Origins of Israelite Monotheism

[TheOneAndOnly]

Of course everyone here has different views on whether the Exodus happened and in what scale and what time. But would it be correct to say that between 1300-900 BC something very strange was happening in Canaan?
I mean in that time frame a people (whether refugees from Egypt, invaders from the hills or whatever) settled en mass in Canaan and started a new religion, that seems to me to be nothing like any religion in Canaan in the ANE.
The egyptians worshipped all sorts of whacky deities and AFAIK even when they worshipped Aten, this wasn't monotheistic, they still worshipped other gods. Didn't the Hyksos and Philistines worship Baal and Dagon (who, if i remember correctly looked kind of like a mermaid, or is that merman?) The Mesopotamians worshipped their own pantheon of gods. I think the Hittites also worshipped a panetheon.
Anyway, I find it strange that among all this pantheism with whacky stories about the creation of earth and the universe etc. a small group of farmers, warriors or refugees could create a much more "theologically advance" (if that term means anything) religion. With one god who created everything,. A god that couldn't be represented as a statue, idol, sun disk or anything, and who, to me anyway, seems more regal and austere than any Egyptian god.
Whatever your views on the Genesis creation story I think its still a much more "advanced" story than, say, the Greek mythological story, where everything was created out of chaos and Uranus got his testicles cut off etc.
This is really just my random thoughts, but I find it strange that in a sea of pantheism a small group of people could create a monotheistic religion.

[Robyn Banks]

would it be correct to say that between 1300-900 BC something very strange was happening in Canaan?

No. The creation of 'monotheism' in Israelite religion is an event of the exile or post-exile, i.e., no earlier than the 500s BC.

One should not confuse a story set in 1300 BC which is written in 500BC, with the events in reality in 1300 BC. The Old Testament story primarily informs us about Israelite beliefs in 500 BC, and records nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs.

Even so, most of the Bible does not strictly support monotheism, but monolatry. The only part of the bible with a relatiely high cluster of monotheistic statements is Deutero-Isaiah.

• "Although the Bible contains a few late addtions designed to transform its religion into monotheism, the overwhelming majority of its texts are henotheistic. To be precise, the Bible usually expresses monolatry, which is a more extreme form of henotheism. Whereas henotheism believes in many gods, but with one supremely powerful god, monolatry believes in many gods, but with only one god that is worthy of worship. Thus, the monolatrist is a henotheist who acknowledges lesser gods but refuses to worship them."
  - KL Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction (London: Sheffield, 2001)

All that occurred in c1200 was a shift from the lowlands of Canaan into the Cisjordan Highlands, together with the sedentarization of a few nomads. This increased the population from c70,000 to c140,000 from 1200 to 900 BC. And, significantly disproving the Biblical explanation of a huge Conquest, the new population settled in the Cisjordan Highlands:
1) Had a continuous culture with the surrounding peoples, as shown by the material culture - pottery particularly,
2) Had a continuous language with the surrounding peoples, as shown from studies of Old Canaanite and Old Hebrew, and
3) Shared common genes with the Syro-Palestinians, as recent Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome studies have shown.

• "the traditional account contained in Genesis through Joshua simply cannot be reconciled with the picture derived above from archaeological investigation. The whole 'Exodus-Conquest' cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term 'myth': perhaps 'historical fiction', but tales told primarily to validate religious belief."
  - William G Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? - What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p121

Notably, in Israel until the eighth century, personal names which included 'Yahweh' were in the minority of 'theophonic' names. Israelites were still naming their children after Baal, El, and other gods.

From his examination of the material culture, William G Dever considers that the following was common in Israelite popular religion before the exile:
- bamot and local shrines
- making images
- veneration of aserim (sacred trees or iconographic images)
- worship of Asherah - the Great Lady (and even Yahweh is described as being alongside his divine wife, Asherah in the eighth century BC)
- rituals of childbirth and children
- pilgrimages and saints' festivals
- planting and harvest festivals
- marzeah feasts (sacred banquets)
- funerary rites (libations for dead)
- wailing over Tammuz
- solar and astral worship
- divination and sorcery
- child sacrifice

Most of these things are also mentioned in the Bible as being practised by Israelites - but in the 500s are no being condemned by those who proscribe the worship of 'Yahweh only'.

Norman Whybray notes that, on textual grounds, the religious traditions appeared late. Even Moses himself is unknown in pre-exilic texts:

• "It is striking that as with Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, there are hardly any references to Moses in any of the Old Testament books outside the Pentateuch that can with certainty be regarded as preexilic, and none that shows any knowledge of the evnts of his life, as recounted in the Pentateuch."
  - R N Whybray, Introduction to the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p66

The old idea of a (divinely inspired) Conquest of the Holy Land has long been considered a mere myth. With its demise, the idea of a Monotheistic ideology driving this Conquest has also gone. For, the origins of Israel do not lie in any conquest or radical break from the past. To the contrary, Israel lies in direct continuity with Canaan, making no radical break with it until many centuries after the time in which the mythical 'Conquest' was placed.

Hope that helps.

Robyn Banks

[TheOneAndOnly]

Are you referring to Ezra? If the Israelites were polytheists up to and including the Exile, and only became monotheists after 538 BC when they returned then
a) What evidence is there of any other gods worshipped by the Israelites? (I'm looking at your sig)
b) How likely is it that the Israelites would leave their old religion to join a new one created by Ezra (or whoever) just because he said so?

"The Old Testament story primarily informs us about Israelite beliefs in 500 BC, and records nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs."

If Genesis was written in 500BC then, although i'm sure you can point out many anacronysms in it, there are still many historically accurate verses, like Joseph costing 20 shekkels - the price of a slave in 1200 BC? Was this really written 700 years later?

"...nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs."

What are your beliefs on the origins of Israelite beliefs?

[guacamole]

No. The creation of 'monotheism' in Israelite religion is an event of the exile or post-exile, i.e., no earlier than the 500s BC.

One should not confuse a story set in 1300 BC which is written in 500BC, with the events in reality in 1300 BC. The Old Testament story primarily informs us about Israelite beliefs in 500 BC, and records nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs.

I have to disagree. Considering the tenacity with which people cling to cherished religious beliefs, I find it hard to believe that a religion with a literate priestly caste would willing cast aside a cherished set of beliefs and revise the faith, even in the turmoil of the exile. I could see a gradual change over time as the jerusalem faction won out over the rural factions, but I can't see a change in Babylon/Persia.

It doesn't make any more sense than the argument that a monotheistic redactor would leave polytheistic linguistic artefacts in the old testament.

[Robyn Banks]

If the Israelites were polytheists up to and including the Exile, and only became monotheists after 538 BC when they returned then
a) What evidence is there of any other gods worshipped by the Israelites? (I'm looking at your sig)

I provided evidence above. This was added after I wrote the first two paragraphs, as I thought you might be after some of my reasons for saying so.

b) How likely is it that the Israelites would leave their old religion to join a new one created by Ezra (or whoever) just because he said so?

There was no 'leaving' of their old religion. Yahwism had gradually become popular in Judah in the seventh century, and developed into a monolatrist religion amongst the exiles.

"The Old Testament story primarily informs us about Israelite beliefs in 500 BC, and records nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs."

If Genesis was written in 500BC then, although i'm sure you can point out many anacronysms in it, there are still many historically accurate verses, like Joseph costing 20 shekkels - the price of a slave in 1200 BC? Was this really written 700 years later?

• "Unfortunately, these authentic details tell us nothing about the accuracy of the exodus and conquest stories. Folklore often carries authentic fragments from the past, but in hopelessly scattered form."
  - KL Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction (London: Sheffield, 2001), p80

As a comparable example of this in folklore (very comparable, if you consider the dating of the story), Homer's Illiad contains many personal names that were authentic to the era of the Trojan War. It also places Pylos as an important Bronze Age Kingdom. Also, some of the ancient customs and clothing are preserved accurately. Noll points out that:

• "Historians of ancient Greece do not conclude from these details that Homer's tale is true in a correspondence sense... Rather, they believe that the Illiad is the product of a long period of epic storytelling, during which accurate elements of the past were preserved in an almost random way."

This excerpt from Northrop Frye is similarly insightful:

• “Trying to extract a credible historical residue from a mass of ‘mythical accretions’ is a futile procedure, if the end in view is Biblical criticism rather than history. It has been obvious for at least a century that ‘mythical accretions’ are what the Bible is: it is the bits of credible history that are expendable, however many of them there may be… If the historical element in the Bible were a conscientious, inaccurate, imperfect history like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, we could understand how important it would be to make a fuller reconstruction of that history. But when it shows such an exuberant repudiation of everything we are accustomed to think of as historical evidence, perhaps we should be looking for different categories and criteria altogether.
  
  An analogy from secular literature may give us a clue to our further procedure. The Icelandic Greenland and Eirik sagas are literary productions: they are intended to be such, and conform to the conventions of literature. But because they allude to Norse explorations and settlements on the coast of America, the extent to which they may be incidentally historical is naturally of great interest to many people. Hence they have also been studied as documents in a historical problem. In that context, what is or may be historical is true, and what belongs to myth and literature is false or imaginary.
  
  These sagas tell us that the Norsemen were attacked by natives with catapaults or balliste. Scholars say that the Algonquins, at least, are known to have used ballistae in welfare; so here is something that may be historically true. We read of ‘unipeds’, or people who had only one foot. No scholar will buy the unipeds: they came out of a book, and are therefore literary and false. We are told that two Scottish members of the expedition, a man and a woman, disappeared into the bush and returned, one with a sheaf of grain and the other with a bunch of grapes. Perhaps not inherently incredible, but there is an echo of Numbers 13.23 and, more important, a most suspicious symmetry. Symmetry, in any narrative, always means that historical content is being subordinated to mythical demands of design and form, as in the Book of Judges. Then again, of the three explored lands mentioned, ‘Helluland’ sounds like Baffin Island and ‘Markland’ like the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland; but ‘Vinland’, though identified with any number of places from Nova Scotia to Florida, still sounds more like Hy Brasil or the Garden of Hesperides than anything mundane enough to be marked on a map. However, the kernal of it may be an actual place: such categories in such narratives refuse to be definitely characterized as true or false.
  
  In these sagas we have only the two elements of history and literature, and so are not disturbed by hysterics screaming that we must accept everything including the unipeds, in fact especially the unipeds, or face the wrath of a God who deliberately created the unipeds as a ‘test of faith’ to make things as difficult as possible for intellectually honest people to believe anything he says. But a principle is involved which also applies to the Bible: we cannot get an inch further without new archaeological evidence, and such evidence would carry the authority that we have ceased to assign to the sagas themselves. Similarly, for the historian of the Biblical period, the primary historical authority is not the Bible but what (the written sources having been exhausted long ago) archaeology can still dig up in the way of acceptable evidence.”
  - Frye, Northrop The Great Code – The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p42-43

"...nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs."

What are your beliefs on the origins of Israelite beliefs?

Israelite beliefs were rooted in Canaanite and other surrounding beliefs. The whole Israelite sacrificial system is deeply Canaanite. And belief in Yahweh as god appointed over the nation is typical of surrounding nations in the Iron Age (Moah had Chemosh, Damascus had Hadad, Tyre had Melqart, Hamath had Ashima, Sidon had Eshmun, etc). Monotheism was a late development in Israelite religion.

Hope that helps.

Robyn Banks

[Robyn Banks]

I could see a gradual change over time as the jerusalem faction won out over the rural factions, but I can't see a change in Babylon/Persia.

I only claim that this final stage of writing of the Bible was post-exilic. Monotheism, too, derived from a strong movement of monolatry in Yahwistic religion pre-exile. Judah in the seventh century may well have been strongly Yahwistic in its religion. So, later developments are more of a natural evolution - not a sudden upheaval.

Robyn Banks

[Didaktylos]

According to suggestions I've seen, the shift from monolatry to outright monotheism was a scheme begun by the Yahwist priesthood shortly after Nebuchadrezzar's failed siege of Jerusalem and finalised while in Babylonian exile in order to keep themselves in business. The argument goes something like this: in any polytheistic system (which henotheism/monolatry is), whatever duties individual members of a people might owe to the deity, the relationship between between a deity and a people collectively is that of employee to employer, and the deity is expected to serve the people - or else. (This attitude is perhaps best exemplified by one of the priests of Djelibeybi in Terry Prattchett's Pyramids: "They're our gods, we're not their people.") Thus, allowing his people to be conquered by their enemies would be regarded as a sacking offense - and his priesthood could also expect to be redundant. The Yahwist priesthood could see that Judah was surrounded by enemies who were much very much stronger - it was only a matter of time before the kingdom would fall. When that happened, they would be out of business. Enter the idea of monotheism - where the relationship between God and people is now owner to property.

[TheOneAndOnly]

"The Yahwist priesthood could see that Judah was surrounded by enemies who were much very much stronger - it was only a matter of time before the kingdom would fall. When that happened, they would be out of business. Enter the idea of monotheism - where the relationship between God and people is now owner to property."

That sounds interesting. But strange how no other small kingdoms or kingdoms on the verge of being invaded decided to shift to monotheism. I can't think of any examples anyway.

[ChrisChillin]

Robyn:

Just a few thoughts and questions...

The creation of 'monotheism' in Israelite religion is an event of the exile or post-exile, i.e., no earlier than the 500s BC.

<snip>

Even so, most of the Bible does not strictly support monotheism, but monolatry.

No major problem with the latter comment, but some questioning of the former. I would like to note that apparently conservative scholars not only agree with the monolatry assessment for the pre-exilic Hebrews but even go on to assert that strict "monotheism" wasn't really adopted in the Second Temple period either. The ones I've seen cited have been Jeffrey Tigay, Larry Hurtado, and I think Richard Bauckham.

The Old Testament story primarily informs us about Israelite beliefs in 500 BC, and records nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs.

So you're a "minimalist", eh Robyn? What I'm wondering here is this: if the OT narratives are primarily about Israelite beliefs of 500 BC, which are then predominantly monolatrous or monotheistic, then why is so much of their space devoted to an allegedly historical struggle between the adherents of sole worship of YHWH and those of pagan syncretism?

And then, of course, without drawing into an extensive debate or discussion about dating, there is the assumption of a late date for the Old Testament books here. Using OneandOnly's timespan of 1300-900, this means we're dealing with the Pentateuchal materials as well as the undoubtedly exilic or post-exilic texts of Kings and Chronicles. Any discussion about the origins of Israelite monolatry/monotheism (hereafter: m/m) will obviously have to take into account theories or presuppositions about the compilation and redaction of the texts. Simply to demonstrate the need for caution in throwing out a simplistic and seemingly arbitrary date such as 500 BC (and I understand that you were not being exact, Robyn) let me throw out as food for thought some information from a recent newspaper article:

"Archaeologist hits holy pay dirt", The New Orleans Time-Picayune [21 February 2004]:

...Among them was the find of two tiny tightly rolled silver scrolls. Carefully unpeeled over time, they revealed faint scratchings that took Barkay's [Gabriel Barkay, now a faculty member at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv] breath away: YHWH. The earliest appearance in Jerusalem of the unspeakable Hebrew word for God.

That find came in 1979 and still ranks on many scholars' lists as one of the most remarkable in modern biblical archaeological history...

The site, Barkay recalled, was high on the west side of the Hinnom Valley...

But most important were two little amulets, perhaps worn around a wrist or over the heart.

"By itself, this was a sensation," Barkay said.

Unrolled, each was only about 2 inches long. But they contained 19 lines of text in tiny letters scratched only a quarter-inch tall, Barkay said.

In time, Barkay and other researchers came to see that both contained variations of the so-called triple blessing from the Book of Numbers, familiar to many today even if they do not recognize its provenance.

In the New International Version of the Bible, the blessing in Numbers 6:24-26 says: "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."

To this day, they rank as the oldest fragments of the Bible ever found: "older by four centuries than the Dead Sea Scrolls," from the time of Jeremiah the prophet, Barkay said.

This sixth or seventh century find "means that if people were writing it on their jewelry, it means the text was already seen as sacred and already in common use," Ortiz [Steven Ortiz, co-director of the Center for Archaeological Research at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary] said...

Now I wouldn't be surprised if you suggest that the triple blessing could have been a liturgical element incorporated into the text during its compilation, but could that be supported by anything besides speculation?

Now, moving on to your comments about the Conquest and continuity. I am currently studying Late Bronze/Early Iron Age archaeology and alternative models of Israelite settlement/emergence in class, so I can't present any solid opinion yet. However, I may note that even from a traditionalist reading of the text, I think there would still be plenty of room for some continuity, especially since the Genesis story states that the Hebrews came into Egypt from Canaan. Therefore, even a conservative could expect similar DNA and language. As for material culture, I could see a fair amount of continuity there as well, because if the Israelites entered and transitioned from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles, then they probably wouldn't have a significant material culture and would adopt much of what already existed among the Canaanites.

It is interesting that you quote Dever right after arguing for continuity. Yes, he doesn't consider the Conquest tradition historical, but as I recall he argues against "minimalism" and for a good deal of discontinuity in his article "Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey" in a spring 2000 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. I'll try to dig that issue up that issue and provide some quotes.

Next: theophanic names. While I do not know any specifics, I will note, just for the sake of showing diversity of opinion, that Tigay discusses this issue of onomastics in this month's edition of Bible Review:

http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BR/bswbbr2001f4.html

Most of these things are also mentioned in the Bible as being practised by Israelites - but in the 500s are no being condemned by those who proscribe the worship of 'Yahweh only'.

Of course, widespread paganism/syncretism is no surprise to conservative scholars, because the OT narratives don't hide the fact that this was the case. And so we have the basic OT history and archaeology coroborrating each other. I guess the sticking point in this discussion is how monolatry arose. You have already stated when you think the monolatry switched to monotheism, Robyn, but do you have a theory as to the development of Yahwistic monolatry, both the when and the why? The Shasu bedouin, perhaps?

Next, a question about your citation of Whybray, before which you state:

Even Moses himself is unknown in pre-exilic texts

Yet Whybray states: there are hardly any references to Moses in any of the Old Testament books outside the Pentateuch that can with certainty be regarded as preexilic

Based on how I read his comment, it seems Whybray is stating that the Pentateuch is pre-exilic, and therefore he is contradicting your introductory remark. As I understand this quote, he says besides the Pentateuch, Moses isn't mentioned by any definite pre-exilic texts. That's not the same as saying he's unknown in all pre-exilic texts. If I have read Whybrary wrong, please correct me by citing any statement of his in which he says the Pentateuch is post-exilic.

OneandOnly:

To get the opinion from the end of the spectrum opposite Robyn, check out Glenn Miller's article on the archaeology of the Conquest here:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/noai.html

Love to all,
Chillin

[Robyn Banks]

I would like to note that apparently conservative scholars not only agree with the monolatry assessment for the pre-exilic Hebrews but even go on to assert that strict "monotheism" wasn't really adopted in the Second Temple period either. The ones I've seen cited have been Jeffrey Tigay, Larry Hurtado, and I think Richard Bauckham.

I have read a bit of Hurtado. It all depends on how strictly you define 'monotheism'. When Israelite religion went from henotheism to 'monotheism', it started developing all sorts of semi-divines and divine intermediaries. Some people think that this isn't 'monotheism' proper. But, I think that as long as you can separate out one God from everything else, then you have monotheism.

So you're a "minimalist", eh Robyn?

Not at all. I'm a moderate - in the middle of 'minimalists' and 'maximalists'. I'm closest to Wiliam Dever's stance - and he is, as you may know, a polemical anti-minimalist. Also, Finkelstein - who is close to Dever - is very good.

What I'm wondering here is this: if the OT narratives are primarily about Israelite beliefs of 500 BC, which are then predominantly monolatrous or monotheistic, then why is so much of their space devoted to an allegedly historical struggle between the adherents of sole worship of YHWH and those of pagan syncretism?

The late 600s and 500s, and even the 400s, still saw disputes about other gods and foreign peoples. Ezra's issues with foreigners and foreign gods show that these issues were still current then.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if you suggest that the triple blessing could have been a liturgical element incorporated into the text during its compilation, but could that be supported by anything besides speculation?

I'm not a 'minimalist', like you earlier presumed, so you don't have to convince me that there are earlier traditions in the Bible. And I don't dispute that parts of the Bible have earlier versions going back into the 600s and 700s BC. But this is still a far cry from 1300 BC.

The amulet is dated to the late 600s by Dever - who also notes that the use of an amulet (a good luck charm) demonstrates the survival of popular religion at this time, in the face of any monotheistic or monolatristic Yahwism.

Moreover, the accounts of the Conquest in Numbers demonstrate that the author was ignorant of geography in the c1300 BC, but only familiar with geography post 700 BC.

Take the alleged crossing of Edom, for example (Num 20):

• "the biblical account does not mention any specific sites. But that is just as well, because there are none. Recent surveys and excavations have shown beyond reasonable doubt that there are only a few possible Late Bronze Age (13th century BC) settlements on the northern plateau of Edom, and none south of those. We now know that occupation of Edom did not begin until much later, and even then it was extremely sparse. And the area remained largely nomadic until perhaps the 7th century BC, when a sort of semi-sedentary 'tribal state' finally emerged...
  What this means is that there cannot have been a King of Edom to have denied the Israelites access, since Edom did not achieve any kind of statehood until the seventh century BC. The obvious solution to this dilemma is to suppose that the writers and editors of Numbers... which as we have seen was probably composed in the seventh century BC, naturally 'read back' into their story the Edom that they knew from their own day."
  - William G Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p28

The excursion in Arad after that in Numbers is equally a product of a seventh century BC imagination:

• "Like other northern Negev sites, Arad has no Late Bronze Age occupation. Indeed, it was not founded until one small, isolated village was established in the late 10th century BC... The claim in Numbers 21.1-3 that the Israelites had lain Arad waste and then destroyed all the cities in the vicinity cannot be based on actual historical events."
  - William G Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p29

Then we have Heshbon -the seat of Sihon, King of the Amorites (Num 21), which was founded in the Iron II period (after 900 BC).

And Dibon was not settled earlier than the ninth century.

• "there are no Late Bronze Age remains whatsoever. Once again, the silence of the archaeological record is deafening."
  - William G Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p32

Numbers, as demonstrated by a comparison of its account of Israel in the Transjordan with archaeological finds, is highly fictional and must be dated quite late.

there would still be plenty of room for some continuity, especially since the Genesis story states that the Hebrews came into Egypt from Canaan.

You will find that, according to the Bible, the 'chosen line' specifically avoided breeding with the local Canaanites (e.g. Gen 24.3), but returned to Abraham's kin in Nahor for wives.

According to the Bible, then, the family of 'Israel'/Jacob who went into Egypt should not have had DNA that most resembled Syro-Palestinian DNA. And as they apparently increased to some 3 million people on their return, there should have been a distinct difference in Israelite DNA. Studies have shown this is not the case.

As for material culture, I could see a fair amount of continuity there as well, because if the Israelites entered and transitioned from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles, then they probably wouldn't have a significant material culture and would adopt much of what already existed among the Canaanites.

A conquesting people is not a 'nomadic' people transitioning to sedentary lifestyle. There is nothing 'nomadic' about this people, even if they in fact sojourned in a wilderness for 40 years. To the contrary, one would expect a great deal of cultural change - as is found with the conquering Philistines in the twelfth century. And if you accept that 3 million Israelites entered Palestine (which had 70,000 people in 1200, increasing to 140,000 200-300 years later), then there would be a significant impact on local material culture.

It is interesting that you quote Dever right after arguing for continuity. Yes, he doesn't consider the Conquest tradition historical, but as I recall he argues against "minimalism" and for a good deal of discontinuity in his article "Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey" in a spring 2000 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. I'll try to dig that issue up that issue and provide some quotes.

It appears that you need to actually read Dever. I highly recommend his 2001 and 2003 books.

As stated, my own opinion is closest to Dever's. The 'discontinuity' Dever identifies is in defence of a developing separate people in the Cisjordan Highlands: 4 room houses, plant remains and animal bones, terraces on the land, development of silos and cisterns. However, he finds a fundamental and significant continuity with Canaanite culture, supporting a shift of population within Canaan, rather than an entry by outsiders. Notably, the new settlements of this people in the Cisjordan Highlands are all in completely new villages - without previous foundation - and previously devoid of Canaanite population. There was no need for armed conflict with Canaanites, because there was no-one there! This settlement was the result of moving out to the frontier, not any 'conquest' or 'immigration' of peoples.

widespread paganism/syncretism is no surprise to conservative scholars, because the OT narratives don't hide the fact that this was the case. And so we have the basic OT history and archaeology coroborrating each other. I guess the sticking point in this discussion is how monolatry arose. You have already stated when you think the monolatry switched to monotheism, Robyn, but do you have a theory as to the development of Yahwistic monolatry, both the when and the why?

I would point to the general change to henotheism throughout the ANE in Iron Age II.

Whybray states: there are hardly any references to Moses in any of the Old Testament books outside the Pentateuch that can with certainty be regarded as preexilic

Based on how I read his comment, it seems Whybray is stating that the Pentateuch is pre-exilic, and therefore he is contradicting your introductory remark. As I understand this quote, he says besides the Pentateuch, Moses isn't mentioned by any definite pre-exilic texts. That's not the same as saying he's unknown in all pre-exilic texts. If I have read Whybrary
wrong, please correct me by citing any statement of his in which he says the Pentateuch is post-exilic.

You have misunderstood Whybray. The reason that Whybray says "besides the Pentateuch" is that he is considering whether any of the pre-exilic works mention Moses by reviewing texts other than the Pentateuch. He is looking to other texts, because he realises that one cannot validate the dating of the Moses tradition within the Pentateuch itself - as it was completed post-exile.

Whybray goes on to say:
"That the story of Moses as recounted in the Pentateuch is a late ltierary construction is supported by a recent and increasingly accepted hypothesis put forward on other grounds, that there was no mass immigration into Canaan from outside at all!" (p67). He is referring primarily to the archaeological proof of there being no cultural or linguistic break.

To get the opinion from the end of the spectrum opposite Robyn, check out Glenn Miller's article on the archaeology of the Conquest here:

I would rather read established scholars from both sides, than pop-apologists from the internet.

Robyn Banks

[ChrisChillin]

Hi again, Robyn!

Not at all. I'm a moderate - in the middle of 'minimalists' and 'maximalists'. I'm closest to Wiliam Dever's stance - and he is, as you may know, a polemical anti-minimalist. Also, Finkelstein - who is close to Dever - is very good.

Okay, thank you for clarifying. When you said this:

The Old Testament story primarily informs us about Israelite beliefs in 500 BC, and records nothing of historical value about the origins of such beliefs.

I interpreted that as a minimalist statement, but I see now your "minimalism" is directed to the OT as it pertains to the origin of m/m, and not its basic historical outline, correct?

And yes, I do know that Dever is anti-minimalist. And what little I've read of him has been very entertaining too!

The late 600s and 500s, and even the 400s, still saw disputes about other gods and foreign peoples. Ezra's issues with foreigners and foreign gods show that these issues were still current then.

Although we could say that the scale of these disputes was greatly reduced post-exile. I'll do some more reading on this...

I'm not a 'minimalist', like you earlier presumed, so you don't have to convince me that there are earlier traditions in the Bible. And I don't dispute that parts of the Bible have earlier versions going back into the 600s and 700s BC. But this is still a far cry from 1300 BC.

Fair enough. Although if Ortiz's assessment is on target when he says the text was already sacred and in common use by the time of Jeremiah, then I wonder if that should at least push the tradition back even further to allow for time for widespread acceptance to occur. I'm not sure if this might require adding a couple of extra centuries to our earliest estimated date for the tradition. Even then, though, I acknowledge that such an estimate would still not be too close to 1300 BC.

The amulet is dated to the late 600s by Dever - who also notes that the use of an amulet (a good luck charm) demonstrates the survival of popular religion at this time, in the face of any monotheistic or monolatristic Yahwism.

No dispute about that. No conservative argues against the widespread practice of folk Yahwism all the way to the exile. The "pop apologist" Glenn Miller gives his agreement to this citation he provides of Ephraim Stern's article "Pagan Yahwism: The Folk Religion of Ancient Israel" [Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2001, vol 27, no. 3, p.28.]:

"We are thus led to the inevitable conclusion that between the foreign pagan practices and the pure monotheism of Yahwism there existed a cult that may be called pagan Yahwism or perhaps more accurately, Yahwistic paganism. Of course in the background was the central monotheistic cult practiced in the Jerusalem Temple by its priests and preached by the Biblical prophets. And some of the kings of Judah--especially Hezekiah and Josiah--made efforts to centralize the monotheistic cult in Jerusalem. But looking at the archaeological evidence, we must conclude that they were less than 100 percent successful. Indeed, until the Babylonian destruction of Judah and the end of the Israelite monarchy in 586 B.C.E., pagan Yahwism was common even in Jerusalem, to say nothing of the rest of Judah."

Quoted in Miller's article on "Mrs. God" at:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/godswife.html

I will not deal with the specifics about the Conquest, because I do not have a definite opinion and I plan on doing a lot more reading.

According to the Bible, then, the family of 'Israel'/Jacob who went into Egypt should not have had DNA that most resembled Syro-Palestinian DNA. And as they apparently increased to some 3 million people on their return, there should have been a distinct difference in Israelite DNA. Studies have shown this is not the case.

I see what you're saying. Could you provide your source for the DNA data?

The 'discontinuity' Dever identifies is in defence of a developing separate people in the Cisjordan Highlands: 4 room houses, plant remains and animal bones, terraces on the land, development of silos and cisterns. However, he finds a fundamental and significant continuity with Canaanite culture, supporting a shift of population within Canaan, rather than an entry by outsiders.

Well, I had thought that he indicated belief in a migration of some significance in his article...but who knows, I've only read it once, so I'll check it out as soon as I can. I do remember the 4 room houses though...

Again, I will have to do more of my own reading about continuity/discontinuity.

I would point to the general change to henotheism throughout the ANE in Iron Age II.

Do you have specifics on what cultures underwent this change?

You have misunderstood Whybray.

So to succinctly state what I think you and Whybray would say, Moses is not unknown to the pre-exile Hebrews, but to their texts, and the oral tradition is not placed into writing until the post-exilic period? Or at least, that we don't have any texts that mention him until after the exile. I hold out the possibility that the amulets mentioned in the newspaper article may suggest a pre-exilic textual tradition in some form or fashion - not necessarily the completed Pentateuch, but some early version. And so, since you said that you agree that earlier versions of the narratives date back to at least the seventh and eighth centuries BC, I'm still a bit confused on why you say Moses is unknown in pre-exilic texts. Are you limiting that comment to texts whose completed form we have now which you believe are pre-exilic?

I would rather read established scholars from both sides, than pop-apologists from the internet.

Although you disparage Glenn Miller, he has a B.A. and a Th.M. in theology, so he should have relevant formal education. I don't know what school he got these degrees at, but at least at my Christian college and in my religion department, we're reading Dever's and Finkelstein's books, as well as Stager, A. Mazar, Mendenhall, Gottwald, etc. And Miller's article interacts with or quotes extensively from Finkelstein, Dever, Mazar and others. I do not state this to justify any uncritical acceptance of the article on my part (for that is not the case) but as a reaction against what I believe to be an overly dismissive comment.

But fair enough. I agree with your basic thrust to stick to the published works first. OneandOnly: Read Thompson, Davies and Redford to get the minimalist perspective. Read Dever and Finkelstein to get the moderate position. Then read A Biblical History of Israel by Provan, et. al. and On the Reliability of the Old Testament by Kitchen as well as Israel in Egypt by Hoffmeier to get the maximalist-to-traditional view.

[Robyn Banks]

your "minimalism" is directed to the OT as it pertains to the origin of m/m, and not its basic historical outline, correct?

I think you've got me right. I was saying that monotheism in the Bible, what there is of it, is a belief from c500 BC - and so, the biblical story of the origins of this monotheism is late ideology, and quite unhistorical (as corroborated by, primarily, the archaeological data).

I see what you're saying. Could you provide your source for the DNA data?

This is all quite new. You will be hard-pressed to find a biblical scholar or archaeologist who makes reference to DNA studies. They regularly cite culture (reconstructed on the basis of archaeological material culture) and language origins as evidence of Israelite continuity with Canaanite culture. DNA provides a third source of corroborating data.

Being new, the studies are not (and this is almost tautological) widely accepted. So, I would qualify the results on this point at least. But, if you are presently studying this, it may provide you with a wholly new additional point to discuss, which your tutors(?) may be interested in.

This is the first relevant study I found, although there are earlier studies of Jewish DNA:
Skorecki K, Selig S, Blazer S, Bradman R, Bradman N, War-burton PJ, Ismajlowicz M, et al (1997) 'Y chromosomes of Jewish priests' Nature 385:32.
http://www.familytreedna.com/nature97385.html

Late last year I attended a very interesting series of lectures by Brian Sykes. It was during one of these lectures that the question of determining Israel's origins struck me as an possible area that DNA-research could shed considerable light on. If the Jewish Y-chromosome was indistinct from other Palestinians, Syrians and Lebonese, then this would lend considerable support to the current leading theory of Israel's origins: that there was no 'conquest' from outsiders, but it was merely a development from within this region.

And, indeed, one study (M.F. Hammer et al., "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97:6769-74, June 6, 2000 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769 ) has concluded that based on Y-chromosome analysis, Jews and Palestinians derive from the same common ancestor.

"Of the Middle Eastern populations included in this study, only the Syrian and Palestinian samples mapped within the central cluster of Jewish populations."

Here's one more recent study, which I understand finds a closer link with peoples north of Syria, than with the (Arabic) Syro-Palestinians (although includes Kurdish Jews from the same area):
"Surprisingly, in the present study, Jews were found to be even closer to populations in the northern part of the Middle East than to several Arab populations. It is worth mentioning that, on the basis of protein polymorphisms, most Jewish populations cluster very closely with Iraqis (Liv[color=red]EDITME[/color][color=red]EDITME[/color][color=red]EDITME[/color][color=red]EDITME[/color]s et al. 1991) and that the latter, in turn, cluster very closely with Kurds (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). These findings are consistent with known cultural links that existed among populations in the Fertile Crescent in early history
...
Jews exhibit a high degree of genetic affinity to populations living in the north of the Fertile Crescent."
"The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East" by Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder, Marina Faerman, and Ariella Oppenheim The American Journal of Human Genetics 69:5 (November 2001): 1095-1112
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJH...33/013033.html

[ChrisChillin]

I think you've got me right. I was saying that monotheism in the Bible, what there is of it, is a belief from c500 BC - and so, the biblical story of the origins of this monotheism is late ideology, and quite unhistorical

I assume your dating of Israelite m/m is partially based on late dates for the OT texts. Is that a correct assumption?

Also, you say archaeology supports this, but I'm not sure if it's so clearcut. Archaeology supports a strong and persistent paganism and "folk Yahwism" in Israel and Judah, right? But then, the OT narratives don't deny that is the case. Or are you saying then that archaeology does not show any indications for the centralized and (for lack of a better word) "orthodox" Yahwism? Such evidence may be hard to come by, of course, given the nature of Jerusalem's material history.

This is what Hoffmeier says:

…as Alan Millard points out, "The accidents of survival and discovery are partly responsible for [the lack of Israelite royal inscriptions]. Jerusalem has been so long occupied, destroyed, and rebuilt that the lack of monuments of her Hebrew kings, early or late, is no surprise.” Millard adds: “Archives from the tenth century B.C. will probably never be unearthed in Palestine because the normal writing material at the time was papyrus, which only lasts when buried in unusually dry places.” Historians must recognize the limitations of archaeology. It cannot at every point substantiate historical records, be they from the Bible or the archives of the ancient Near East.

- taken from James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt [Oxford University Press, 1996: p. 12]

Although he discusses material evidence for the Hebrew monarchy, I believe the same principle applies for the Temple cult (even more so, due to the issues involving the Temple Mount in more recent history).

This is all quite new. You will be hard-pressed to find a biblical scholar or archaeologist who makes reference to DNA studies. They regularly cite culture (reconstructed on the basis of archaeological material culture) and language origins as evidence of Israelite continuity with Canaanite culture. DNA provides a third source of corroborating data.

In looking at these studies, this is the problem that I see: what constitutes current "Canaanite" DNA? That the Jews may be related to other Middle Eastern peoples or Syro-Palestinians of the present day is no surprise to me. If one were to look at this from a traditionalist perspective of the Bible, it should be no surprise either. Apart from Abraham and his family supposedly coming from some part of Mesopotamia (one of the Ur cities..), and even despite the prohibitions against intermarrying, apparently plenty of it eventually occurred (from high to low - syncretistic peasant to syncretistic Solomon).

And then back to my original question, whose DNA descends from Canaanite DNA and how do we know that? Without assured knowledge of what constitutes distinct Canaanite DNA, how do we know that the DNA of the Hebrews and Canaanites were so similar? And then, this is still based on modern studies of Jewish DNA. We don't have any DNA from 1200 BC to go on. So I have my reservations about this line of argument. What these studies are working with is current DNA from current populations, and I'm not sure how far this can be extrapolated backwards and with what supporting evidence. Of course, I'm not at all claiming any expertise in the biological or molecular sciences, but these questions seem at least pretty evident to me. But if you've got more info or good answers to these questions, I am of course ready and willing to listen. Either way, it's a fun discussion so far!

And now, for some balance in this discussion, I shall quote some more from Hoffmeier as he gives a critique of moderate and minimalist positions on the OT narratives. I just recently rediscovered that I had his book Israel in Egypt, which starts with a history in Israel in recent scholarship and a critique of minimalist in the origins of Israel debate. I'm not sold out on maximalism, but I figured it would be helpful for this discussion to also post what the "other side" says as a critique of moderate or minimalist views.

First, some more general thoughts on ancient historiography:

• Van Seters rightly observes that the true historian is “objective” [if that is really absolutely possible], but ancient writers never reach this ideal, according to him, until well into the first millennium. Halpern characterizes Van Seters’s assessment of the ancient biblical writers by saying he “imagines him (the Deuteronomic historian) a rogue and a fraud, a distributor of taffy.” On the other hand, historians like Hallo and Kitchen, who might be called maximalists, have greater faith in the ancient writer’s integrity. One reason for the disparity between historical maximalists and minimalists is that the former tend to be trained in Near Eastern languages, history, and archaeology with the Hebrew Bible as a cognate discipline, whereas the latter are largely trained in Old Testament studies in the nineteenth-century European mold and treat cognate languages and sources as ancillary rather than central to their discipline. (p. 15)

• The ability of the ancient scribes to record history must not be diminished by modern notions of historiography or by the current proclivity to give late dates to the Hebrew narratives based on the groundless assumption that the Israelites were unable to write history until the middle third of the first millennium, a position held by Van Seters. On the contrary, Hallo maintains “that history begins where writing begins and I see no reason to exempt Israel from this working hypothesis.” (p. 16)

On the patriarchs and cultural parallels:

• Van Seters’s and Thompson’s works on the Patriarchal narratives successfully exposed some of the shortcomings of the social or legal parallels that Albright, Speiser, and others drew between second-millennium cuneiform sources and Genesis. Concerning this aspect of their critique, Kitchen offers praise to these scholars: “Thus, their works do perform the useful function of ruthlessly exposing sloppy argumentation of others, false or inadequate parallels, refuting the wilder excrescences of speculation, and emphasizing the need to look at all periods (not only the second millennium) in reviewing possible background to the patriarchal narratives.” On the other hand, Kitchen chides them for other methodological inconsistencies in their approach: “However, these same advocates themselves then fail to match up to this selfsame standard of reviewing the patriarchal data against all periods. Instead, they neglect the 3rd millennium BC entirely, along with whole sections of relevant evidence from the early second millennium, and give exaggerated attention to the 1st-millennium materials.” (pp. 16-17)

On the Albright-Wright Conquest model and the biblical record:

• The Albright-Wright synthesis has been rightly challenged by virtually every recent scholarly investigation concerned with the origins of Israel debate. Because the Baltimore School took a moderately conservative maximalist position relative to the biblical narratives, its critics have widely assumed that the “conquest” theory of Albright-Wright and their followers is one and the same as the “biblical” description. Therefore, the repudiation of the former has resulted in the abrogation of the latter....
  
  Wright…often overstated or went beyond what the biblical text actually claimed…goes on to assign a destruction around 1220 B.C. to nearly every site mentioned in connection with Israel’s campaign in Joshua 6-11 and ascribes the Late Bronze II destruction of Beitin (Bethel?) to Israel even though the Bible makes no such claim. Wright includes Megiddo in his list of cities conquered by Israel, and yet nowhere in Joshua or Judges is Megiddo reported to be conquered. (p. 33)

• For Dever…the lack of destruction levels at sites reportedly attacked by the Israelites means that the Joshua narratives are not historical.
  This conclusion rests on some fallacies and unfounded assumptions. First, it has long been assumed that if there was a conquest it took place around 1220 B.C…However, if this chronological scenario is wrong, then archaeologists should not expect to find cities destroyed in Canaan as the biblical materials report…
  A second problem for recent reconstructions that reject the idea of conquest is the fallacy of “negative proof” – that is, “an attempt to sustain a factual proposition merely by negative evidence.”...
  
  However, a close look at the terms dealing with warfare in Joshua 10 reveals that they do not support the interpretation that the land of Canaan and its principal cities were demolished and devastated by the Israelites…To “besiege,” “assault,” or “take” a city does not mean it was destroyed, as Dever claims. Abraham Malamat, after investigating the so-called “conquest” narratives, labels early Israel’s military tactics as indirect. (p. 34)

• Given the indirect strategy of military conquest, we should expect only limited, if any, discernible destruction in the archaeological record…Consequently, the cities enumerated in Joshua 10 were probably not destroyed or leveled, thus leaving no detectable evidence in the archaeological record. This does not mean, however, that fighting did not occur at these ancient cities. Consequently, when destructions from the end of the Late Bronze Age are absent from cities where the Israelites fought (according to Joshua), the archaeologist should not be surprised…The book of Joshua reports only three cities destroyed by fire…Jericho…Ai…and Hazor.
  
  Presently, of the three, only Hazor is currently being dug. In 1996 Amnon Ben Tor’s team uncovered the sensational, charred remains of the Late Bronze Age palace. The deliberate decapitation and mutilation of statues of deities, in keeping with the charge of Moses to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7:5, is one factor that has led Ben Tor to provisionally suggest that this destruction is the work of the Israelites. (p. 35)

On Jericho:

• Recently…Bryant G. Wood has reassessed the Jericho material by comparing Garstang’s publications, the material in Excavations at Jericho volumes three through five, and unpublished Jericho ceramics. He argues for returning to Garstang’s original dating and suggests attributing the destruction to the Israelites. Wood’s suggestions have not been received warmly by Syro-Palestinian archaeologists. However, his arguments for redating the ceramics that Kenyon assigned to the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age must be considered carefully, and the presence of mid-fifteenth through mid-fourteenth-century Egyptian scarabs from the Jericho tombs cannot be ignored. Thus the problem of Jericho has been reopened for discussion and firm conclusions concerning the Israelites must be withheld until the recent publications on Jericho have been studied thoroughly, or there are new excavations. (p. 7)

On Ai, he briefly states: "It should be noted that the equation of et-Tell with Ai of the Joshua narratives has been questioned." (p. 7)

On "literalism" and interpreting Joshua:

• One of the troubling features of the summary statements and other descriptions of vanquished cities in Joshua are the sweeping claims about conquering an area and decimating its population…But then hyperbole, as Younger has shown, was a regular feature of Near Eastern military reporting, the failure of Miller, Dever, Redford, and others to recognize the hyperbolic nature of such statements in Joshua is ironic because the charge usually leveled at maximalist historians is that they take the text too literally. As a consequence of this failure, these historical minimalists have committed “the fallacy of misplaced literalism”… (p. 42)

On cultural continuity and material evidence:

• After the battles had been fought and the land divided up among the tribes, Israel is said to have occupied “a land on which you have not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you dwell therein; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards which you did not plant” (Josh. 24:13). This suggests that the arrival of the Israelites did not significantly affect the cultural continuity of the Late Bronze Age and may explain why there is no evidence of an intrusion into the land from outsiders, for they became heirs of the material culture of the Canaanites. (p. 44)

[Robyn Banks]

In looking at these studies, this is the problem that I see: what constitutes current "Canaanite" DNA? That the Jews may be related to other Middle Eastern peoples or Syro-Palestinians of the present day is no surprise to me.

It should be surprising - they've been living in Europe and Asia for the last 2,000 years. Yet, the continuity in DNA with their middle eastern relatives is very high - and very few european genes. Looks like most of them were pretty faithful (to their spouses, that is)!

And then back to my original question, whose DNA descends from Canaanite DNA and how do we know that? Without assured knowledge of what constitutes distinct Canaanite DNA, how do we know that the DNA of the Hebrews and Canaanites were so similar? And then, this is still based on modern studies of Jewish DNA. We don't have any DNA from 1200 BC to go on.

I understand that the DNA is in fact traced to c1000BC - albeit measured with reference to currently living persons. I too am no expert in biological or molecular sciences, so I can only suggest you read the scientific studies I provided links to - which although technical include some plain english explanations of the significance of the findings.

And now, for some balance in this discussion, I shall quote some more from Hoffmeier as he gives a critique of moderate and minimalist positions on the OT narratives.

I have Hoffmeier's book as well, but thanks for selecting the quotes you did. His is one of the few conservative books that contain solid scholarship. And the criticism of other positions in the first pages is quite worthwhile on its own.

Notably, Hoffmeier only provides counter-arguments to the consensus that the Exodus and Conquest did not occur; he really just aims to show that a case can still be made for the Exodus and Conquest. If you go back just a few decades, you can contrast this with Albright-Bright-Wright, etc, who rejected as unfeasible the view that the Exodus or Conquest was unhistorical. So, his book is testament to the fact that conservative scholarship has been reduced to merely defending the possibility of the Exodus/Conquest.

Another worthwhile conservative book on the subject is V Philips Long, David W Baker, Gordon J Wenham, eds. Windows into Old Testament history - Evidence, Argument and the Crisis of 'Biblical Israel' (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2002). Actually, it may be the only other worthwhile conservative offering around - I can't think of another one.

• Van Seters’s and Thompson’s works on the Patriarchal narratives successfully exposed some of the shortcomings of the social or legal parallels that Albright, Speiser, and others drew between second-millennium cuneiform sources and Genesis.

Van Seters's and Thompson's conclusions have been given better ground since their works were published in the 1970s. The general consensus now upholds their basic conclusions - they are literary creations, rather than the result of longstanding traditions.

• For Dever…the lack of destruction levels at sites reportedly attacked by the Israelites means that the Joshua narratives are not historical.
  This conclusion rests on some fallacies and unfounded assumptions. First, it has long been assumed that if there was a conquest it took place around 1220 B.C…However, if this chronological scenario is wrong, then archaeologists should not expect to find cities destroyed in Canaan as the biblical materials report…

In actual fact, Dever does not confine his attention to such a narrow time-period. For example, in respect of Ai, he notes that a fortified city was destroyed there in 2,200 BC, that it was completely deserted by 1500 BC, until 1200 BC. And this wide-view is typical. To the contrary, Dever usually considers a wide time-frame - obviously concentrating on the most plausible period for any Israelite 'Conquest', as this is supported by the Albright Conquest Theory. Hoffmeier is just wrong here.

• A second problem for recent reconstructions that reject the idea of conquest is the fallacy of “negative proof” – that is, “an attempt to sustain a factual proposition merely by negative evidence.”...

I remember reading this at the time I read Hoffmeier's book, and considering it an empty apologetic point.

Firstly, negative proof is not a 'fallacy'. An argument from silence can be a fallacy, but this is not necessarily so. And, to the contrary, when experts (in this case archaeologists) would highly expect evidence - which turns out on examination not to be there - this provides a very high level of proof.

Secondly, the conclusion that the conquest was a fiction is also based on positive proof in the archaeological record that contradicts the biblical account.

• To “besiege,” “assault,” or “take” a city does not mean it was destroyed, as Dever claims. Abraham Malamat, after investigating the so-called “conquest” narratives, labels early Israel’s military tactics as indirect.

Of course, a great number of 'assaults' were against cities that didn't even exist - so, despite Hoffmeier's use of Malamat's work, there was no city to even assault, let alone 'conquest'!

• Recently…Bryant G. Wood has reassessed the Jericho material by comparing Garstang’s publications, the material in Excavations at Jericho volumes three through five, and unpublished Jericho ceramics. He argues for returning to Garstang’s original dating and suggests attributing the destruction to the Israelites. Wood’s suggestions have not been received warmly by Syro-Palestinian archaeologists. However, his arguments for redating the ceramics that Kenyon assigned to the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age must be considered carefully, and the presence of mid-fifteenth through mid-fourteenth-century Egyptian scarabs from the Jericho tombs cannot be ignored. Thus the problem of Jericho has been reopened for discussion and firm conclusions concerning the Israelites must be withheld until the recent publications on Jericho have been studied thoroughly, or there are new excavations. (p. 7)

On Ai, he briefly states: "It should be noted that the equation of et-Tell with Ai of the Joshua narratives has been questioned." (p. 7)

This suggestion of 'possible alternatives' is fine in itself. But, it only does that: provides a technical possiblity.

The majority view accepts that Ai was destroyed in 2200BC, completely deserted by 1500BC until 1200BC - but 'destroyed' by Joshua!

These findings, known since 1933-35, were reviewed by Joseph Callaway, an American archaeologist and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor. Undoubtedly, he set out to fault the findings. But to his horror, he could only conclude that they were correct. Here is what he concluded:

"For many years, the primary source for the understanding of the settlement of the first Israelites was the Hebrew Bible, but every reconstruction based upon the biblical traditions has floundered on the evidence from archaeological remains ... [Now] the primary source has to be archaeological remains."

Having concluded these results, Callaway resigned from his conservative teaching post on returning to the US. He preferred to avoid the inevitable conservative backlash that his honest search for truth would have resulted in.

• One of the troubling features of the summary statements and other descriptions of vanquished cities in Joshua are the sweeping claims about conquering an area and decimating its population…But then hyperbole, as Younger has shown, was a regular feature of Near Eastern military reporting, the failure of Miller, Dever, Redford, and others to recognize the hyperbolic nature of such statements in Joshua is ironic because the charge usually leveled at maximalist historians is that they take the text too literally. As a consequence of this failure, these historical minimalists have committed “the fallacy of misplaced literalism”… (p. 42)

Huh? There isn't a single moderate or 'minimalist' that denies that this is a literary exaggeration, or 'hyperbole'. In fact, the whole account is a gross exaggeration! It never happened!!

Not only were the cities not destroyed by invading 'Israelites', but the ancestors of the Israelite towns settled in entirely new sites on the frontier, in the Cisjordan Highlands. This wasn't an invasion at all!

• After the battles had been fought and the land divided up among the tribes, Israel is said to have occupied “a land on which you have not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you dwell therein; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards which you did not plant” (Josh. 24:13). This suggests that the arrival of the Israelites did not significantly affect the cultural continuity of the Late Bronze Age and may explain why there is no evidence of an intrusion into the land from outsiders, for they became heirs of the material culture of the Canaanites. (p. 44)

You can understand that people are not going to be convinced by an elaborate (and exaggerated) account of the settlement of Israel, when the same facts can be explained by a continuity of Canaanites. One does not usually accept a dramatic and unusual explanation without further evidence. And, despite the 'possible' suggestion, an incoming people are always going to bring in new material culture, as did the Philistines.

Robyn Banks

[jason]

Of course everyone here has different views on whether the Exodus happened and in what scale and what time. But would it be correct to say that between 1300-900 BC something very strange was happening in Canaan?
I mean in that time frame a people (whether refugees from Egypt, invaders from the hills or whatever) settled en mass in Canaan and started a new religion, that seems to me to be nothing like any religion in Canaan in the ANE.
The egyptians worshipped all sorts of whacky deities and AFAIK even when they worshipped Aten, this wasn't monotheistic, they still worshipped other gods. Didn't the Hyksos and Philistines worship Baal and Dagon (who, if i remember correctly looked kind of like a mermaid, or is that merman?) The Mesopotamians worshipped their own pantheon of gods. I think the Hittites also worshipped a panetheon.
Anyway, I find it strange that among all this pantheism with whacky stories about the creation of earth and the universe etc. a small group of farmers, warriors or refugees could create a much more "theologically advance" (if that term means anything) religion. With one god who created everything,. A god that couldn't be represented as a statue, idol, sun disk or anything, and who, to me anyway, seems more regal and austere than any Egyptian god.
Whatever your views on the Genesis creation story I think its still a much more "advanced" story than, say, the Greek mythological story, where everything was created out of chaos and Uranus got his testicles cut off etc.
This is really just my random thoughts, but I find it strange that in a sea of pantheism a small group of people could create a monotheistic religion.

There is an assumption in all of this that monotheism is a progression up the pole from polytheism.

How do you know that polytheism is not a degeneration of monotheism.

After all, many a small "primitive" tribe have a strong monotheistic belief.

Jason