The Oxford History of the Biblical World (22 page)

Baines, John, and Jaromír Málek.
Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt.
Rev. ed. New York: Facts on File, 2000. A lavishly illustrated, invaluable introduction, with detailed discussions of geography, history, sites, and daily life.

Dothan, Trude, and Moshe Dothan.
People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines.
New York: Macmillan, 1992. A personal, popular account by two Israeli archaeologists of their decades of research into the Philistines and related archaeological discoveries at a number of important sites.

Frerichs, Ernest S., and Leonard H. Lesko, eds.
Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence.
Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997. Six papers by well-known scholars provide a useful overview of recent thinking on the Exodus and Israelite settlement, with extensive bibliographies.

Friedman, Richard Elliot.
Who Wrote the Bible?
New York: Summit, 1987. A readable and thorough account of the history and development of the Documentary Hypothesis intended for a general audience.

Hoffmeier, James K.
Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. A detailed examination of the biblical account of the Exodus incorporating recent textual, historical, and archaeological scholarship, which concludes that the main points of the narratives are plausible.

Johnstone, William.
Exodus.
Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1990. An excellent, concise introduction to the book of Exodus outlining major thematic, historical, literary, and religious concerns.

Leonard, Albert, Jr. “Archaeological Sources for the History of Palestine: The Late Bronze Age.”
Biblical Archaeologist
52 (1989): 4—39. A useful summary of Late Bronze Age archaeological finds in the southern Levant correlated with New Kingdom Egyptian history.

Merrillees, Robert S. “Political Conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age.”
Biblical Archaeologist
40 (1986): 42–50. A general summary of historical events, with particular emphasis on the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries
BCE
.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Michael D. Coogan, eds.
The Oxford Companion to the Bible.
New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993. An invaluable one-volume reference resource. See especially the articles by Michael D. Coogan on “Exodus, The” and by John I Durham on “Exodus, The Book of.”

Perevolotsky, Aviram, and Israel Finkelstein. “The Southern Sinai Exodus Route in Ecological Perspective.”
Biblical Archaeology Review
11, no. 4 (July-August 1985): 27–41. An illuminating discussion of the relationship between Exodus traditions and the rise of monasticism in Sinai, as well as of the ecology of the region.

Redford, Donald B.
Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. An impressive overview of interrelationships between Egypt and the Levant from prehistory to the early sixth century
BCE
. The general reader must be cautious, however, as some of the author’s views are disputed.

Sandars, N. K.
The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean 1250–1150
B.C
. Rev. ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985. A classic review of the major issues concerning the Sea Peoples and the evidence for understanding their origins and actions.

Stiebing, William H.
Out of the Desert? Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narratives.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1989. A general overview and evaluation of the archaeological and textual evidence for and the main historical theories about the Exodus and conquest.

Time-Life Books.
Ramses II: Magnificence on the Nile.
Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1993. A nicely done, well-illustrated popular overview of the life and times of Rameses II, with an excellent bibliography.

The Emergence of Ancient Israel

LAWRENCE E. STAGER

S
hortly after 1200
BCE
the once great Hittite empire in Anatolia and the Mycenaean empire in mainland Greece—the Trojans and the Achaeans, to use the language of Homeric epic—collapsed, releasing different centrifugal forces. Within the Mycenaean and Hittite worlds an internal process of fragmentation and ruralization began, leading to what archaeologists often call a “dark age.” This in turn triggered mass migrations by sea to the already crowded coastlands of the Levant and Cyprus, sending repercussions into the interior of Canaan as well. The Philistines were one group taking part in these migrations. Not long before, another group had appeared in the land of Canaan, although by a process that is much more disputed. This group called itself Israel, and according to the biblical story it also had arrived from a foreign land—escaping slavery in Egypt, crossing a body of water, and eventually entering Canaan from the east. This chapter focuses on reconstructing the early history of these two new groups, the Philistines and the Israelites, in the land of Canaan, insofar as the textual and archaeological evidence permits such a synthesis.

The Egyptians maintained some control over parts of Canaan until just after the death of Rameses III in 1153
BCE
. By the first half of the twelfth century, Canaan had become a virtual mosaic of cultures, including Canaanites, Egyptians, Israelites, and the mysterious “Sea Peoples,” of whom the Philistines are the best known. The settlement process in highland Israel began a generation or two before the Sea Peoples arrived on the coast. An event of such magnitude must have had powerful repercussions on the indigenous Canaanite population as it was being squeezed out of the plains. Some of these displaced inhabitants probably entered the frontier communities located in the highlands east and west of the Rift Valley—the polities of early
Israel, Moab, Ammon, and perhaps Edom. The displacement and migration of the tribe of Dan from the central coast to the far north is symptomatic of the ripple effects of this event.

The Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (1213–1203
BCE
) provides the earliest nonbiblical reference to ancient Israel, in a short poem appended to a much longer prose account of his self-proclaimed victory over the Libyans and their allies, the Sea Peoples. The victory stela (now usually known as the “Israel Stela”) was erected in 1209 in Merneptah’s funerary temple at Thebes. The relevant part of the victory ode reads:

The princes are prostrate, saying “Shalom” [Peace]!

Not one is raising his head among the Nine Bows.

Now that Libya [Tehenu] has come to ruin,

Hatti is pacified.

The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe;

Ashkelon has been overcome;

Gezer has been captured;

Yanoam is made nonexistent;

Israel is laid waste and his seed is not;

Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt.

The leading adversaries of the Egyptians—three city-states, or kingdoms, designated by their capitals (Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam), and a people known as Israel—lie within the larger geographical framework of Canaan and Hurru. The latter, bereft of her spouse, has become a “widow” because of Egypt. Ironically, Merneptah’s premature proclamation of the demise of Israel is the first reference in history to this polity, which survived for another six hundred years as a “nation,” first as a confederation of tribes and later as a monarchy (1025–586
BCE
).

Within the larger territorial framework of Canaan, the Egyptians use the determinative for a fortified city-state to designate the smaller kingdoms of Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam; Israel is correctly distinguished as a rural or tribal entity by the determinative for “people.” In Egyptian the names of foreign countries, provinces, and cities are treated syntactically as feminine. But Israel, with the “people” determinative, is a masculine collective, probably indicating its identity with an eponymous patriarchal ancestor. Clearly the Egyptians regarded Israel as a different kind of polity from the other three, although all were apparently equal adversaries, if not part of an organized anti-Egyptian Canaanite coalition. The campaign against Canaan proceeds from the southwest to the northeast, Ashkelon to Gezer, and then farther north to Yanoam, somewhere near the Sea of Galilee.

Where was this early Israel located, and what was its settlement pattern and social structure? The people determinative can be used of tribally organized pastoralist or agriculturalist groups, with or without territorial boundaries. The Egyptian designation could apply equally well to an unsettled or to a settled group or confederation organized along tribal lines. This early entity must have had sufficient military strength to stand on par with the three other city-states, or kingdoms.

When the rebellion of Canaanites and Israelites against Egypt is placed in broader
perspective, it appears that this was just one of many trouble spots that threatened Egyptian control and order in the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries
BCE
. The first wave of Sea Peoples (which did not include the Philistines), allied with the Libyans, lapped right up to the shores of Egypt itself during Merneptah’s reign. Three decades later a second wave of Sea Peoples (including the Philistines) threatened the Nile Delta and carved out coastal kingdoms in Canaan at the expense of the Egyptian empire under Rameses III.

In this larger context of disorder in the eastern Mediterranean it is abundantly clear from the Merneptah Stela that Israel was a political-ethnic entity of sufficient importance to the Egyptians to warrant mention alongside the three Canaanite city-states. Indeed, this event of about 1200
BCE
was the nearest thing to a real revolution in Canaan—and it was against the Egyptians.

An elegant and precise pictorial complement to the victory hymn of Merneptah has recently been identified in four battle reliefs at Karnak. Formerly attributed to Rameses II but now assigned with confidence to Merneptah, these reliefs depict the three city-states (Ashkelon is mentioned by name in the reliefs) and the “people” Israel.

In the Merneptah reliefs, the Israelites are not depicted as Shasu, but wear the same clothing and have the same hairstyles as the Canaanites, who are defending the fortified cities of Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam. This new evidence does not, of course, settle the perennial question concerning the “origins” of Late Bronze Age Israel, that is, whether it consisted predominantly of pastoralists, peasants, new immigrants, or all three. But it does undermine the older notion that the Israelites were only the Shasu known by a new name, who settled down in agricultural villages about 1200
BCE
.

Another victory ode, this time from the early Israelites themselves, is preserved in Judges 5 and is known as the Song of Deborah. George Foot Moore considered the poem the “only contemporaneous monument of Hebrew history” before the United Monarchy. It probably dates from the twelfth century
BCE
. As a celebration of victory over the Canaanite coalition at the battle of Kishon, the poem is a masterpiece of Semitic literature. As a historical document, it is important for the self-portrayal and self-understanding of early Israel that the poet provides.

The poem portrays Israel as a confederation of ten (not twelve) tribes, a theopolity known as the “people [kindred] of Yahweh” (Judg. 5.13). Marching forth from the southeast, from Seir and Edom, Yahweh leads his people to victory over the Canaanites “at Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo.” Through divine succor from the heavenly host and a flash flood in the Wadi Kishon, the Israelites rout the better-armed Canaanites, who are equipped with chariots. The final blow of the battle is struck by Jael, a woman of the Kenite clan (a subgroup of the Midianites), who drives a tent peg through the head of Sisera, leader of the Canaanite coalition.

Early in the twelfth century
BCE
the confederation of ten tribes was occupying a variety of ecological niches on both sides of the Jordan, and carrying on a variety of professions, such as highland farming (Ephraim, Machir, Benjamin, Naphtali), sheep and goat herding (Reuben), and seafaring (Dan and Asher). Such a wide-ranging confederation of disparate groups committed to the kindred of Yahweh did not always act in concert, as the Song of Deborah indicates. Sometimes individual tribal
interests and economic entanglements prevailed: Reuben, Gilead, Dan, and Asher declined to answer the call to arms. The positive response to the muster came from the highland village militia of the six other members of the confederation.