The Invention of Ancient Israel (8 page)

Biblical scholarship employs a bewildering array of terms for the region: ‘the Holy Land', ‘the Land of the Bible', ‘Eretz Israel' or ‘the land of Israel', ‘Israel', ‘Judah', ‘Canaan', ‘Cisjordan', ‘Syro–Palestine', ‘Palestine', and ‘the Levant'. To the casual reader of many standard works on historical geography or studies of the history of the region, these terms may appear to be interchangeable or even neutral. Yet the naming of land implies control of that land: designations such as ‘Levant', ‘Middle East', or ‘Near East' betray a Eurocentric conception of the world. Anderson (1991) has shown how the map played a crucial role in conceptualization and control of European colonial territories. Equally, it is important to examine how the terms ‘Eretz Israel', ‘the land of Israel', and ‘Palestine' have been invested with, or divested of, meaning in Western scholarship. Despite the fact that Western scholarship has continually employed the term ‘Palestine', it has been divested of any real meaning in the face of the search for ancient Israel.
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The political implications of the terminology chosen to represent this area can be traced through some of the classic works of historical geography which have informed biblical studies over the last century. The classic early treatment of historical geography can be found in George Adam Smith's
The Historical Geography of the Holy Land
, first published in 1894. The subtitle of the work is revealing: ‘Especially in Relation to the History of Israel and of the Early Church'. He uses the term ‘Palestine' as interchangeable with ‘Holy Land' while his preface makes it quite clear that his primary motivation is to illuminate the Bible:

Thus Palestine has no intrinsic meaning of its own, but provides the background and atmosphere for understanding the religious developments which are the foundation of Western civilization. Palestine does not have a history of its own, it is the history of Israel and thereby the history of the West. Commensurate with this lack of history is also the absence of inhabitants in the land. Palestine is a religious curiosity shop, what Smith (1984: viii) calls ‘a museum of Church history … full of living as well as of ancient specimens of the subject'. He recounts (1894: x) the ancient ruins of the past through to the present and notes that after the trail of Napoleon's march and retreat we find that ‘after the long silence and crumbling of all things native, there are the living churches of to-day, and the lines of pilgrims coming up to Jerusalem from the four corners of the world'. The reader is left in no doubt as to the vitality of European culture in contrast to the decline and devastation which have been supervised by the indigenous population.

The land seems empty and devoid of interest apart from the vestiges of ancient monuments that are important for understanding the development of European civilization. This is reinforced in Smith's own day by the ‘European invasion of Syria' (1894: 19). He goes on to describe this process throughout Palestine and Syria, culminating with his view of the significance of the introduction of the railway:

His view of the place of European civilization reveals that indigenous culture and history are of little interest by comparison. The land is the rightful property of Western powers if they so decide: a superiority defined in terms of military power.

When he goes on to discuss the place of Syria–Palestine in world history, he does so in terms of Opportunity and Influence, which means in terms of religion (1894: 21). Smith's account is a classic Orientalist expression of Europe's Other. In describing the religious development of the Semitic in the ‘seclusion' of Arabia, he is able to proclaim that:

For Smith, as for so many theologians and biblical specialists since, Israel's genius, the reason its religion rose to prominence while its neighbours fell into the degradations of fertility worship, was the ethical impulse of its belief. Though this has been shown to be a false representation of indigenous religion or those of surrounding cultures, the influence has remained very strong in biblical scholarship, retaining a powerful hold on popular perceptions.
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One of the important consequences is that it is Israelite culture which represents the pinnacle of achievement while Canaanite fertility religion is surpassed and supplanted. Thus Israelite history supersedes and in effect silences Canaanite, i.e. indigenous Palestinian history. The description of the land is presented in terms of its importance for Western civilization and the origins of its monotheistic faith: European powers were returning to protect the land which had provided the taproot of its own civilization.
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Recent standard treatments of the history of Israel illustrate just how influential these ideas have been and how they have been perpetuated and strengthened throughout this century. Martin Noth's (1960) classic
The History of Israel
opens with a section entitled ‘The land of Israel'. Noth, like most biblical scholars, states that the history of Israel was conditioned by its geographical setting to such an extent that a knowledge of the geography of the region is one of the preconditions for a proper understanding of its history.
However, in discussing the name of the region, he acknowledges that the phrase ‘the land of Israel' is used only once in the Hebrew Bible (1 Samuel 13: 19) and that the ‘original name for the land' has not been preserved. He then goes on to argue that:

The history of those inhabitants of Palestine not included in the Israelite tribes is silenced by Noth's concern with Israel. Only homogeneity seems to count. The history of Palestine in general is subsumed by the concern with Israel despite his acknowledgement that it is usual to call the land of Israel ‘Palestine'. The effect of this, however, is to divest the term ‘Palestine' of any meaning by transforming it into a mere shorthand for the land of Israel. The proper object of study then becomes Israel rather than Palestine or the inhabitants of Palestine. Thus he goes on to state that:

The land that might be termed ‘Palestine' has no intrinsic value of its own but becomes the arena for the ‘real and authentic history' of Israel.

Noth's following description of the physical features of the region presents a peculiar landscape virtually barren and devoid of human habitation. What population exists is anonymous and notable only for its lack of unity (1960: 10). A seemingly ‘objective' description of topography presents an empty land waiting to be populated by Israel, at which point Noth's historical description can begin. Revealingly, these anonymous inhabitants of Palestine are never
described as ‘Palestinians'. Noth's work is representative of the assumptions and hidden discourse of biblical studies which effectively silences Palestinian history in favour of the search for ancient Israel. It has divested the term ‘Palestine' of any meaning and ignored the history of the indigenous population of the region.

Herrmann (1975) begins his account of Israelite history with a chapter entitled ‘The scene' in which he claims that:

It is noticeable that Palestine once again becomes shorthand, this time for ‘the promised land' which is designated to be Israel's homeland: it is not a Palestinian homeland or the homeland of the indigenous population. As we have already noted, the choice of the term ‘homeland' takes on an added significance in light of the use of this term in the Balfour Declaration. Herrmann's treatment, which continues in the line of German biblical historiography inspired by Alt and Noth, again provides a barren and empty landscape: what population is mentioned is largely anonymous. Palestine is introduced to the reader merely as ‘the scene of the history of Israel' (1975: 6). It only becomes inhabited and of significance with the fulfilment of the promise which sees Israel's entry onto the stage. He detects an important link between past and present when reviewing the achievements of ancient Israel – a claim of considerable political import given the contemporary struggle for Palestine. He denies that there has been any fundamental climatic change between ancient and modern times, concluding that the bareness of the land and its resistance to agriculture can only be overcome by the most extraordinary effort, ‘like that expended by the modern state of Israel'.
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The continuum between past and present means that this difficult land can only be made to yield up its produce by the extraordinary efforts of Israel. No one else, it seems, possesses this ability. The claim that it is Israel, and Israel alone, which has made the land bloom has long been part of the Zionist justification for Jewish immigration
and the founding of a modern state. The Zionist representation of an ‘empty land' has been paralleled in biblical scholarship by a construction of the past which ignores the role of the indigenous population in many periods. Once again, it is the uniqueness of Israel that allows it to overcome overwhelming odds: Palestinian history simply does not exist or is of no account by comparison.

American biblical historiography is represented by John Bright's (1972) classic treatment
A History of Israel
which is a culmination of Albright's scholarship and influence upon biblical studies. Despite the fact that Noth's and Bright's histories have long been seen as representing alternative approaches to the history of ancient Israel, particularly for its early periods, it is remarkable how they share fundamental assumptions which have dominated modern biblical studies. Bright, like Noth, represents ancient Israel as part of the ancient Orient, a term whose ideological implications Said has exposed. Yet he does not provide the usual geographical introduction to his volume, preferring to use the term ‘Palestine' without any discussion of its possible meanings. Yet once again, although he discusses the history of the region prior to the emergence of Israel, he never refers to its inhabitants as Palestinians. The land might be called Palestine, yet its inhabitants are Amorites, Canaanites, or Israelites.

By contrast, Miller and Hayes (1986), who describe their work as standing within the tradition of Alt–Noth–Albright–Bright provide a chronological and geographical setting for their study of Israelite and Judaean history. They present the Palestinian hill country as the ‘center stage' (1986: 30) for this history, acknowledging that Palestine ‘was shared by a diversity of people' (1986: 30). The recognition that this region was not the sole reserve of Israelites and Judaeans but was populated by various ‘inhabitants of ancient Palestine' (1986: 33) does not extend to their identification as ‘Palestinians'. The inhabitants are for the most part anonymous, only taking on an identity when they become Israelite or Judaean. They discuss the various designations for the region in ancient texts which include Retenu, Hurru, Amurru, Canaan, Philistia, and many others, although their description of the region is in terms of its topographical and physical features. It is possible to refer to the ‘Palestinian coastline', ‘Palestinian agriculture', or the ‘Palestinian economy' (1986: 51), but the inhabitants are never described as Palestinians.

The examples chosen here, from biblical reference works or specialist articles on the history of ancient Israel, could be multiplied
many times over. The point at issue, however, is more than adequately illustrated by this series of extracts from a number of representative works on ancient Israelite history that have dominated biblical studies. The fact that they refer to the geographical region as Palestine but never refer to its inhabitants as Palestinians is a denial and silencing of Palestinian history. We are continually presented with images of a land in which its inhabitants are anonymous or nonexistent. The history of Palestine effectively only begins with the history of Israel and becomes coterminous with it. The reason for this cannot be that the focus of these works is upon the history of Israel or that they can claim that their accounts only begin with the emergence of Israel onto the historical stage, since all refer to periods prior to the existence of Israel or Israelites. All refuse studiously to use the term Palestinians to describe the inhabitants, even though the adjective ‘Palestinian' is acceptable to describe inanimate objects such as the physical setting or economy. The refusal to use the same qualifying adjective of the inhabitants of the region is thereby a denial of their existence and history. Thus Palestine can be presented as a small, poor, isolated region – frequent descriptions in biblical studies – which has been transformed and made notable by the unique historical presence of Israel. Biblical studies is, thereby, implicated in an act of dispossession which has its modern political counterpart in the Zionist possession of the land and dispossession of its Palestinian inhabitants. As a people without history – or deprived of that history by the discourse of biblical studies – they become unimportant, irrelevant, and finally non-existent. It is an act of interpretation presented as objective scholarship, carrying the full weight of Western intellectual institutions, which is intricately bound to the dominant understanding of the present in which the modern state of Israel has made an ‘empty' and ‘barren' land blossom.