a working hypothesis that enhances one’s ability

an entirely different form of history. The academic journal usually

Three Types of Academic History

Among academic historians, there are at least three types of histories,

trains. During his career, popular accounts in newspapers and fictional

a religious community but will refrain from believing those religious

Figure 7. ‘Belonging to Shema, slave of Jeroboam’. Artifacts from the past

field bounded at one end by a dirt road. According to the veterans,

Ideological history can be good history or bad history. At its best,

reader can be misled. Consider an example from Libya during the

8 J. Davis, ‘The Social Relations of the Production of History’, in E. Tonkin, M.

interpretations of the Bible tend to transform elements of an ancient,

Tools for Study of the Ancient Past

10 M. Oakeshott, ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’, in Rationalism in Politics

grounded in a particular social context. Out of that context, they become

11 Y. Goren et al., ‘Authenticity Examination of the Jehoash Inscription’, Tel

can perform tests such as petrography and neutron activation analysis.

Figure 8. Sample stratigraphy

gathered in a systematic way, they provide a statistically valid data-set

13 For discussion of method, see M. Broshi and I. Finkelstein, ‘The Population

pottery typology. This is the study of pottery style aimed at determining

a three-stage process. The historian first examines data and, second,