Archaeology, History, and Identity Formation of Ancient Israel - Čapek (2024) (original) (raw)
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Archaeology and Ancient Israel
2008
Anyone who reads a book written in the past can expect some help in understanding it from study of the time when it was written, help that may come from other written works or from material remains of the age. When the book in question belongs to a particularly remote or little known age, the study of its context may also indicate how good a representative of its time it is, and how trustworthy its statements may be. That is to say, something may be revealed about its authenticity and reliability. With the Old Testament help of this sort can come from archaeological discoveries in Palestine and the neighbouring lands, and from written documents of the Old Testament period. The purpose of this paper is to consider four areas of discovery that relate to the history of Israel. Before turning to them, it is important to comment on how difficult the archaeologist may find the identification of the remains he unearths as the product of a specific race or nation. Often cultural boundaries ...
The Ancient Israelite World, 2023
Until about 25 years ago, the history of ancient Israel was largely based on a critical reading of the biblical narrative. Although parts of the narrative were agreed to be non-historical, and some were disputed, the major components of the story – from the tribal social organization of the period of the Judges onward – were seen as mostly historical. The minimalists challenge of the 1990s and the subsequent debates had a major impact on the discipline, and altered the discourse, leading to the separation of the literary, biblical Israel, from the historical Israel. At the heart of this development is the relationship between the biblical text and archaeological record, and in particular, the degree of historicity contained in the former and the way in which the latter mirrors specific sociocultural realities. The present chapter will not only provide a synthesis of this debate, but it will provide evidence for the historicity or non-historicity of specific biblical “histories.” The first part of the paper will outline the development of scholarship, and how the distinction between “biblical Israel” and “historical Israel” came into being. This will be followed by an examination of the historical epochs that are currently debated, including a review of the implications of these developments on the growing role of archaeology in reconstructing Israel’s history. The main part of the article will briefly review the history of ancient Israel as it stands today – what is regarded as historical, what is viewed as a-historical, and what is debated – and will offer outlines to this history. The final part of the chapter will offer new directions for biblical archaeology, and new ways to integrate texts and artifacts in reconstructing the history of ancient Israel in its broadest sense.
The Origin of Early Israel – Current Debate, Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives, 1998
Near Eastern Archaeology, 2019
The rise of ancient Israel has been studied from the perspectives of archaeology and the biblical text in parallel. Archaeology deals with the settlement processes that took place in the highlands, while biblical exegesis may identify germs of memories that go back to events that took place before the rise of the Hebrew kingdoms and shed light on the ideology of Israelite and Judahite authors regarding the emergence of the Israelite "nation. " The archaeology of the rise of early Israel, involving the investigation of Iron I sites in the highlands, flourished in the 1980s and introduced new field methodologies and theoretical frameworks. For political reasons, progress in this area has since come to an almost complete standstill, yet recent work in regions bordering on the highlands shed light on several important issues related to the rise of ancient Israel. I refer mainly to the chronology of the process and the impact of climate on the events in Canaan ca. 1250-1100 BCE. The cessation of fieldwork in the highlands has stimulated scholars to revisit the textual traditions regarding the emergence of ancient Israel and to combine the existing archaeological data with the biblical text in a more critical way than was practiced in the past. In what follows I wish to do both, in three parts. First, I shall briefly comment on chronology and climate. Second, I shall combine archaeology and text in an attempt to locate the earliest territorial formation of what we can refer to as "Israel. " Finally, I shall depart from archaeology to focus on the biblical texts-mainly the geographical setting behind them-in order to shed light on the ideology of (northern) biblical authors regarding the emergence of ancient Israel. Recent Contributions of Archaeology Chronology Regarding the period and process dealt with here, chronology needs to be approached from three perspectives.