The New Jews

When Shlomo Zand, a professor at Tel Aviv University, wrote his book, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, he probably knew that his book would generate intensive discussion about the origins of Israel as a people and as a nation.

According to Zand, a group of Jewish intellectuals who lived in Germany in the 19th century, influenced by German nationalism, invented a narrative about Jewish origins in order to create a modern Jewish nation.

In a post published in his blog, Haitham Sabbah, a Palestinian activist, carries out this idea further by saying that the modern state of Israel has stolen Palestinian heritage and history by claiming that the Palestinians are the true descendants of the original inhabitants of Judea. He wrote:

Even though asserting ownership to a country after absence of 2000 years is preposterous, Israel’s theft of Palestine from the native population is popularly legitimised through the claim that today’s Jews descend from inhabitants of Greco-Roman Judea.

Sabbah also claims that DNA tests prove Israeli Jews were Europeans. He wrote:

Current genetic anthropological findings based on DNA analysis indicate that the male ancestors of Yiddish Jewry were of Eastern European and non-Levantine Southwest Asian origin while the female ancestors were Eastern Europeans.

The Palestinians' ancestors created the Hasmonean Kingdom, composed the Hebrew Bible, followed Jesus, wrote the New Testament, compiled the Mishnah, and redacted the Jerusalem Talmud. The Palestinian people constitute the living link to the earliest beginnings of the heritage from the Torah and Gospel.

Zionists are almost pitiable, for they are so ashamed of their own history that they have usurped one belonging to another people.

Zand’s and Sabbah’s argument is similar to the the argument of minimalists who say that the history of Israel as found in the Bible is an invention of a group of returnees who desired to create a home for themselves by dispossessing those who were living in the land at the time of their return.

In spite of all the rhetoric about the Palestinian people being the writers of the Hebrew Bible and the compilers of the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, I doubt the Palestinians themselves believe this fantasy.

The God of the Hebrew Bible said to his people: “If you obey me and do everything I command you, then you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 11:4). The people who obey the teachings of God as found in the Hebrew Bible are the true people of God.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Ancient Israel, Palestinians, Shlomo Zand

The Inventing of a Nation: When and How Was the Jewish People Invented

When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? is a book written by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand. The book, which was published last year, has produced intensive discussion about the origins of Israel both inside and outside academia. Zand’s book will be translated into English and published in the United States this year.

According to AlterNet, the following are some of the issues raised by the book:

What would happen if the Jewish nation was a modern invention? What if the Palestinians who are oppressed by Israel were the true Israel of the Bible?

What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heel of the modern Israeli state are in fact descended from the very same "children of Israel" described in the Old Testament?

And what if most modern Israelis aren't descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn't "return" to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish a new state following the attempt to exterminate them during World War II, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia?

What if the entire tale of the Jewish Diaspora -- the story recounted at Passover tables by Jews around the world every year detailing the ancient Jews' exile from Judea, the years spent wandering through the desert, their escape from the Pharaoh's clutches -- is all wrong?

One reviewer of the book summarized Zand’s book with the following words:

There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened -- hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua.

This book raises difficult issues that are directly related to the minimalist/maximalist controversy. Although I have not yet read Zand’s book, it seems to me that he begins where the minimalists and the reconstructionists focus their argument: that the history of Israel is an invention of the post-exilic community. Zand, on the other hand, believes that there was never a Jewish Diaspora and that the Jews living in Palestine today are not directly related to Biblical Israel.

The view proposed by Zand is a radical departure from the traditional historical understanding about the people who live in the land of Israel today. According to the article in AlterNet, Zand’s book seems to be an apologia for Palestinian rights and a call for a single nation where Israelis and Palestinians live together as one nation.

The arguments for a single-state solution, that is, a binational state where all residents of Israel and the Palestinians share the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship, is gaining some momentum in the discussion on how to solve the political situation in Palestine today.

I believe it would be a sad day if the solution of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is solved by denying the fact that the Jewish people who live in Israel today are not the direct descendants of the people of the Bible.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Biblical Israel, Israelis, Palestinians

Archaeology and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Neil Asher Silberman wrote an article evaluating the “Israeli-Palestinian Cultural Heritage Agreement” that was established between Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists. The purpose of the agreement is to develop a way for both Israelis and Palestinians to resolve conflicts over archaeological sites and artifacts once Israel and the Palestinians agree on the issue of the two states.

Although the agreement is an attempt at protecting the fragile archaeological legacy buried below ancient ruins, Silberman believes that, unless there is an effort to change how Israelis and Palestinians view the role of archaeology, the agreement will fail.

Silberman wrote:

Indeed the very concept of "heritage" is almost necessarily exclusionary, delimiting "our" heritage from "theirs." Israelis tend to see stones, pots and ancient coins as materialized illustrations of a meaningful national narrative that runs from the beginnings of Jewish history to the rise of the State of Israel. For Palestinians, the narrative is one of dispossession, in which archaeological artifacts and sites are not seen as symbols but as alienated possessions, as real and movable property, whose ultimate significance lies in their physical return.

Neat archaeological partition will not work, and compromise arrangements will not further the cause of peace, so long as we refuse to recognize that it is not passionate archaeology that causes the present conflict, but, rather, that it is the other way around.

I believe Silberman is right. The idea of bestowing “exclusive possession of cultural property” has merits but it can create a potential for destruction of vital archaeological information. I just wonder what the Palestinians would do if they found an inscription that said “David slept here.” Would they share that inscription with the world?

I hope the agreement works and that it does not lead to further animosity between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Israel, Palestinians

Zephaniah and the Palestinians

In his post “Zephaniah Calls Canaan Palestine,” Jim West declared that Zephaniah identified Canaan with Palestine, that the Canaanites were called Philistines, and that they were the inhabitants of the central highlands. From his conclusions, Jim then declares that “the ‘Palestinian’ presence in the central highlands goes back at least as far as Zephaniah’s era.”

There are several statements in Jim’s post that need correction. The way Jim’s post was written, it can be interpreted as a political statement which advocates a Palestinian right to the land of Canaan, or in modern political understanding, the land of Israel. However, the proper exegesis of Zephaniah 2:4-5 will demonstrate that Jim’s view is based on a misinterpretation of the text.

1. The Old Testament never calls Canaan “Palestine.” The word “Palestine” appears in the King James Version of Joel 3:4: “Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine?” However, this translation is incorrect because the word in Hebrew should be translated “Philistia.” The word “Philistia” appears in all translations and it is used elsewhere in the King James Version (except, of course, in Joel 3:4).

2. Jim says that in his oracle Zephaniah is referring to two different people: “the coastal folks known as the Cherethites and the central highland’s inhabitants which he calls the Philistines.”

This interpretation that Jim proposes is not correct. What Zephaniah is using here is probably a parallelismus membrorum. In the parallelism, “the inhabitants of the sea-coast, the nation of the Cherethites” is the same as “Canaan, the land of the Philistines.”

To Zephaniah, the Cherethites and the Philistine are different names for the same people. Gesenius §131a calls this construction “apposition.” According to Gesenius, “apposition in the stricter sense is the collocation of two substantives in the same case in order to define more exactly the one by the other.”

It is easy to misinterpret synonymous parallelisms in the Old Testament because what appears to be two different items is in reality one idea. One example of synonymous parallelism is Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”

In the Old Testament, the land of Canaan is never called the land of the Philistines, except in Zephaniah 2:5. To the contrary, in Joshua 13:3, the land of the Philistines is considered to be part of the Canaanite territory. The same idea also appears in Genesis 10:19 where it says that Canaanite territory extended as far as Gaza.

3. Jim wrote: “I can’t think of anyone who argues that the Canaanites lived elsewhere besides the central highlands-and hence the inhabitants of that area are called Philistines.”

This statement is also incorrect. The Canaanites lived in Sidon, Tyre, and other coastal cities, for the land of Canaan also included the coastal areas. The book of Joshua extends the land of Canaan “from the Shihor, which is east of Egypt, northward to the boundary of Ekron” (Joshua 13:3). In addition, the people who lived in the highlands were not called Philistines, although there was a Philistine presence in the highlands.

4. Jim wrote: “Therefore, the ‘Palestinian’ presence in the central highlands goes back at least as far as Zephaniah’s era.”

This statement is also incorrect. When the Philistines entered Canaan a few years after the Israelites, they gained control of the western part of Canaan, settling in five cities, commonly known as “The Philistine Pentapolis”: Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron (Joshua 13:3). After the battle of Aphek, when the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4), the Philistines began to extend their presence in Canaan, moving into the central mountain range. It was this threat posed by the Philistines that forced the people of Israel to select Saul as a king who would unify the tribes and confront the Philistine threat. Thus, the Philistines were present in the central highlands as early as the days of Samuel.

What Jim fails to recognize in his post is what Zephaniah intended with his oracles against the Philistines.

Zephaniah addresses his oracles against four of the Philistine cities. In his oracle, Zephaniah mentioned Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Ekron. Only the Philistine city of Gath is missing. The reason for its absence was that since the days of David, Gath had been under the control of Judah: “David defeated the Philistines and subdued them, and he took Gath and its villages out of the hand of the Philistines” (1 Chronicles 18:1).

After the Assyrian invasion of Canaan, the four cities mentioned by Zephaniah became vassals of Assyria and under Sargon II, they became an Assyrian province named Ashdod.

Zephaniah 2:5 must be understood in the context of Zephaniah’s oracle against the nations in Zephaniah 2:4-15. In verse 8 Zephaniah also mentions Moab and Ammon. In Zephaniah’s day, Philistia, Ammon, and Moab were Assyrian vassals. Zephaniah’s oracle is an anti-Assyria oracle that may reflect Josiah’s efforts at revolt against Assyrian control. This oracle indicates that Assyrian control was still present but the threat of reprisal against rebellious vassals was diminished because of the rise of Babylon.

Zephaniah’s oracle against the four Philistine cities declares that the cities will be punished with the loss of their inhabitants. Gaza will become a forsaken territory, Ashkelon will be devastated, Ashdod will be deported, and Ekron will be eradicated. The cry of lament, “Woe” (Hebrew hoy), when used in prophetic oracles indicates that the subject has entered the realm of judgment that will result in death.

What Zephaniah has done with this oracle is to take the political situation of the seventh century and couch his words in the language of the conquest of Canaan. The enemies of Judah are seen as Canaanites. Philistia is to receive the same fate of the Canaanites and lose its inhabitation by conquest and complete annihilation. The Philistines are present in the land promised to Israel but they do not belong there; so, like the Canaanites of old, they will be eradicated. The Philistine cities will be depleted of their residents and occupied by Judean shepherds (Zephaniah 2:6-7).

The words of Zephaniah found fulfillment with the Babylonian invasion of Canaan. As Kenneth A. Kitchen in his article, “The Philistines,” in People of Old Testament Times, ed. D. J. Wiseman (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1973), p. 67, wrote: “Ashkelon sought to resist the Neo-Babylon advance in 604 B.C.; Nebuchadrezzar II subdued it and exiled its king in Babylon, where his sons appear in the ration-tablets with Jehoiachin of Judah and his relations. These, with mentions of kings of Gaza and Ashdod at the Babylonian court, are the last traces of Philistia as an entity, before her final disappearance as a political unit.”

Thus, Zephaniah is not defending a Philistine right to the land. To the contrary; Zephaniah is saying that the Philistines do not belong there. The Palestinians are not the remnants of the Philistines. If anyone desires to use a biblical text to justify the Palestinian's right to the land, Zephaniah 2:5 is not the right text.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Canaan, Palestine, Palestinians, Philistines, Zephaniah