A Brief History of Ancient Israel, Part One: Exodus to Solomon, Study notes of World Religions

Download A Brief History of Ancient Israel, Part One: Exodus to Solomon and more Study notes World Religions in PDF only on Docsity! REL 101 Lecture 4 1 Welcome back to Religious Studies 101. This is Literature and World of the Hebrew Bible. This is session four. Today we’re gonna be talking about — this session is gonna be titled A Brief History of Ancient Israel, Part One, the Exodus through Solomon. In the last session, we took a stroll through the land of Palestine, the land of Israel, and today we’re going to talk about what happened many years ago, thousands of years ago, in that land. We have talked about in our introductory two sessions about the Hebrew Bible is a collection of texts that were compiled, collected over the course of about 1,000 years or so. We’re gonna learn about what happened during those 1,000 years. And it’s within the context of this land and that time frame, and the historical events that took place there, that shaped the ideas, that shaped the literature and the content of that literature that shows up in the Hebrew Bible. So that’s the context and the connection for what we’re doing today. Again, this course is a descriptive course. We’re trying to describe the ideas and describe the history, and the history of those ideas: how they transformed, changed, shaped themselves as time changed as historical events required. We’re trying to describe that as objectively as we can. Now, let’s — today in the lesson there are three major sections that this lesson is gonna follow. Number 1, we’re going to talk just very briefly about history and historiography which is the discipline of history-writing itself. There are a few things that I want you just to be aware of, a certain theoretical context that you need to know as we enter into this discussion of ancient Israel’s history. REL 101 Lecture 4 2 Number 2, we’re gonna talk a little bit about archaeological periods and sort of some chronological conventions that scholars use when they’re talking about the history and the time-frame and the time periods of ancient Israel. And then Number 3, we’re gonna start in and we’re gonna start talking about the history of ancient Israel and we’re going to conclude with Solomon’s reign. Then we’ll pick up from there the next lesson. So for this first section, we’re gonna talk about what is history. It may seem like a simple question, maybe seems like a question that answers itself — what is history. Most people think, “Well, we’re making history. We’re living through history. History is a collection of events.” Not that simple. History is the retelling of events and the writing about, the discussion of events. And certainly history is not merely a collection of facts and dates and figures. And if you’ve put them all together, somehow you’ve got a history. It’s not quite that simple. Think back to the histories that you’ve read in high school or in other college courses, or just on your own for your own enjoyment. What is a history? Well, it is a — fundamentally, it’s a story and it’s a story that takes not every fact that’s out there, not every person that’s out there, not every event that took place out there, but it is a story about particular people and particular events and particular times and particular places and it draws connections. And that story says this happened because of this, and this caused that, and here’s the significance of it, and here are some lessons we should draw from it. And so it has a purpose to it. And so when we ask the question what is history, we’re really asking the REL 101 Lecture 4 5 descriptive and normative approaches to the text. The biblical texts themselves are a normative approach to history. It is the ancient historian who is saying that here is a norm, a standard, a moral lesson, a theological lesson, a lesson about the nature of reality that should be learned from these historical events and here’s what they are. And they deal with the historical events in order to get across that message. What that means for us is that we want to describe that message. I don’t want to be normative in class, even though I’m looking at normative messages from the past, but I want to describe merely what was that message. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish here. Archaeology is a tool for the historian. Archaeology is the science of finding artifacts and uncovering ancient buildings in order to find data and raw material for the writing of history. Archaeology has supplemented the biblical text and the study of the biblical text in a strong, strong way. In later lessons in this course, we’re gonna have a session or two about archaeology and touch upon archaeology. You’re gonna see a little bit about how archaeologists go about their work and how they view their work. It’s through looking at archaeological data, looking at textual data, and combining the two that biblical scholars get a fresh picture of biblical history. It is against that backdrop, then, that they look at and they can see a little bit more clearly the normative message that the ancient biblical writers are trying to get at. That is why the study of history is such a crucial part of what a biblical scholar does and a crucial part of what this course is. This course fundamentally is a history class. That’s its fundamental nature. All right. Let’s look now a little bit — moving to the second section of this REL 101 Lecture 4 6 session, this class session, and look at the chronological conventions that archaeologists and biblical scholars use. Up on your screen is a chart of chronological periods. I just want to read through these briefly. There are earlier periods than the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age is not where archaeologists start their charts. But in terms of what we’re going to be looking at and dealing with early Bronze is a good place to start and to jump in. We’re looking at the early Bronze Age which goes up to about 2100 B.C.E. We also, then, move down to the middle Bronze Age, 2100 to about 1500 B.C.E. This is the setting, the time period in which the stories about the ancestors, Israel’s ancestors — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — were set, and their wanderings in Palestine, and when they migrated into Palestine. This is the time frame in which those stories are set. Now, you’ll learn later in the class that doesn’t necessarily mean scholars think those stories were originally written during that time period, during the middle Bronze Age, but rather they were set in that age. Maybe they were written much later in the Iron Age, and then looked back and set Abraham back there. That’s a discussion we’ll have. We move into the late Bronze Age. This is the time period in which the exodus is set and this would be — the exodus again is Israel’s exodus or going out from Egypt and this is roughly the time period, 1500 to 1200 B.C.E. Now we move into Iron Age I and Iron Age II. First thing, by the way, at this point it’s worthwhile noticing that the Bronze Age and the Iron Age and the Chalcolithic Age, etc., etc., Stone Age talked a lot about the materials that were being used at that time. That’s how early on archaeologists describe these periods and those REL 101 Lecture 4 7 descriptions have stuck. The Iron Age, Iron Age I and Iron Age !!, that’s the period of ancient Israel. Those are the periods in which ancient Israel’s history took place and the events in Palestine that are recorded, talked about, the backdrop for the Hebrew Bible, that’s when they took place. Iron Age I is 1200 B.C.E. to about 1000 B.C.E. This is the time when Israel as an ethnic group first and then as a nation comes to be formed and comes into existence. Then Iron Age II is 1000 B.C.E. to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. That’s the time of Israel as an autonomous political entity, as a nation, as a theocracy, as a monarchy. As a distinct political, autonomous entity. Iron Age II. And then you see that scholars and archaeologists give up the material way of designating time periods and move into talking about political powers. There’s the Persian Period, 587 B.C.E. to 330, roughly, B.C.E. That is when Persia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Cyrus, etc. — that’s when they were politically dominant during that period of time. Then you have Alexander the Great moving into the area and it’s the Hellenistic Period. And it is the time when Greek culture takes over the world and unites the world culture under — through Greek philosophy, Greek culture, Greek language, Greek political thought. It’s a Hellenistic culture brought about through Alexander the Great and his, in essence, conquering the world. The distinction then between the Persian Period and the Hellenistic Period is important. It’s not that we’re gonna deal with it so much in this class, but it’s important in your broad understanding of history because there was a cultural shift. If you’re REL 101 Lecture 4 10 don’t know exactly what happened in the exodus. We think that the biblical record records some sort of kernel or seed of historical — of an historical event. That there was some part of Israel, some branch that later became Israel, some tribe that later became Israel, some group of people that later identified themselves as Israelites or Hebrews, who were indeed slaves in Egypt, did indeed escape from Egypt, and did really think that it was God who saved them miraculously from Egypt. But exactly the story as it’s presented in the biblical text, is that actual — are those historical events or are those literary events that talk about the significance of in some way God saving those people or talk about — are they theological treatises in narrative form? And so a lot of scholars don’t look at the material in the biblical text about the exodus as necessarily good, historical data by which to reconstruct and understand historically what happened. They see this as a kernel of truth, as holding a kernel of an ancient event that is fuzzy to us. But they see that largely as a literary creation that stems from, grew out of, and is related to that historical kernel. So just to recap, we’ve looked at two different ways people, scholars, understand the exodus. One is that it’s literal truth, biblical as it’s related in the biblical text, that literally happened the way the biblical text talks about it, or, number two, it’s — that the biblical text is a literary creation stemming from and growing out of an historical event. There’s a third way and that says that the exodus didn’t happen at all. There’s nothing that we can know about the exodus. These are total literary fabrications, but they’re fabrications that still have a theological intent behind them and purpose behind them. And so they would say it’s still valuable text, but it doesn’t tell us about an exodus. It’s REL 101 Lecture 4 11 not good, reliable, historical data in any way. So three different approaches there. We move now into the conquest. By the way, the exodus is set in — whether it actually happened or not, but it’s set in the late Bronze Age, 1550 to 1200, somewhere around there. The conquest. Again, there are various theories about Israel entry into the land and conquest of the land. The conquest is set roughly in Iron Age I period of time, 1200 B.C.E., thirteenth century, roughly along those lines. Now, again, there are about three different ways — three major ways of understanding the conquest. One is what people refer to as a conquest model. Again, let me throw out a scholar’s name that this is associated with. You’re not gonna be tested on this name, but it’s W. F. Albright. William Foxwell Albright, one of the classic founders of Hebrew Bible studies in the United States in the twentieth century. A very important figure to know if you continue on in the field. Conquest model is based upon some early archaeological data combined with biblical text. Early in the 20th century when archaeologists like Albright went over to Israel, started looking at the archaeological data, they said, “Oh, my goodness. There in about the 13th century, look at all of these cities that have a destruction level about the 13th century B.C.E. That’s the Israelites coming in and taking over the place.” And they matched it up with certain biblical text, things like that. And so they drew on archaeology. They combined it with the biblical text and they said, “You know, the picture of the Israelites coming into the land as it’s described in Joshua is fundamentally correct.” And that’s the conquest model. There is — now, the problem with that theory — and we’re gonna look at this again a little bit later — but the problem with that is that later in the 20th century as REL 101 Lecture 4 12 people started to reexamine these archaeological sites and they started to reexamine the archaeological — and they fine-tuned the dating of these sites, they started to see that a lot of these places were destroyed before the Israelites ever would have come there and that the dating of the destruction levels of these didn’t match up like they thought it did with the biblical text. So that theory is — has some issues and is not — in the biblical text not substantiated by the archaeological data like people thought. Another name to remember — I think I mentioned his name a little bit ago — Martin Noth, N-o-t-h. Don’t have to remember that. But he has a theory of — and kind of a proponent of — that there was a gradual migration. That the ancient Israelites were groups of people, tribes out there, maybe living the Transjordan area, maybe living in Sinai, maybe there’s a group who came from Egypt. And they generally — they were nomadic at first but they generally gravitated into the land, coalesced around the worship of Yahweh, formed a tribal league and became Israel. Martin Noth was not an archaeologist, didn’t look at archaeological data to come up with this theory. He studied the text in an historical fashion. You might say he excavated the text for historical data to put together his picture, his theory of how ancient Israel came together. Now, some people have questioned it on grounds that — of whether his picture of Israel coming together around a central shrine, of what life as a nomad was like, maybe a little bit idealistic and whether or not it was well-grounded in reality, so there are some problems with Martin Noth’s theory as well. There is, then, a third theory and this is a peasant revolt theory. The name to be REL 101 Lecture 4 15 the noble. The people of the Lord marched down for him against the mighty. And so here you have the people of Israel coming down and so they’re uniting together. Israel is uniting together. The tribes are uniting together. From Ephraimm they set out unto the valley, following you Benjamin with your kin. From Machir, a tribe that we’ve lost, marched down the commanders. And from Zebulun, those who bear the marshal’s staff. The chiefs of Issachar came with Deborah and Issachar faithful to Barak. Into the valley they rushed out at his heels. So there you’ve got some great tribes. They’re doing a good job. They’re defending each other. Among the clans of Reuben — hmmm — there were great searchings of heart. Why did you tarry among the sheepfolds? To hear the piping for the flocks? Among the clans of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan. And then why did he abide with the ships? Asher sat still at the coast of the sea, settling down by his land needs. So you get some tribes that didn’t seem to hold up their end of the bargain. I could read this other part, but read it on your own. But it gives a picture of some of the tensions within a tribal league. Sounds like a great idea. There’s a lot of freedom there but there’s some problems that come with that freedom as well. In addition to defending one another and maybe that didn’t work so well, there was also, though, freedom in terms of laws and in terms of how people ruled their day-to-day life. Let’s look a little bit further in REL 101 Lecture 4 16 Judges. If you look in Judges 17:6 and in particular in 21:25: “In those days there was no king in Israel,” no central government. Okay. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? All the people did what was right in their own eyes. So you have a picture in which there is — in which there is a decentralization of law and justice. And the picture that you get is of people coming to the villages, to the elders of the village, and if they have a dispute they bring that dispute to those elders. For example, if I have a patch of land and maybe sometime during the night I moved the boundary stones that mark where my boundary is, and move it a foot or two over, I’m essentially stealing the land or the inheritance of my neighbor. And my neighbor comes and says, “Hey, move the stones over.” And I say, “Hey, that’s where they’ve been forever.” And he says — says it in Hebrew, of course, ancient Hebrew — “The heck they were. You moved ‘em there in the middle of the night.” He and I are gonna take that dispute to the elders of the city. Of course they’re gonna know that I’m a cheater and a scoundrel, and they’re gonna say, “Well, Strong, we know that you’re a cheater and a scoundrel and you come from a long line of cheaters and scoundrels. Your father tried to move those stones. Your grandfather tried to move those stones. And now you’re trying to do it, too. We’re not gonna let it happen. Move the stones back and let’s set this thing straight.” It’s village justice. And that is how a lot of Israel worked without a king. People did what was right in their own eyes. Now, later on in the text we’re gonna look at how Judges questions it. Is that always what was right in REL 101 Lecture 4 17 Yahweh’s eyes? We are running short on time again. I’m going to have to cut this short. We’re gonna pick up with the dawn of the monarchy here in the next lesson. So we didn’t get through Solomon in this lesson, so we will pick up David and Solomon in the next lesson and then move forward and finish off with the Exile. Thank you again for your attention. Be sure that you’re paying attention to the web page for updated assignments. Be sure that you’re paying attention to the syllabus for updated events and readings. I look forward to seeing you again through the television tube in our next session which will complete brief history of ancient Israel.