Papers

(SOTS/OTW Joint Meeting)

Professor John Bartlett (Dublin): Mercator in the Wilderness: Numbers 33

Professor Bob Becking (Utrecht): David between History and Ideology

Dr Meindert Dijkstra (Utrecht): The Origins of Israel between History and Ideology

Dr Harm van Grol (Tilburg): Visions of the Chasidim and History

Professor Axel Knauf (Bern): The End of History

Dr Marinus Koster (Bathmen): The Old Testament as a Diachronic Corpus

Professor Andrew Mayes (Dublin): Pharaoh Shishak’s Invasion of Palestine and the Exodus from Egypt

Dr Jill Middlemas (Aarhus): The Additions to the Book of Esther: What They Offer to Those in Search of History

Professor Nadav Na’aman (Tel Aviv): Does Archaeology Really Deserve the Status of a ‘High Court’ in Biblical Historical Research?

Professor Ed Noort (Groningen): The Historiography of the Settlement

Professor Klaas Spronk (Kampen): The Book of Judges and History

Professor Keith Whitelam (Sheffield): Resisting the Past: Ancient Israel in Western Memory

Abstracts

(SOTS/OTW Joint Meeting)

Professor John Bartlett (Dublin): Mercator in the Wilderness: Numbers 33

This paper (illustrated) explored the sixteenth-century exegesis of the Exodus-Wilderness story as revealed by the work of the cartographers of the period. Particular attention was paid to the scholarly work of Jacob Ziegler and Gerhard Mercator, together with maps from Lucas Cranach the Elder, Coverdale’s Bible, and Wolfgang Wissenburg. The paper marked their contribution to biblical and cartographical scholarship in the Reformation period of the sixteenth century.

Professor Bob Becking (Utrecht): David between History and Ideology

Already within the Hebrew Bible images of David can be found that are shaped by tradition. The focal question of this paper was: Can we get beyond these images and reach the ‘real David’? In seeking to answer that question, circumstantial evidence was investigated from landscape, archaeology, epigraphy, and climatology before the biblical traditions were monitored.

Dr Meindert Dijkstra (Utrecht): The Origins of Israel between History and Ideology

The Old Testament contains a variety of stories about the origins of Israel in Egypt and Canaan. Such ancient biblical stories are not simply convertable into modern history. How do we reconstruct Israelite origins between ancient Near Eastern history and culture and Old Testament visions of the past? This contribution attempted a somewhat simplified but practical approach to the problem: Egyptian presence in Canaan seen as the negative of Israelite and Judean political emergence. The emergence of independent ‘early states’ in the region of the southern Levant only became possible after the gradual withdrawal of Egypt’s military and administrative rule from the 11th century BCEonward, and perhaps even later.

Dr Harm van Grol (Tilburg): Visions of the Chasidim and History

This paper discussed the well-known description of the Chasidim in 1 Maccabees 2:42 (‘then a group of Hasideans joined them, mighty warriors, each of them zealously devoted to the law’), its historical trustworthiness and its relation to later Psalm collections (Psalms 138–145 and 146–150), possibly texts of the Chasidim themselves, focusing on the militant character of this movement.

Professor Axel Knauf (Bern): The End of History

The ‘end of history’, as repeatedly and speciously proclaimed, is basically a biblical concept — a concept derived from biblical literature. Only stories can have an end. If ‘history’ is perceived as a non-idiosyncratic perception of the past, history will end with time (or the death of the last perceiver). The use of history in biblical studies has, however, entered a critical phase. Some applications of history to the Bible, prominent in the last two centuries, might no longer be feasible; others will have to be continued out of sheer necessity.

Dr Marinus Koster (Bathmen): The Old Testament as a Diachronic Corpus

Not only does the Old Testament as a whole, but also most of its constituent parts, testify to a historical development of sometimes considerable length, which is reflected in the history and literature of Israel’s neighbours. This being embedded in the historical reality of its Umwelt (instead of being a Fremdkörper), contributes effectively to its living and ‘true’ character.

Professor Andrew Mayes (Dublin): Pharaoh Shishak’s Invasion of Palestine and the Exodus from Egypt

The invasion of Palestine by Pharaoh Shishak is recorded both in 1 Kings 14 and on a wall beside the Bubastite Portal of the temple at Karnak. Each account has been used in different ways in the reconstruction of the event, the Egyptian record being variously taken as purely conventional or as preserving a historical account. The focus of this paper was on the significance of the event within the wider historical context of the foundation of the northern state of Israel with its ‘charter myth’, the exodus from Egypt.

Dr Jill Middlemas (Aarhus): The Additions to the Book of Esther: What They Offer to Those in Search of History

The two Greek versions of the Esther scroll (the Alpha Text and the Septuagint Text) invite historical readings exactly because they convey historical similitude within material not found in the Hebrew version of the story. Yet it remains difficult, nevertheless, to determine the exact socio-historical setting and provenance that gave rise to the Greek versions and their differences (see, for example, the conflicting conclusions reached in recent discussions by Linda Day [1995], Karen Jobes [1996], and Charles Dorothy [1997]). This paper included an analysis of the ways the Greek versions of the Esther story contribute to historical and other questions. The writers and editors of these scrolls were interested in defining history according to a biblical norm and present three views of history: (1) the God of the Jews acts in history; (2) the story of Esther, Mordecai and the Persian Jews aligns with, and even parallels in some cases, the traditions of ancient Israel; and (3) the past is presented as an ongoing event contemporaneous with the recipients of the story. What the evidence of the Greek texts of Esther contributes to a discussion about the search for the history of ancient (better, biblical) Israel is that writers and editors in antiquity seem to have had different types of historical questions at the forefront of their minds than those often applied by biblical critics in the modern and postmodern period. An understanding of how writers in a biblical mode approached the reconstruction of events illuminates a more fluid definition of history than just the search for whether or not events happened in the past as recounted. Indeed, the way the Greek versions of the Esther scroll deal with history draws attention to the need for the critical awareness, indeed analysis, of a biblical traditional norm written as history (however factual) in mind. This is a principal of analysis that might be applied fruitfully to analyses of biblical literature more generally.

Professor Nadav Na’aman (Tel Aviv): Does Archaeology Really Deserve the Status of a ‘High Court’ in Biblical Historical Research?

From the earliest days of its modern research, archaeology has played an important role in biblical-historical studies. Recently its impact has increased dramatically, due to the progress made in the field of archaeology and the development of a sharply critical approach to the Bible as a historical source. Some scholars have gone so far as to place archaeology in the position of a ‘high court’ in all biblical-historical controversies. But does archaeology really deserve this elevated status? To consider this important issue, the paper examined a series of test-cases in which there is disagreement between the historical documents and the results of archaeological research. The sites examined were Jerusalem (in the Late Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Persian period), Gibeah (Tell el-Ful) and Bethel. In the light of this comparison, it was pointed out that in multi-strata highland sites in periods of urban culture decline (such times as the ‘United Monarchy’ and the Babylonian and Persian periods), the results of the archaeological excavations should be treated with great caution. Only the skilful use of the documents and the archaeological findings can lead to a balanced evaluation of the ancient reality.

Professor Ed Noort (Groningen): The Historiography of the Settlement

For decades three lines of thinking with some variation dominated the field of settlement/conquest studies (Alt, Albright, Mendenhall). Only in recent times have they disappeared from students’ textbooks. The theme of this paper was not the settlement itself, but the historiography. Concerning the language of violence used in the narratives and their theoretical framework, scholars favoured a connection with Neo-Assyrian royal ideology. In the debates on newer Pentateuch theories and the rethinking of the Deuteronomistic History, the narratives of the conquest are linked to models of re-entering the country after the Babylonian Exile. Focusing on some case studies, these theories were tested.

Professor Klaas Spronk (Kampen): The Book of Judges and History

This paper explored two particular questions. Firstly: What do we really know about the historical background of the stories told in the book of Judges and of the one telling these stories? And secondly: How can we distinguish fact and fiction in the biblical texts and in the scholarly literature about these texts?

Professor Keith Whitelam (Sheffield): Resisting the Past: Ancient Israel in Western Memory

Why have particular images of ancient Israel become so ingrained in Western popular and political imagination that they appear so natural as to be self-evident? Why has recent research on the history of ancient Israel and Palestine found it so difficult to disturb these images? The paper explored some of the deep-seated images that are part of western collective memory, their resistance to analysis, and the assumptions that underpin dominant memories of the past within biblical studies.

[index of past meetings]