Mario Liverani and the History of Ancient Israel

Israel’s History and the History of Israel by Mario Liverani. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2003. xx + 427 pp. $60.00. ISBN 1-904768-76-8.

Until recently, most pastors and seminary students were exposed to the history of Israel through books that described and summarized the biblical events as they appear in the Bible. One good example is John Bright’s, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980), a classical work which summarizes the history of Israel from the period of the patriarchs to the rise of Judaism.

In the past two or three decades, the method of writing a history of Israel has shifted from using the biblical text as a basic outline to develop a history of Israel to an approach that begins with the premise that the biblical text has been highly influenced by an ideology of the post-exilic community of the Persian period.

This volume by Mario Liverani, professor of ancient-Near-East history at the University of Rome, summarizes the views and perspectives of this new approach to understanding Israel’s history. Liverani believes that most of the history of Israel found in the Old Testament is a creation of the post-exilic community written to justify the resettlement of the people who returned from the exile in Babylon during the Persian period.

Liverani’s book is divided into two major parts, with an intermezzo. Part I, which is composed of nine chapters, deals with “The Normal History” of Israel. This section uses the results of archaeology to discuss what was actually happening in Israel and in the nations surrounding Israel during the Iron Age. The Intermezzo discusses “The Axial Age,” “The Diaspora,” and “The Abandoned Landscape.” The Axial Age is his discussion of several events in the sixth century that contributed to the formation of Israel’s basic religious traditions.

Part II of the book deals with what Liverani calls “The Invented History of Israel.” The history of Israel from the days of the patriarchs to the end of the United Monarchy was invented to justify the occupation of the land by the “returnees,” the people who returned from exile after the decree of Cyrus, king of Persia, in 537 BCE.

According to Liverani, the biblical text is not actual history, but it is historiography, an ideological rereading of the past in order to under gird political realities in post-exilic Judah. This invented history served as a strategy to implement a program of national recovery at the end of the exile. The result of this process of national recovery was the rewriting of the history of Israel based on the text of the Deuteronomic history that begins with the exodus and the conquest and includes the period of the monarchy.

Liverani believes that the first section of this history, from the conquest under Joshua up to the united monarchy under Solomon, is mostly folkloristic and legendary, chronologically vague, and historically not very reliable. Then, from the divided monarchy after the death of Solomon until the deportation of Judah in 587 BCE, the historians had official documentation at their disposal which proved to be reliable sources of information.

The returnees are called “Zionists.” They were the elite who had been deported while the remainees were the poor people who were left behind to cultivate the land after the fall of Jerusalem. The returnees called the remainees “the people of the land” and used this pejorative term to define the people who had neither been deported nor emigrated as well as the non-deported Israelites from the North.

According to Liverani, the biblical stories are foundational myths written to justify the legal possession of the land: the returnees had property rights but the remainees actually occupied the land. Since the returnees did not have a justification to take possession of the land from those who occupied it, they needed authoritative traditions assigning possession of Canaan to the tribes of Israel and identifying the returnees, not the remainees, as the legitimate heirs of those tribes and of the promises to the patriarchs.

The foundational myth most appropriate to show the rights of the returnees were the promise made to the patriarchs and the conquest of the land. Thus, the archetypical migration of Abraham from Babylon illustrates the plight of the returnees from Babylon. The migration of Abraham reflects the situation the returnees would encounter as they returned to Canaan. The promise Yahweh made to Abraham represents God’s legitimation of the returnees to take possession of the land of Canaan, as discussed in Chapter 13: “Returnees and Remainees: The Invention of the Patriarchs.”

Although the returnees had rights to the land, for them to actually acquire the land in its totality, they needed another model. The Exodus from Egypt serves as the foundational myth that provides legitimation of the possession of Canaan by the arrival of a group of people from the outside that seek to conquer the land in fulfillment of the divine promise. The conquest of Canaan serves as the foundational myth for the occupation of the land by the returnees during the Persian period. Joshua becomes the archetypical leader in the post-exilic community. (See Chapter 14: “Returnees and Aliens: The Invention of the Conquest.”)

Liverani’s history of Israel is a typical example of the minimalist approach to the biblical text, understanding that the Bible does not provide any reliable historical information for the reconstruction of the history of ancient Israel. Rather, Israel’s history was an invention of the post-exilic Jewish community. They also believe that since the biblical narratives do not provide reliable information for reconstructing the history of ancient Israel, scholars must rely on evidence provided by archaeological discoveries and on information derived from anthropological and sociological models.

Liverani’s book provides valuable information synthesizing the work of archaeologists, but it is a book for scholars who are interested in the academic discussion of the origins of ancient Israel and the formation of the biblical traditions. The minimalist view may be an acceptable issue for discussion in academic circles, but their views have nothing to say to pastors and seminary students who accept as a matter of fact that God has entered human history and made his presence known in the historical events that gave birth to biblical Israel.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Note: This book review was published in the Review and Expositor 105 (Summer 2008), 511-513.

To subscribe to the Review and Expositor, visit R&E Home Page.

Tags: Ancient Israel, Mario Liverani, Minimalists

Mario Liverani, the Bible, Jim West, and the Unicorn

My review of Mario Liverani’s book, Israel’s History and the History of Israel has been received in different ways by different people (see Jim's blog). It is possible that my post failed to communicate clearly my objections to Liverani’s book or else people misunderstand where I stand on the issue of history and the Bible.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a maximalist nor a minimalist; maybe I am a medialist, as Kevin has suggested. I am not a fundamentalist, I do not believe in inerrancy, and I am not a literalist. I believe that the Bible is sacred Scripture, that God has revealed himself in the history of Israel and in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and that the Bible is a record of that revelation.

I do not adopt a literal interpretation of every fact and statement in the Bible. In my study of the Bible I use historical criticism and a literary approach to the text. I believe that the biblical narratives are based on historical events but it does not mean that history has to become the arbiter of faith.

As a Christian, I believe that the ultimate source for knowing what God has done in history and in the person of Jesus Christ is the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. Everything we know about God we find in the Bible. In fact, without the Bible, our knowledge of God and what he has done would be minuscule. It is because of the Bible that we know the mighty acts of God in the events associated with the Exodus from Egypt and how they became the central focus of much of the Old Testament in the same way that the death and resurrection of Christ became the central focus of the New Testament.

However, the radical criticism and modern skepticism of biblical scholars have removed any possibility of historicity behind these events. To many scholars, these stories are only narratives that are metaphorically true even though they are not literally or factually true.

Marcus Borg, in his book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), pp. 15-18, said that modernity has influenced the way most people read the Bible today: they know something to be true only when there is valid verification. Thus, one consequence of modernity’s impact on reading the Bible is that modernity has made people skeptical about spiritual realities.

It is this skeptical spirit that has impacted the study of Israelite history. The skeptical understanding of reality has influenced the way the Bible is read and has made the understanding of God and his work in the world a problem that goes against the very core of orthodox Christianity.

According to Borg, the logical outcome of this modern worldview is the kind of skepticism that leads to the rejection of the supernatural and eventually creates what has been called “the death of God theology.”

To me, it seems that biblical scholarship today has rejected the supernatural and developed a non-biblical view of God because of its preoccupation with factuality, that is, that for something to be true or historical it must be scientifically and historically proven by reliable evidence. In criticizing this view, Borg said that “modern Western culture is the only culture in human history that has identified truth with factuality.” He said Christian liberals are “fact fundamentalists,” that is, if a statement cannot be proved scientifically or historically, then that statement is not true.

Many biblical scholars are influenced by a postmodernity understanding of the Bible. This view affirms that historical events are culturally conditioned and in general, are historical reconstructions of the past. This is the view espoused by Liverani when he writes that the early history of Israel is an “invented history,” a reconstruction of the past in order to meet the political and ideological needs of the post-exilic Judean community.

It is the same view that led Borg to say: “The way of seeing and reading the Bible that I describe in the rest of this book leads to a way of being Christian that has very little to do with believing” (p. 18). Borg sees the Bible as the human product of two communities: Israel and the church. What the Bible says is the words of those two communities, not the word of God. Thus, the Bible as a whole does not have divine origin. The Bible is not divine in some parts and in some part human; the Bible is all a human product.

If the biblical narratives are invented history, then the Bible is no better than the Baal stories. If the Bible is only a human product, a work without divine origin, then there is no difference between the God of the Bible and Baal or Marduk.

The matter has to do how we teach and preach the biblical narratives. Now, here is where I need Jim West’s help and this is a sincere request since Jim teaches seminary students (as I do) and he pastors a church where he preaches to his congregation (as I do).

Let us suppose that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David never existed, that they were part of this invented history created by a group of Zionists to justify their right to take the land from poor peasants who lived in Palestine in the sixth or fifth centuries BCE. My question is: how is the fact that these people did not exist, the fact that they are literary creation, the fruit of a fertile mind, how does this fact affect our understanding of the New Testament? Here are four examples:

1. In Exodus 3:6 God said: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This statement was quoted by Jesus when speaking about the resurrection: “But about the resurrection of the dead-- have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32).

If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed, how can this statement be true, even metaphorically true? Or does it matter?

2. During the transfiguration of Jesus, Matthew 17:2-3 says that Jesus was talking to Moses. I know that this is only a vision but one that even Peter saw. However, how could Jesus speak to Moses if Moses was just an invention of a creative writer?

3. In John 8:58 Jesus said: “‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’” This verse says something special about Jesus and in the process says something important about Abraham.

4. In the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1, Jesus Christ is called the son of David, the son of Abraham. However, how can this be true if David and Abraham never existed?

How do minimalists explain and understand these statements of the New Testament if these people never existed? Do we take the approach used by the people at the Jesus Seminar? How do Christians proclaim the truth of the gospel when these statement are based on a fictive history that tells the actions of people who never existed? I hope Jim (or any biblioblogger) has a good answer for me.

It is easy to say that Jesus was just quoting from the “invented history.” It is also easy to say that Jesus was accommodating himself to the knowledge of the people of his day, or that in his humanity he did not know everything, or that this is just metaphorical language, or that this is just the way the early church believed these things to be.

If the Bible is just a human book, the product of ancient Israel and the early church, then these four statements are only what those human writers believed these things to be. So, nothing needs to be historical because human beings can invent a history to provide political and religious legitimation to an ideology or a community either in the sixth century (ancient Israel) or the first century (the early church).

However, if the Bible is a record of God’s revelation in the history of Israel, if the Bible is the Word of God transmitted through human agents, then a metaphorical truth will not be sufficient to explain the biblical narratives. Contrary to what Borg wrote, reading the Bible from a Christian perspective has a lot to do with believing.

Whether one believes the history of Israel is based on historical events or is an invented history depends on whether the Bible is only the words of human beings or whether it is the word of God. I know where I stand and I can do no other.

In the end, Mario Liverani, Jim West, and Claude Mariottini may not amount to much. Some of my paranoid readers believe that the Second Coming of Christ will be in 2012. If Jesus does not come in 2012, then in one or two generations Liverani, Jim, and I will be history (whether invented or real the Lemches of the future will decide), but the truth of the Bible will remain.

Until now I have talked about Liverani, the Bible, and Jim West. But, how about the unicorn? As for the unicorn, we all know they never existed (read Duane’s post).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Bible, Marcus Borg, Mario Liverani, Revelation

Mario Liverani and the History of Israel

During the Christmas break I finished reading Mario Liverani’s Israel’s History and the History of Israel (London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003). Last week I finished writing a review of the book that I will submit to a major journal for publication. The review is also part of the commitment I made to Chris Brady at Targuman to submit a scholarly work for publication during the Biblical Studies Academic Writing Month. The content of the present post is different from the review I wrote for publication and different from my previous post on Liverani’s book.

Liverani’s book is divided into three sections. In Part I, Liverani presents a description of the different archaeological periods of Israel’s history. In this section, which he calls “The Normal History,” Liverani studies the textual and archeological evidence that contribute to the proper understanding of what was actually happening in Israel and in the countries that form the land of the Bible during a time period that includes Palestine in the Late Bronze Age up to the Babylonian invasion and the exile of Judah in 587 BCE.

The second section is an Intermezzo, a section in which he discusses events that were happening in other parts of the world in the sixth century BCE, a time which he calls “The Axial Age.” In the Intermezzo, Liverani also discusses the diaspora and the myth of the empty land.

The third section, Part II of his book, Liverani discusses the “Invented History of Israel.” By invented history, Liverani means the ideological rereading and rewriting of the Deuteronomic history in order to undergird the political realities of post-exilic Judah. According to Liverani, the rewriting of Israel’s history served as a strategy to implement a program of national recovery that would provide political and religious legitimacy for the people who made a commitment to return and re-colonize Judah after the edict of Cyrus, king of Persia, allowed the exiles to return home.

Liverani makes a distinction between two groups of Jews in post-exilic Judah. Those Jews who were returning home from exile were the “returnees.” The returnees are also called “Zionists.” Those Jews who did not go into exile and remained in the land are called “the remainees.” The remainees are called “the people of the land” by the returnees. This pejorative term was used by those returning from exile to describe all those Jews who did not go into exile.

According to Liverani, the returnees needed a legal justification to take possession of the land that belonged to the remainees. Since the remainees occupied the land, the returnees needed an authoritative tradition assigning ownership of the land of Canaan to the tribes of Israel. This tradition needed to identify the returnees as the legitimate heirs of the land and declare that the remainees should be dispossessed of their land.

Thus, according to Liverani, those Jews returning from exile rewrote the Deuteronomic history and created a set of foundational myths that legitimized the claim of the returnees as the legitimate heirs of the promises of God.

The migration of Abraham from Babylon to Canaan and the promise of God to give Abraham the land of Canaan as an inheritance became the foundational myth to legitimize the returnees’ claim that God brought them from Babylon and gave them the land of Canaan. This idea is covered in Chapter 13: “Returnees and Remainees: The Invention of the Patriarch.”

Although the myth of the patriarchs gave the returnees a promise of the land, they needed another authoritative tradition that allowed them to actually take possession of the land. Thus, the foundational myth of the Exodus provided the returnees with the legitimation for a group of people from the outside to take possession of the land. The foundational myth of the Conquest provided the returnees with the legitimation to take the land from the remainees by force, if necessary. This idea is developed in Chapter 14: “Returnees and Aliens: The Invention of the Conquest.”

Thus, to Liverani, the history of Israel as presented in the biblical text is an invented history. He also deals with “The Invention of the Judges,” The Invention of the United Monarchy,” “The Invention of the Solomonic Temple,” and “The Invention of the Law.” In describing the aim of his work, Liverani wrote:

In the present work I have tried to write– at least in the form of a first draft–a new version of the history of Israel, starting from the results of textual and literary criticism as well as from data collected by archaeology and epigraphy. In doing so I felt free to change the Biblical plot, while keeping a properly historical approach.

Liverani’s history of Israel is a typical example of a minimalist approach to the history of Israel. The minimalists deny this historicity of the biblical narratives. Biblical minimalists say that the history of the patriarchs, the exodus, the conquest, the giving of the law, together with the historicity of Moses and Joshua and the existence of a united monarchy under David and Solomon are post-exilic inventions that were created to justify the political and religious aspirations of a group of Zionists who desired to take possession of the land from of group of people who had lived in the land for almost a century. So, the minimalists feel “free to change the Biblical plot” in order to sustain their presuppositions.

To biblical minimalists, the biblical narratives reflect a rewriting of history that created an ideal past in order to justify the realities as they existed in the seventh and six centuries BCE. To many minimalists, these stories were first created by the people who were involved in the reforms of Josiah in the seventh century. Others believe that some of these stories were “invented” in the sixth and fifth centuries to provide political and religious legitimacy to the post-exilic community of Yehud.

However, if Abraham, Moses, and the patriarchs never existed and if these stories were “invented” in the sixth century, how can we explain the mention of the names of some of those invented people in the prophetic literature of the eighth century?

For instance, in the eighth century BCE, the prophet Micah mentions Moses, Aaron, and Miriam and the exodus from Egypt (Micah 6:4). The Exodus from Egypt is also mentioned by Amos (Amos 2:10; 3:1) and Hosea (11:1) in the eighth century. In addition, Amos speaks of Israel sojourning forty years in the wilderness (Amos 2:10). All the eighth century prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, mention the patriarch Jacob.

In the Elijah narratives, a source most scholars believe to be independent from the Deuteronomist, when the prophet Elijah (ninth century BCE) seeks to go back to the source of Israelite religion, he goes back to Horeb, the Northern name for Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19:8).

If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed, then it is almost impossible to understand Jesus’ words when talking about the resurrection: “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32). How can God be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and how can they be alive when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed?

The problem with the minimalists is that they use the same approach atheists use when they deny the existence of God. Atheists say to theists: “God does not exist. Now, prove to me that God exists.” Minimalists say that these stories are invented; now the burden of proof is with those who say that they are historical.

James Hoffmeier, in his book Israel in Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 10, talks about the insistence of minimalists that a claim made in the Bible must be corroborated before the statement can be considered historical. Hoffmeier wrote: “[The] assertion that the burden of proof does not rest on the critical (minimalist) historian has become the prevailing attitude in biblical scholarship for the past several decades.”

The matter of the historicity of the biblical text is what prompts the debate between those who are called maximalists and those who are called minimalists. The minimalists accuse the maximalists of accepting the historicity of the biblical text because they presuppose divine intervention in human affairs. They demand proof of the historicity of the events narrated by the text. On the other hand, the maximalists accuse the minimalists of being skeptics and radical ideologues. They say that the minimalists reject Israel’s understanding of its own religious traditions as irrelevant because their views are based primarily on a literary interpretation of the text.

I would like to put the burden of proof on the other side. For once, I would like to see the minimalists prove that Moses did not exist.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Mario Liverani, Maximalists, Minimalists, Moses, Patriarchs

Sennacherib’s Joke

After the death of Sargon II, the king who conquered Samaria, Sennacherib, his son, became the new king of Assyria. Sargon had left his son a large empire. Sargon died in 705 B.C. When Sennacherib became king, he faced uprisings all over the empire. After ascending the throne, Sennacherib led two campaigns against Assyrian enemies in the north. A few years after he became king, Sennacherib led his forces toward Syria and Palestine.

Among the vassals who revolted against Assyria was Hezekiah, king of Judah. In preparing to revolt against Assyria, Hezekiah sought help from Egypt. He also took steps to regain independence by refusing to pay the vassal tribute. According to 2 Kings 18:7, Hezekiah “rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.”

Hezekiah’s plan to revolt against Assyria was motivated by the promises of help from Egypt and Babylon. Hezekiah made a covenant with Egypt, a covenant which the prophet Isaiah called a “covenant with death” (Isaiah 28:18). Trusting in the military help from Egypt (Isaiah 30:1-7; 31:1-3), Hezekiah refused to pay the annual tribute to Assyria.

Sennacherib responded swiftly. First, he subdued many rebellious vassals who had rebelled against him. Then, he came against Hezekiah. According to Assyrian records, Sennacherib destroyed forty-six fortified cities of Judah and deported their population to other parts of the Assyrian empire. As for Hezekiah, Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem and kept him in the city “like a bird in a cage.”

It was at that time, that Sennacherib sent a message to Hezekiah. Mario Liverani, in his book, Israel’s History and the History of Israel (London: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2005) relates Hezekiah’s response to Sennacherib’s message. In his book, Liverani (p. 148) quotes the annals of Sennacherib to express Hezekiah’s reaction:

"As to Hezekiah, the Judean, he did not submit to my joke."

At a first reading, it seems that Hezekiah was being very ungrateful. Sennacherib sent him a joke and instead of accepting Sennacherib’s joke, Hezekiah refused it.

I wonder why Hezekiah rejected Sennacherib’s joke. As it is well known, some people just don’t know how to tell a joke, and maybe Sennacherib was one of those individuals. But, when one reads the joke Sennacherib imposed on Hezekiah, one understands the reason Hezekiah was not smiling.

During the invasion, Sennacherib conquered the strong cities of Judah and countless small villages in their vicinity. Sennacherib conquered the fortified cities of Judah and sent the surviving population into exile, a total of 200,150 people, young and old, male and female.

Sennacherib presents a triumphal account of his victory against Hezekiah:

As to Hezekiah, the Jew, . . . I laid siege to his strong cities, walled forts, and countless small villages, and conquered them by means of well-stamped earth-ramps and battering-rams brought near the walls with an attack by foot soldiers, using mines, breeches as well as trenches. I drove out 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered them slaves. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were his city's gate. Thus I reduced his country, but I still increased the tribute and the presents to me as overlord which I imposed upon him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually. Hezekiah himself, did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches inlaid with ivory, nimedu-chairs inlaid with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony-wood, boxwood and all kinds of valuable treasures, his own daughters and concubines.

The tribute Sennacherib demanded from Hezekiah was no joke. It was so excessive that Hezekiah did not have enough silver and gold to pay the tribute; he gave all he had and paid the remainder in kind.

So, where is Sennacherib’s joke? The joke is only in a bad translation of Liverani’s book. The book was translated from Italian into English and the translators made a horrible mistake. Instead of translating: "as to Hezekiah, the Judean, he did not submit to my yoke," the translators translated: "as to Hezekiah, the Judean, he did not submit to my joke," thus, playing a joke on the readers.

Translating from one language to another is difficult. For this reason, translators must be very careful not to introduce into the text a foreign concept or a wrong message due to a faulty translation. I am sure the “joke” was unintentional, but for readers who may not be familiar with the annals of Sennacherib, the “joke” is not a joke at all.

Claude Mariottini
Professors of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Hezekiah, Mario Liverani, Sennacherib, Translation