Josiah King of Judah is portrayed in Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silverman's book, "Rashit Yisrael" not only as the one who restored the small kingdom of Judah, and not only as a reformer of worship, but also as a patron of a new theology: The monotheistic faith
Yaakov Shavit
In the photo on the left: Nikolaus Manuel, 16th century, King Josiah smashes the statues. In the photo on the right: Josiah listens to the reading of Deuteronomy
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Josiah King of Judah is depicted in Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silverman's book, "Rashit Yisrael" not only as the one who restored the small kingdom of Judah, and not only as a reformer of worship, but also as the patron of a new theology: the monotheistic faith. And this whole great act was done, according to them, under the inspiration of the Book of the Torah of Moses, which was presented as a rediscovery of an ancient book, but in fact it was written closely. indeed?
The Past Shaping the Present: The Design of Biblical Historiography at the End of the First Temple and After the Destruction, by Nadav Naaman, Yeriot - Arena Hess Publishing, Jerusalem, 128, 2002 pages
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silverman, The Beginning of Israel: Archaeology, the Bible and Historical Memory, translated from English by Adi Ginzburg-Hirsch, Tel Aviv University, Publishing House, 384
, 2003 pages
The meaning of the Bible and its importance are the result of tradition and therefore one must distinguish between the history of the biblical text, the question of its reliability as a historical document, and the history of tradition. The first book in this review deals with the history of biblical historiography, and the second - with the degree of reliability of the biblical historical story. In doing so, they - and no less than that, many of the reactions they provoked - give expression to the deep value that has occurred in the last two hundred years or so given to the biblical text and interest in it as a historical composition and as "history".
Until the 19th century, there was almost no other historical picture of the history of ancient Israel apart from the one painted by the Bible, and its reliability was taken for granted. Doubts could only arise in the "secular" climate created during the 19th century, an era in which philological-historical research gained prestige and in which extra-biblical sources appeared, and in which "history" became a central element of consciousness and of defining identity and belonging. This is how it happened that during the 19th century the Bible as the "history" of the people of Israel became a central element in the modern Jewish consciousness. As a result, great importance was now given to the question of its reliability as a national history. The "secular" world view is the one that gave the historical layer a decisive value. And so, those who could not accept the theo-historical world view of the Bible (that is, the principle of God's involvement in history), found it necessary to defend the reliability of the set of historical stories also with the help of extra-biblical evidence; That is, the archaeological findings.
Thus, while the traditional reader of the Bible did not distinguish between "myth", "legend" and "tradition", on the one hand, and "history", on the other hand, the modern reader - and especially the national Jewish reader - will find it difficult to base his historical-national consciousness on A "myth", and he cannot be satisfied with the claim that the value of this "myth" lies in the undisputed fact that it created historical reality and historical consciousness and shaped them. It is understood that the need to prove that the entire biblical tradition is a historical truth has become very strong as a result of turning biblical research and archeology into weapons in the Israeli-Arab conflict. This is also where the great excitement comes from any study that is seen as questioning the reliability of the Bible as history and describes it as a composition that "invented" national history, and even from studies that accept the biblical story as a super-story (or skeleton) but try to distinguish between the historical core and the "fiction".
The many questions that the two books touch upon have been extensively discussed in research and public discourse, and it is too short to cover them all here. This is especially true as far as Finkelstein and Silverman's book is concerned, which requires examining separately each of the reconstruction proposals they offer for the various literary units of the Bible. The two books are similar not only in the spirit of critical skepticism in which they treat the biblical historical testimony, but also in the time they set for the compilation of Deuteronomistic history, so I will focus here only on this aspect.
Naman's goal is more "modest" than his colleagues. He does not rewrite the history of biblical Israel, but offers an eloquent, critical and careful examination of the history of a part of the biblical historiography, the so-called "deuteronomistic" historiography, or the Mishna-Torah (Books of Deuteronomy-Kings). The premise of his research, based on a wide canvas of research literature in various fields and the archaeological find, is that the main text of the Deuteronomistic treatise was written in the seventh century, probably by a single writer. This writer was helped by various sources, found to him (again, based on examples from the cultural space of the ancient Near East), in the temple library where a wide corpus of historical essays was kept, including official certificates (hence he was a priest). According to Naman, the impetus and inspiration for the composition of the main text of this essay was the ritual reform that took place in the days of King Josiah (in the years 586-689 BC). The purpose of the Deuteronomistic writer was to strengthen this religious revolution (which was presented as a restoration) by a cohesive and complete historical narrative of A story about Israel that will also offer a new historical-religious consciousness In the revolution in historical recognition and the ways of historical writing that occurred at the same time, they gave birth to a sublime text with unusual literary qualities.
Only those who believe that the author of the books of Joshua-Kings 1-2 wrote under divine inspiration, or those who believe that the source material on which the author was based was always authentic and reliable, and that the author left no room for imagination and interpretation, will disagree with Naaman's assumption of origin; That is, he will dispute the claim that any historical writing - and certainly historical writing guided by a worldview, or interests - that writes about events from a distance in time and is based on sources of a different nature, cannot tell history "as it really was". He will therefore not be able to disagree with the claim that the purpose of the research is to try and get to the historical core of the biblical story whose reliability can be checked with the help of extra-biblical sources. However, it seems to me that it would be difficult to prove that there is a necessary connection, as Naam claims, between the revolution in religious worldview and the one-time literary qualities of the biblical historical story.
Finkelstein and Silverman's book has a much larger purpose. He offers a reconstruction of the history of the people of Israel during the monarchy. The book eloquently summarizes research views that were revealed to a part of the educated public as part of the "controversy over the Bible" that began at the end of 1999, which may have caused the reception of the book to be less enthusiastic. According to the claim of the two authors, the united kingdom from the days of David and Solomon is a figment of the Jewish author's imagination; An invention whose purpose was to create a primitive image of the past shared by Judah and the refugees from Israel. In fact, the formation of the Kingdom of Israel preceded the formation of the Kingdom of Judah by almost a hundred years, which until the destruction of Samaria was nothing more than a small tribal kingdom. The negative description of the Kingdom of Israel is also the work of the Jewish author. However, the two authors are not satisfied with a reconstruction, which depends on agreement on their interpretation of the archaeological find and its validity, of the period of the monarchy, but claim that the history of the people of Israel was invented in a specific period of time within it, point to the identity of the "historians on behalf of", and also seek to explain the motives behind the composition of the layers The different parts of the biblical tradition - from the stories of the ancestors onwards - about ancient Israel. This is probably the secret of the great success of the book, which combines in a very readable and eloquent way a rereading of biblical history and the description of the relevant archaeological findings and their interweaving in the story, with an explanation of why and how the historical stories were written.
And here, aside from agreeing to the main claim that the reliability of a large part of the historical tradition about the history of ancient Israel cannot be trusted, the explanations that the authors give for the patterns of the invention of the tradition and its transformation into "official history" seem to me to be too decisive, simplistic, and even imaginative.
Finkelstein and Silverman (and Naman) are based on some a priori assumptions and some hypotheses, which may be reasonable, but which cannot be confirmed with the help of extra-biblical evidence. First and foremost, they accept as a historical fact that a ritual reform did take place in the days of Josiah, even though only the Bible testifies to it. And so, as evidence that there was a reform, a faithful is required to parallels from ritual reforms from the history of Mesopotamia (and why not the example of Pharaoh Akhenaten?). This matter is even more evident for the method of Finkelstein and Silverman, who do not bring any archaeological evidence to confirm the biblical testimony, which according to the internal logic of their method could be an "invention" of a late writer. Even more, they provide archaeological evidence that Josiah's reform was not fully realized (and was short-lived).
Continuation of the article - next week
The Bible scholar - myth or history?
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