Ø The country was always open to immigration[2] the more so because, in the Bronze Age, it had no unified government or army and had, in the Late Bronze Age, large areas of hill country almost unoccupied. This was the case in spite of the fact that the technology, in the form of plastered cisterns and metal tools, necessary to clear and settle the land were available. In the event, Israel emerged in the form of settlers on this unoccupied hill country.

From the north, the country was open to Lebanon, Syria and via Syria to Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The south was open to infiltration by nomads and to military invasion by Egypt. The east was open to infiltration by nomads from the Syrian Desert and Arabia. The western border was the Mediterranean which was the greatest highway of all. In fact, during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages Egyptian armies frequently invaded from the south, Israelite tradition states that they tried, and failed to enter Canaan from the south and then entered successfully from the east and the Philistines and other Sea People successfully invaded from the sea and took over the coastal plain. Later, both Israelite kingdoms were destroyed by Mesopotamian powers coming from the north in response to rebellions supported by Egypt from the south.

Ø While, according to biblical tradition, there were many ethnic groups in Canaan (Amorites, Hittites, Hivites, Horites, Kenites, Perizites etc.), and even though some of these would appear to be non-Semitic in origin (e.g. Horites (= Hurrians?) and Hittites) they seem to have become assimilated into the Canaanite culture speaking Canaanite and having West Semitic names.

Ø There was, from the earliest times, strong Egyptian cultural influence along the coast and strong Mesopotamian influence in north Syria. Egyptian cultural influence was boosted by Egyptian rule in the centuries preceding the emergence of Ancient Israel.

1.2 Canaanite Religion

Our only real view into the world of Middle to Late Bronze Age Canaanite culture is via Ugaritic literature (see my Ugarit and the Bible: Ugaritic Literature as an Aid to Understanding the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).

Ugaritic literature reflects a society of independent city-states sharing a common culture; a stratified aristocratic society based on agriculture.

Some of the characteristics of Canaanite Religion were (see Table 1 for more details):

Ø It was polytheistic and iconic (i.e. worshiped idols which served as focuses of the presence of cosmic /nature gods). Although there were, in principle, many gods, the pattern in Iron Age Phoenicia, and probably in the territories of Israel and Judah, “… was composed of a triad of deities: a protective god of the city, a goddess, often his wife or companion who symbolizes the fertile earth; and a young god somehow connected with the goddess (usually her son), whose resurrection expresses the annual cycle of vegetation”[3]

Ø It was tied to nature and the seasons; a religion of renewal of life and fertility. This sometimes led to what we would consider strongly sensual, orgiastic or cruel behaviour. A prominent example of cruel behaviour is child sacrifice (Molech in the Bible; massive child sacrifice, apparently to El, in Carthage). Not surprisingly, its predominant sense of time was cyclical not linear i.e. it did not provide a good cultural background for the writing of history which presumes real linear change[4].

2. Alternative Views on the Emergence of Israel and Israelite Religion[5]

2.1 The Fundamental Problem – the Nature of the Evidence

The reason for serious scholars coming up with very different ideas about Israelite history and religion is rooted in the paucity, illusive nature, ambiguity and of the ambivalence of the relevant data. Short of major discoveries of contemporaneous religious and historical texts of the kind we have for Pre-Hellenistic Mesopotamia, Egypt and Ugarit, this situation is not likely to change. This results in the field of Ancient Israelite History and Religion being extremely open to academic faddism.

In fact, we have almost no certain knowledge of anything in Israelite history before the time of King David[6] (c.1010-970 BCE) at the earliest and almost no reliable biblical evidence regarding what religious beliefs and behaviour were before that reflected in the Torah. Since the Torah was only finalized in the early Persian period (late 6^th- 5^th centuries BCE) the evidence of the Torah is most relevant to early Second Temple Judaism. The Judaism reflected in the Torah would seem to be generally similar to that later practiced by the Sadducees and Samaritans.

2.1.1 Sources for the Cultural History of Syria-Palestine (1200 BCE-600CE)

Since, at least, 1200 BCE, the peoples of Syria-Palestine – Canaanites, Phoenicians, Israelites, Aramaeans and Hellenistic Greeks wrote using alphabetic scripts on papyrus or wood etc[7]. For non-permanent records they used broken pieces of pottery (called ostraca) writing on them using water-soluble ink. These materials usually do not long survive in the climate of the region.

As N H. Niehr wrote[8] -

“With regard to the sources, the distinction between primary and secondary evidence is paramount for working out a religious history or aspects of this history of Judah and Israel. Due to the Judean censorship of the texts of the Hebrew Bible during the Second Temple period, the evidence contained in the texts for reconstructing the religious history of Judah and Israel is of secondary or tertiary value. This evidence has to be corroborated, corrected or refuted by primary evidence provided by inscriptions and archaeological findings.”

2.1.1.1 Primary Sources

· Rare fragments of writing that have survived against all the odds – e.g. Dead Sea Scrolls, Arad and Lachish ostraca;

· Equally rare inscriptions and graffiti; and,

· Other archaeological evidence.

2.1.1.2 Secondary Sources

These are documents prized by groups having direct cultural descendants (Jews, Christian cultural tradition etc.) Since it was very laborious to copy books, normally only a small selection could be copied and these would be the items that the community, at the time of copying, considered important. The community valuation of what is worth preserving varies with period. E.g. In Hellenistic times Sappho’s poetry was considered a classic and was produced in a standard collection in Alexandria. However, only one complete poem has come down to us.

· Copies of copies, often many times removed, of documents, originally contemporaneous with the events or situations described but may have been subject to editing during the history of transmission;

· Histories in the Greek or biblical traditions[9] (see)

Of course, the most important of the documents are those contained in the Hebrew bible. Though, it can be argued that we have a reasonable idea of the political history of Israel from, say the late 10^th century to 586 BCE[10], and we have, from Ugaritic literature, a fair idea of Canaanite religion, it is unclear how much we know of Israelite religion before the Babylonian exile. Odd remarks preserved in the stories, not the framework, of the books of Judges[11] and Samuel probably provide some information. However, the overt information provided in the Torah-Deuteronomic History is anachronistic and tendentious.

“In the Deuteronomistic History, from Joshua s, there was clear evidence of Israel’s polytheistic roots, but readers often viewed the material as evidence of backsliding from original monotheism, because they followed the intimations provided by the final editors of these books. The editors were trying to promulgate monotheism in their own exilic age by projecting their religious values in idealized fashion back into the past. Some scholars went beyond the idealized portrait of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly editors and envisioned a religion more ideal and ethical than even those biblical editors suggested; Yehezkiel Kaufmann’s work would be a good example.

“The Deuteronomistic Historians …. Viewed their past through a Yahwistic lens and saw their history not only as it was but very much as it should have been. The guidelines by which they measured their past included strict allegiance to Yahweh, rejection of other deities, rejection of native cultic activities (such as golden calves, asherim and the bronze serpent), centralized worship in the Temple, and a great deal of egalitarianism and social justice in society. Their criteria for evaluating the past are laid out in their great manifesto the book of Deuteronomy. They evaluated the past as though their spiritual ancestors, the prophetic minority, were the true leaders meant to define the religious life of Israelites from the time of Moses onward when in reality they were but a progressive minority within society. Therefore, beguiled by the rhetoric of the redactors of the biblical text, readers sometimes missed the truly dramatic story in the Deuteronomistic History; the great struggle of the progressive thinkers in the ‘Yahweh-alone’ movement who gave birth to a new value system over the years and helped an entire people evolve toward monotheism.

“The Deuteronomistic Historians were not liars; they did not deceive more than historians of any age. All historians seek to craft a narrative of the past by selecting those aspects which they consciously or unconsciously consider most valuable in order to communicate a meaningful message to the present so as to shape the direction of the future…. The Deuteronomistic Historians were theologians and preachers who wished to achieve significant religious goals with their interpretation of history; they were above all preachers, and the Deuteronomistic History is primarily a sermon.”[12]

“The task of reconstructing the cult of Yahweh includes biblical claims and sets them within a wider framework that accounts for the available information. The data in the attested sources indicate a pluralism of religious practice in ancient Israel that led sometimes to conflict about the nature of correct Yahwistic practice. It is precisely this conflict that produced the differentiation of Israelite religion from its Canaanite heritage during the second half of the monarchy.”[13]

The approach of the Deuteronomistic Historians is not at all dissimilar to the retrospective definition of Normative Judaism in the rabbinic tradition.

2.1.1.3 The Voiceless People

The only Middle-Late Bronze Age (1950-1250 BCE) group in Syria-Palestine to leave us an extensive literature was the ruling class of Ugarit. No group did so in the Iron Age (1250-587 BCE). The only Iron Age groups in the region to have survived to the present are the Jews and Samaritans. The Jews, and the Christian church, have preserved important documents relating to Israelite-Jewish history 1200 BCE-600 CE.

The many other groups of the region, together with the illiterate, women, slaves, children, minority groups etc. remain voiceless. Who knows what they might have told us had there been records and had they survived.

First Temple and Second Temple Jewish society was fairly literate[14]. However, due to the scarcity of stone inscriptions, and the use of perishable writing materials, all the written remains could be printed on a few pages.

This contrasts sharply with the situation in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt papyrus lasts for thousands of years and there were many inscriptions on stone. The papyri include personal letters, legal documents, tax receipts, literature of all kinds. In Mesopotamia the clay tablets, inscribed in cuneiform, last for ever.

Sumerian (third to early second millennium BCE), has left us copious records and a cultural heritage –

“The Sumerians were prolific writers, scratching their cuneiform script with a stylus on moist clay tablets…. They recorded stories and poems, songs and technical data, laws, receipts, medical prescriptions. They recorded, it seems, everything of interest in their world and to their imaginations, and much of what they recorded has survived, an enormous body of documentation that surpasses that of the Romans and Chinese. ‘We have more from the Sumerians than from any culture in history before the invention of the printing press,’ …. We know the names of their gods and the list of their kings; we know their epics – including the world’s first tales of creation and of the flood, and the oldest written tale of paradise – and … we know their legacy; the legal and religious tradition the Sumerians bequeathed to Israel, and of the magical, astronomical and mathematical lore bequeathed to Greece. We know it because it became part of our legacy too.”[15]

This plentitude of documentation continued in the post-Sumerian period when the Semitic Akkadian became the main written language of Mesopotamia.

“Akkadian is first attested to in proper names in Sumerian texts (ca. 2800 BCE). From ca. 2500 BCE one finds texts fully written in Akkadian. Hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering many subjects, e.g.

-economy (business, administrative records, purchase and rentals),

-politics (treaties),

-law (witnessed and sealed contracts of marriage, divorce; codes of law),

-history (chronological text, census reports),

-letters (personal, business and state letters),

-religion (prayers, hymns, omens, divination reports),

-scholarly texts (language, word lists, history, technology, mathematics, astronomy) and

-literature (narrative poetry, recounting myths, epics).

The last texts date from the first century A.D. By then Akkadian was already an extinct language, replaced as a spoken language by Aramaic.”[16]

Many Mesopotamian tablets were private records recording contemporary issues and concerns meant only for the eyes of the recipient. Thus we have a better idea of what life was like and what people thought in Mesopotamia, under Ur III in 2100 BCE that we have for almost any period of pre-modern Jewish history!

2.2 The Origin of Ancient Israel

A good and extensive review of current and past theories of Israel’s origin is presented in Gnuse chapter 1 New Understandings of the Israelite Settlement Process (pp. 23-61).

There are basically three alternative hypotheses (see Table 1) about the origin of Ancient Israel. Only one of these, in my view, seems a reasonable enough hypothesis to merit serious consideration, i.e. that ancient Israel, and its constituent tribes, emerged after the settlement in the almost unoccupied hill country of central Palestine by diverse groups originating from outside and within Canaan[17]. Most reconstructions assume that the worship of Yahweh and the traditions of Aramean-Mesopotamian origin, Sinai Experience and Egyptian were brought in, not necessarily by the same groups, from outside Canaan at, or before, the end of the Late Bronze Age (approximately 1200 BCE). Yahweh may or may not have been a deity worshipped somewhere in the region.[18]

The best summary of the archaeological evidence is in Finkelstein. He outlines (pp. 12-14) a seven point hypothesis which he considers to best fit the evidence. Among other things, he points out the mixed background of the people who became historic Israel.

Table 1

Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of Ancient Israel[19]

Alternatives for Emergence of Israel	How Well Does it fit Known Archaeological, Environmental and Historic Facts
1. Pan-Israelite Exodus and Invasion[20] as per Book of Joshua. Israel exists as a people before entering Canaan.	Not supported by archaeology. Fits with descriptions in Torah and Book of Joshua. Extremely unlikely to be historically accurate.
2. Independent migrations & Settlement by separate extended family (Hebrew bet ‘av), Clan (Hebrew mishpaHa) etc.,[21] in unoccupied hill country as per Alt[22], Noth, Aharoni. Israel, and its constituent tribes, form after settlement in the hill country on the basis of geography.	Fits reasonably with archaeology record and with descriptions in Book of Judges.
3. “Conquest” as Internal Revolt[23] -Canaanite peasants moving into hills to escape oppressive conditions under city-state aristocracies where they join up with small groups from outside Canaan as per Mendenhall, Gottwald.”[24] Israel, and its constituent tribes, form after settlement in the hill country on the basis of geography.	Fits reasonably with archaeology record but contradicts what the Israelites themselves said about their past in Hebrew Bible.
4. Independent Migrations & Settlement by separate extended family (Hebrew bet ‘av), Clan (Hebrew mishpaHa) etc., in unoccupied hill country where they merged with Canaanites leaving the city-state ruled low lands as per Finkelstein[25] and many others. Israel, and its constituent tribes, form after settlement in the hill country on the basis of geography.	Fits well with archaeology record and with descriptions in Book of Judges. In my view most likely to be correct.

2.3 Origin and Nature of Ancient Israelite Religion

A good and extensive review of current and past theories of Israel’s religious development origin is presented in Gnuse chapter 2 Recent Scholarship on the Development of Monotheism in Ancient Israel (pp. 62-128).

There are basically three alternative hypotheses (see Table 2) about the origin of ancient Israelite religion of which two are worth serious consideration i.e.:

2.3.1 That Israelite monotheism came into being as a sui generis innovation unrelated to the Semitic polytheism which preceded it. In Table 2, I provide further details plus the reasons that I find this option unconvincing, for some variations, or, state that for others, given the evidence available, that it is almost impossible to prove or disprove though, to me, they seem to me improbable.

2.3.2 That Israelite monotheism developed progressively out of Canaanite religion.

2.3.2.1 Practical Monotheism?

Most scholars would argue that the earliest unambiguously monotheistic texts in the Bible date to the Exile[26].

However,

“The study of Israelite religion often involves studying practices more than creedal beliefs because the Bible more frequently stresses correct practices than correct beliefs or internal attitudes. Christian scholars, however, tend to focus more on beliefs or internal attitudes because Christian theology has often emphasized this aspect of religion. The study of Israelite monotheism is complicated by this factor, as monotheism has usually been defined as a matter of belief in one deity whereas monolatry has been understood as a matter of practice, specifically, the worship of only one deity, sometimes coupled with a tolerance for other peoples’ worship of their deities. However, if ancient Israelite religion is to be viewed primarily as a matter of practice, then the modern distinction between monotheism and monolatry is problematic[27].”

2.3.2.2 The Process - Convergence and Differentiation

I find Smith’s reconstruction to be convincing so I will quote him on this (the emphasis through bolding is my own) -

“Baal and Asherah were part of Israel’s Canaanite heritage, and the process of the emergence of Israelite monolatry was an issue of Israel’s breaking with its own Canaanite past and not simply one of avoiding Canaanite neighbours. Although the Bible witness accurately represented the existence of Israelite worship of Baal and perhaps of Asherah as well, this worship was not so much a case of Israelite syncretism with the religious practices of its Canaanite neighbours, as some biblical passages depict it, as it was an instance of old Israelite religion. If syncretism may be said to have been involved at all, it was a syncretism of various traditions and practices of Israelites. In short, any syncretism was largely a phenomenon within Israelite culture…. Israelite religion apparently included the worship of Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Baal. The shape of this religious spectrum in early Israel changed, due in large measure to two major developments; the first was convergence, and the second was differentiation. Convergence involved the coalescence of various deities and/or some of their features into the figure of Yahweh. This development began in the period of the Judges and continued during the first half of the monarchy. At this point, El and Yahweh were identified, and Asherah no longer continued as an identifiable separate deity. Features belonging to deities such as El, Asherah and Baal were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion of Israel…. In … poetic compositions, titles and characteristics originally belonging to various deities secondarily accrue to Yahweh…. Israelite monolatry developed through conflict and compromise between the cults of Yahweh and other deities. Israelite literature incorporated some of the characteristics of other deities into the divine personage of Yahweh. Polemic against deities other than Yahweh even contributed to this process. For although polemic rejected other deities, Yahwistic polemic assumed that Yahweh embodies the positive characteristics of the very deities it was condemning.

“The second major process involved differentiation of Israelite cult from its Canaanite heritage. Numerous features of early Israelite cult were later rejected as Canaanite and non-Yahwistic. This development began first with the rejection of Baal worship in the ninth century continued in the eighth to sixth centuries with legal and prophetic condemnations of Baal worship, the Asherah, solar worship, the high places, practices pertaining to the dead, and other religious features. The two major developments of convergence and differentiation shaped the contours of the distinct monotheism that Israel practiced and defined in the Exile (ca. 587-538) following the final days of the Judean monarchy.” …

“Though the reasons for Israelite ‘convergence’ are not clear, the complex paths from convergence to monolatry and monotheism can be followed…. (and) involved both an ‘evolution’ and a ‘revolution’[28] in religious conceptionalization…. While evolutionary in character, Israelite monolatry was also ‘revolutionary’ in a number of respects. The process of differentiation and the eventual displacement of Baal from Israel’s national cult distinguished Israel’s religion from the religions of its neighbours…. Israelite insistence on a single deity eventually distinguished Israel from the surrounding cultures….’”

Table 2

Hypotheses Regarding the Origin of Israelite Religion[29]

Alternatives for Emergence of Israelite Religion	How Well Does it fit Known Historic Facts
1. Israelite religion was originally a local variety of the pattern in Iron Age Phoenicia in which there was a triad of deities: a protective god of the city (often El), a goddess, often his wife or companion (in Ugarit and Israel Asherah) who symbolizes the fertile earth; and a young god (in Ugarit and Israel Baal) usually her or their son), whose resurrection expresses the annual cycle of vegetation.[30] Through the processes of convergence and differentiation this developed into Biblical Monotheism. At an early stage a new god Yahweh was brought in from outside urban Canaan, identified with the Canaanite High God El[31], and accepted as the main object of worship by the emerging Israelite confederacy i.e. association of clans and tribes.	Appears to fit very well
2. It developed from early Semitic religion which was a “practical monotheism” in which only El was worshiped.[32]	Unlikely since the biblical evidence is that Israelite religion was preceded by polytheism.
3. It came into being as a sui generis innovation unrelated to the Semitic polytheism which preceded it. This hypothesis is further divided into 3 subcategories:
3.1 Verbal Revelation i.e. the Pentateuch was Virtually Dictated by God[33] 3.1.1 Traditional Jewish Divine Revelation[34] – God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai the written Pentateuch that we have today together with the Oral Law i.e. the tools for developing the laws of the Pentateuch to meet all future needs. This Oral Law was later embodied in the Talmuds and other Rabbinic literature; 3.1.2 Traditional Karaite and Samaritan Divine Revelation – God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai the written Pentateuch that we have today as an immutable, all-encompassing, law.	The results of Higher Criticism of the Bible make this extremely unlikely. In fact, the only way to intellectually maintain these positions would be to reason[35]: 1) Higher Criticism of the Bible deduces that the Torah was written and edited by people, over a long period, by comparing the Torah to other documents, showing similar characteristics, that can be shown to have been written and edited by people, over a long period; 2) For this to be valid one must compare like to like; 3) The Torah is the only divinely written document that has ever existed so comparisons with other documents are fundamentally invalid.
3.2 Various Modern Jewish Thinkers e.g. non-Orthodox Jewish theologians [36] and, perhaps Kaufmann – God intervened, perhaps progressively, to reveal his totally new religious teaching*	Given the evidence available, it is almost impossible to prove or disprove these sorts of hypothesis though, by what is known, they seem to me improbable.