Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel,
archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the
Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not
conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and
Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts
have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody
wants to hear about it

  By Ze'ev Herzog

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the
Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the
desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass
it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the
fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by
the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it
will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah,
had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted
monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount
Sinai.Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking
spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people -
and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the
Bible story - now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of
the Jewish people's emergence are radically different from what that story
tells.

What follows is a short account of the brief history of archaeology, with
the emphasis on the crises and the big bang, so to speak, of the past
decade. The critical question of this archaeological revolution has not
yet trickled down into public consciousness, but it cannot be ignored.

Inventing the Bible stories

The archaeology of Palestine developed as a science at a relatively late
date, in the late 19th and early 20th century, in tandem with the
archaeology of the imperial cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and
Rome. Those resource-intensive powers were the first target of the
researchers, who were looking for impressive evidence from the past,
usually in the service of the big museums in London, Paris and Berlin.
That stage effectively passed over Palestine, with its fragmented
geographical diversity. The conditions in ancient Palestine were
inhospitable for the development of an extensive kingdom, and certainly no
showcase projects such as the Egyptian shrines or the Mesopotamian palaces
could have been established there. In fact, the archaeology of Palestine
was not engendered at the initiative of museums but sprang from religious
motives.

The main push behind archaeological research in Palestine was the
country's relationship with the Holy Scriptures. The first excavators in
Jericho and Shechem (Nablus) were biblical researchers who were looking
for the remains of the cities cited in the Bible. Archaeology assumed
momentum with the activity of William Foxwell Albright, who mastered the
archeology, history and linguistics of the Land of Israel and the ancient
Near East. Albright, an American whose father was a priest of Chilean
descent, began excavating in Palestine in the 1920s. His declared approach
was that archaeology was the principal scientific means to refute the
critical claims against the historical veracity of the Bible stories,
particularly those of the Wellhausen school in Germany.

The school of biblical criticism that developed in Germany beginning in
the second half of the 19th century, of which Julian Wellhausen was a
leading figure, challenged the historicity of the Bible stories and
claimed that biblical historiography was formulated, and in large measure
actually "invented," during the Babylonian exile. Bible scholars, the
Germans in particular, claimed that the history of the Hebrews, as a
consecutive series of events beginning with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and
proceeding through the move to Egypt, the enslavement and the exodus, and
ending with the conquest of the land and the settlement of the tribes of
Israel, was no more than a later reconstruction of events with a
theological purpose.

Albright believed that the Bible is a historical document, which, although
it had gone through several editing stages, nevertheless basically
reflected the ancient reality. He was convinced that if the ancient
remains of Palestine were uncovered, they would furnish unequivocal proof
of the historical truth of the events relating to the Jewish people in its
land.

The biblical archaeology that developed from Albright and his pupils
brought about a series of extensive digs at the important biblical tells:
Megiddo, Lachish, Gezer, Shechem (Nablus), Jericho, Jerusalem, Ai, Giveon,
Beit She'an, Beit Shemesh, Hazor, Ta'anach and others. The way was
straight and clear: every finding that was uncovered would contribute to
the building of a harmonious picture of the past. The archaeologists, who
enthusiastically adopted the biblical approach, set out on a quest to
unearth the "biblical period": the period of the patriarchs, the Canaanite
cities that were destroyed by the Israelites as they conquered the land,
the boundaries of the 12 tribes, the sites of the settlement period,
characterized by "settlement pottery," the "gates of Solomon" at Hazor,
Megiddo and Gezer, "Solomon's stables" (or Ahab's), "King Solomon's mines"
at Timna - and there are some who are still hard at work and have found
Mount Sinai (at Mount Karkoum in the Negev) or Joshua's altar at Mount
Ebal.

The crisis

Slowly, cracks began to appear in the picture. Paradoxically, a situation
was created in which the glut of findings began to undermine the
historical credibility of the biblical descriptions instead of reinforcing
them. A crisis stage is reached when the theories within the framework of
the general thesis are unable to solve an increasingly large number of
anomalies. The explanations become ponderous and inelegant, and the pieces
do not lock together smoothly. Here are a few examples of how the
harmonious picture collapsed.

Patriarchal Age: The researchers found it difficult to reach agreement on
which archaeological period matched the Patriarchal Age. When did Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob live? When was the Cave of Machpelah (Tomb of the
Patriarchs in Hebron) bought in order to serve as the burial place for the
patriarchs and the matriarchs? According to the biblical chronology,
Solomon built the Temple 480 years after the exodus from Egypt (1 Kings
6:1). To that we have to add 430 years of the stay in Egypt (Exodus 12:40)
and the vast lifetimes of the patriarchs, producing a date in the 21th
century BCE for Abraham's move to Canaan.

However, no evidence has been unearthed that can sustain this chronology.
Albright argued in the early 1960s in favor of assigning the wanderings of
Abraham to the Middle Bronze Age (22nd-20th centuries BCE). However,
Benjamin Mazar, the father of the Israeli branch of biblical archaeology,
proposed identifying the historic background of the Patriarchal Age a
thousand years later, in the 11th century BCE - which would place it in
the "settlement period." Others rejected the historicity of the stories
and viewed them as ancestral legends that were told in the period of the
Kingdom of Judea. In any event, the consensus began to break down.

The exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The
many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites'
presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the exodus. Many
documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during
periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta.
However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred
frequently across thousands of years and were hardly exceptional.

Generations of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the stations of
the tribes in the desert. Despite these intensive efforts, not even one
site has been found that can match the biblical account.

The potency of tradition has now led some researchers to "discover" Mount
Sinai in the northern Hijaz or, as already mentioned, at Mount Karkoum in
the Negev. These central events in the history of the Israelites are not
corroborated in documents external to the Bible or in archaeological
findings. Most historians today agree that at best, the stay in Egypt and
the exodous occurred in a few families and that their private story was
expanded and "nationalized" to fit the needs of theological ideology.

The conquest: One of the shaping events of the people of Israel in
biblical historiography is the story of how the land was conquered from
the Canaanites. Yet extremely serious difficulties have cropped up
precisely in the attempts to locate the archaeological evidence for this
story.

Repeated excavations by various expeditions at Jericho and Ai, the two
cities whose conquest is described in the greatest detail in the Book of
Joshua, have proved very disappointing. Despite the excavators' efforts,
it emerged that in the late part of the 13th century BCE, at the end of
the Late Bronze Age, which is the agreed period for the conquest, there
were no cities in either tell, and of course no walls that could have been
toppled. Naturally, explanations were offered for these anomalies. Some
claimed that the walls around Jericho were washed away by rain, while
others suggested that earlier walls had been used; and, as for Ai, it was
claimed that the original story actually referred to the conquest of
nearby Beit El and was transferred to Ai by later redactors.

Biblical scholars suggested a quarter of a century ago that the conquest
stories be viewed as etiological legends and no more. But as more and more
sites were uncovered and it emerged that the places in question died out
or were simply abandoned at different times, the conclusion was bolstered
that there is no factual basis for the biblical story about the conquest
by Israelite tribes in a military campaign led by Joshua.

The Canaanite cities: The Bible magnifies the strength and the
fortifications of the Canaanite cities that were conquered by the
Israelites: "great cities with walls sky-high" (Deuteronomy 9:1). In
practice, all the sites that have been uncovered turned up remains of
unfortified settlements, which in most cases consisted of a few structures
or the ruler's palace rather than a genuine city. The urban culture of
Palestine in the Late Bronze Age disintegrated in a process that lasted
hundreds of years and did not stem from military conquest. Moreover, the
biblical description is inconsistent with the geopolitical reality in
Palestine. Palestine was under Egyptian rule until the middle of the 12th
century BCE. The Egyptians' administrative centers were located in Gaza,
Yaffo and Beit She'an. Egyptian findings have also been discovered in many
locations on both sides of the Jordan River. This striking presence is not
mentioned in the biblical account, and it is clear that it was unknown to
the author and his editors.

The archaeological findings blatantly contradict the biblical picture: the
Canaanite cities were not "great," were not fortified and did not have
"sky-high walls." The heroism of the conquerors, the few versus the many
and the assistance of the God who fought for his people are a theological
reconstruction lacking any factual basis.

Origin of the Israelites: The fusion of the conclusions drawn from the
episodes relating to the stages in which the people of Israel emerged gave
rise to a discussion of the bedrock question: the identity of the
Israelites. If there is no evidence for the exodus from Egypt and the
desert journey, and if the story of the military conquest of fortified
cities has been refuted by archaeology, who, then, were these Israelites?
The archaeological findings did corroborate one important fact: in the
early Iron Age (beginning some time after 1200 BCE), the stage that is
identified with the "settlement period," hundreds of small settlements
were established in the area of the central hill region of the Land of
Israel, inhabited by farmers who worked the land or raised sheep. If they
did not come from Egypt, what is the origin of these settlers? Israel
Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has proposed
that these settlers were the pastoral shepherds who wandered in this hill
area throughout the Late Bronze Age (graves of these people have been
found, without settlements). According to his reconstruction, in the Late
Bronze Age (which preceded the Iron Age) the shepherds maintained a barter
economy of meat in exchange for grains with the inhabitants of the
valleys. With the disintegration of the urban and agricultural system in
the lowland, the nomads were forced to produce their own grains, and hence
the incentive for fixed settlements arose.

The name "Israel" is mentioned in a single Egyptian document from the
period of Merneptah, king of Egypt, dating from 1208 BCE: "Plundered is
Canaan with every evil, Ascalon is taken, Gezer is seized, Yenoam has
become as though it never was, Israel is desolated, its seed is not."
Merneptah refers to the country by its Canaanite name and mentions several
cities of the kingdom, along with a non-urban ethnic group. According to
this evidence, the term "Israel" was given to one of the population groups
that resided in Canaan toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, apparently
in the central hill region, in the area where the Kingdom of Israel would
later be established.

A kingdom with no name

The united monarchy: Archaeology was also the source that brought about
the shift regarding the reconstruction of the reality in the period known
as the "united monarchy" of David and Solomon. The Bible describes this
period as the zenith of the political, military and economic power of the
people of Israel in ancient times. In the wake of David's conquests, the
empire of David and Solomon stretched from the Euprates River to Gaza
("For he controlled the whole region west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah
to Gaza, all the kings west of the Euphrates," 1 Kings 5:4). The
archaeological findings at many sites show that the construction projects
attributed to this period were meager in scope and power.

The three cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, which are mentioned among
Solomon's construction enterprises, have been excavated extensively at the
appropriate layers. Only about half of Hazor's upper section was
fortified, covering an area of only 30 dunams (7.5 acres), out of a total
area of 700 dunams which was settled in the Bronze Age. At Gezer there was
apparently only a citadel surrounded by a casematewall covering a small
area, while Megiddo was not fortified with a wall.

The picture becomes even more complicated in the light of the excavations
conducted in Jerusalem, the capital of the united monarchy. Large sections
of the city have been excavated over the past 150 years. The digs have
turned up impressive remnants of the cities from the Middle Bronze Age and
from Iron Age II (the period of the Kingdom of Judea). No remains of
buildings have been found from the period of the united monarchy (even
according to the agreed chronology), only a few pottery shards. Given the
preservation of the remains from earlier and later periods, it is clear
that Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon was a small city, perhaps
with a small citadel for the king, but in any event it was not the capital
of an empire as described in the Bible. This small chiefdom is the source
of the "Beth David" title mentioned in later Aramean and Moabite
inscriptions. The authors of the biblical account knew Jerusalem in the
8th century BCE, with its wall and the rich culture of which remains have
been found in various parts of the city, and projected this picture back
to the age of the united monarchy. Presumably Jerusalem acquired its
central status after the destruction of Samaria, its northern rival, in
722 BCE.

The archaeological findings dovetail well with the conclusions of the
critical school of biblical scholarship. David and Solomon were the rulers
of tribal kingdoms that controlled small areas: the former in Hebron and
the latter in Jerusalem. Concurrently, a separate kingdom began to form in
the Samaria hills, which finds expression in the stories about Saul's
kingdom. Israel and Judea were from the outset two separate, independent
kingdoms, and at times were in an adversarial relationship. Thus, the
great united monarchy is an imaginary historiosophic creation, which was
composed during the period of the Kingdom of Judea at the earliest.
Perhaps the most decisive proof of this is the fact that we do not know
the name of this kingdom.

Jehovah and his consort: How many gods, exactly, did Israel have? Together
with the historical and political aspects, there are also doubts as to the
credibility of the information about belief and worship. The question
about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel
and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that
mention a pair of gods: Jehovah and his Asherah. At two sites, Kuntiliet
Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and at Khirbet
el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that
mention "Jehovah and his Asherah," "Jehovah Shomron and his Asherah,
"Jehovah Teman and his Asherah." The authors were familiar with a pair of
gods, Jehovah and his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's
name. These inscriptions, from the 8th century BCE, raise the possibility
that monotheism, as a state religion, is actually an innovation of the
period of the Kingdom of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom
of Israel.

The archaeology of the Land of Israel is completing a process that amounts
to a scientific revolution in its field. It is ready to confront the
findings of biblical scholarship and of ancient history. But at the same
time, we are witnessing a fascinating phenomenon in which all this is
simply ignored by the Israeli public. Many of the findings mentioned here
have been known for decades. The professional literature in the spheres of
archaeology, Bible and the history of the Jewish people has addressed them
in dozens of books and hundreds of articles. Even if not all the scholars
accept the individual arguments that inform the examples I cited, the
majority have adopted their main points.

Nevertheless, these revolutionary views are not penetrating the public
consciousness. About a year ago, my colleague, the historian Prof. Nadav
Ne'eman, published an article in the Culture and Literature section of
Ha'aretz entitled "To Remove the Bible from the Jewish Bookshelf," but
there was no public outcry. Any attempt to question the reliability of the
biblical descriptions is perceived as an attempt to undermine "our
historic right to the land" and as shattering the myth of the nation that
is renewing the ancient Kingdom of Israel. These symbolic elements
constitute such a critical component of the construction of the Israeli
identity that any attempt to call their veracity into question encounters
hostility or silence. It is of some interest that such tendencies within
the Israeli secular society go hand-in-hand with the outlook among
educated Christian groups. I have found a similar hostility in reaction to
lectures I have delivered abroad to groups of Christian bible lovers,
though what upset them was the challenge to the foundations of their
fundamentalist religious belief.

It turns out that part of Israeli society is ready to recognize the
injustice that was done to the Arab inhabitants of the country and is
willing to accept the principle of equal rights for women - but is not up
to adopting the archaeological facts that shatter the biblical myth. The
blow to the mythical foundations of the Israeli identity is apparently too
threatening, and it is more convenient to turn a blind eye.

(c) copyright 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved