Ann-Margret “Maggie” Yonan
California
The Books of Moses, as discussed in part I of this article, (please see Zinda November 12, 2007) are primarily based on three most important elements: the Genesis story of the wandering patriarchs of the Israelites, the Jewish Exodus out of Egypt, and the conquest of Canaan by the Davidic Dynasty, establishing a vast, united Hebrew empire. We demonstrated how the Bible was pieced together in the seventh century B.C. from old source documents and we raised questions about the existence of Israelite patriarchs, (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and asked whether or not there was an actual Jewish Exodus out of Egypt, an “Ark of the covenant” or for that matter so-called “prophets” in Israel, especially in the context of a glorious empire that David and his son Solomon might have established, as the Bible depicts.
Israel’s Mythical Patriarchs-
The story of Israel begins with the patriarchs as described in the Bible to provide the historical tradition with which the ancient Jews have been identified. The Bible names Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob, (also known as Israel) as the patriarch of the Jews. But as we will shortly see, these biblical stories are neither based on historical reality nor any archaeological evidence. If we examine the early Israelite settlements to try to piece together how the Jewish patriarchs might have come to Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees, we will have to admit there’s no evidence to support any of the patriarchs of Israel stories, hence these biblical narrations remain legends and the origins of the Israelites as outlined in the Bible remain obscure.
As mentioned previously, most of the biblical narratives were initially woven together from earlier sources, and we came to believe these stories mostly because the pastoral life of the patriarchs seemed to mesh well with the Bedouin’s way of life. Yet the search for the historical patriarchs was ultimately unsuccessful, since none of the periods around the biblically suggested date of 2100 B.C. provided a compatible background to the biblical stories. The assumed sudden westward migration of groups from Mesopotamia toward Canaan, (the so-called Amorite migration) in which Albright placed the arrival of Abraham and his family was later shown to be illusory. Archaeology completely disproved the contention that a sudden, massive population movement had taken place at that time. Subsequent attempts by De Vaux to place the narratives of the patriarchs in the Middle Bronze Age, (2000-1550 B.C.) also failed. Moreover, attempts by the American scholars Speiser and Gordon to place them against the background archive found in Nuzi in northern Iraq was proven to be completely inaccurate. The Israeli biblical historian, Benjamin Mazar and his attempt to place them in the Early Iron Age also failed to establish a convincing link.
It would have been impossible for Abraham to have traveled from Ur to Canaan via a caravan route around 2100 B.C. as the biblical writers have suggested. We now know through archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not used in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 B.C. The camel caravan carrying gum, balm, and myrrh were products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh century B.C. Precisely at this time, Assyrian sources describe camels being used as pack animals in caravans. Moreover, the Philistines, a group of migrants from the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean, had not yet established their settlements along the coastal plain of Canaan until sometime after 1200 B.C. Their cities prospered in the eleventh century and continued to dominate the area well into the Assyrian period. The mention of Gerar as a Philistine city in the narratives of Isaac, suggest that this city had a special importance and was widely known at the time of the composition of the patriarchal stories. Gerar is today known as Tel Haror, and excavations there have shown that in the Iron Age I, the early phase of the Philistines, it was a small insignificant village. But by the late eighth and seventh century B.C. it had become a strong, heavily fortified Assyrian administrative stronghold, an obvious landmark. All clues point to a time of composition of the patriarchal stories after the time in which the Bible reports the lives of the patriarchs took place. This means that patriarchal narratives were created in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.
Beginning with the Arameans, who dominate the stories of Jacob’s marriage to Leah and Rachel and his relationship with his uncle Laban, we can determine the relationship of neighboring peoples with the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The Arameans are not mentioned as a distinct ethnic group in ancient Near Eastern texts before 1100 B.C. They became a dominant factor on the northern borders of the Israelites in the early ninth century B.C. when a number of Aramean kingdoms arose throughout the area of modern Syria, among them the kingdom of Aram-Damascus, which was sometimes an ally and sometime a foe of the kingdom of Israel, for control of the rich agricultural territories that lay between their main centers. In fact, the cycle of stories about Jacob and Laban metaphorically express the complex and stormy relationship between Aram and Israel over many centuries.
Aram and Israel were military rivals, but much of the population of the northern territories of the kingdom of Israel seems to have been Aramean in origin. The book of Deuteronomy describes Jacob as “the wandering Aramean,” and the stories of the relations between the individual patriarchs and their Aramean cousins clearly express the consciousness of shared origins. The biblical description of the tensions between Jacob and his uncle Laban, establishing a boundary stone east of the Jordan to mark the border between their peoples reflects the territorial partition between Aram and Israel in the ninth-eighth centuries B.C.
Among the descendants of Ishmael listed in Genesis 25:12 are the Qedrites, (from Ishmael’s son Qeder) who are mentioned for the first time in Assyrian records of the late eighth century B.C. and are frequently referred to during the reign of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the seventh century B.C. Before that time, they lived beyond the territories of Judah and Israel, occupying the western fringe of the Fertile Crescent. In fact, Ishmael’s sons Adbeel and Nebaioth represent north Arabian groups that are also first mentioned in the late eighth and seventh century Assyrian inscriptions. Ishmael’s third son, Tema is most likely linked with the great caravan oasis Tayma in northwest Arabia, mentioned in Assyrian and Babylonian sources of the eighth-sixth centuries B.C.
The Genesis narratives also reveal unmistakable familiarity with the location and reputation of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires of the ninth-sixth centuries B.C. Assyria is specifically mentioned in relation to the Tigris River in Genesis 2:14, and two of the royal capitals of the Assyrian empire, Nineveh recognized as the capital of the empire in the seventh century B.C. and Calha, its predecessor are mentioned in Genesis 10:11 (both are J documents). The city of Haran plays a dominant role in the stories of the patriarchs. The site still called Eski Haran, (old Haran) is located in southern Turkey, on the border with Syria. The city prospered in the early second millennium B.C. and again in the Neo-Assyrian period. Assyrian texts mention towns near Haran such as Terah, (Abraham’s supposed father) Nahor, and Serug, Abraham’s purported forefathers, (Genesis 11:22-26, a P source).
The German biblical scholar Martin Noth long ago argued that the accounts of the events of Israel’s earliest periods of existence, the stories of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the wandering in Sinai, were not originally composed as a single saga. He theorized that they were the separate traditions of individual tribes that were assembled into a unified narrative to serve the cause of the political unification of a scattered and heterogeneous Israelite population. Noth pointed out that many of the stories connected with Abraham are set in the southern part of the hill country, in Hebron and Isaac is associated with the southern desert fringe of Judah, particularly Beersheba, whereas Jacob’s activities take place in the northern hill country that were part of the kingdom of Israel. Noth therefore suggests that the patriarchs were originally quite separate regional ancestors, who were eventually brought together in a single genealogy in an effort to create a united history for the Hebrews. The figure of Abraham therefore functions as the unifier of northern and southern traditions, bridging north and south.
It is entirely possible and even probable that the individual episodes in the patriarchal narratives are based on ancient local traditions, yet the use to which they are put and the order in which they are arranged transform them into powerful expression of seventh century Judahite dreams. In the fragmentary evidence of the E version of the patriarchal stories, presumably compiled in the northern kingdom of Israel before its destruction in 720 B.C. by Assyria, the tribe of Judah plays almost no role. But by the late eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Judah was the center of what was left of the Israelite nation, and in that light the J version of the patriarchal narratives are nothing more than a literary attempt to define the unity of the people of Israel rather than an accurate record of the lives of historical characters living more than a millennium before.
The heartland of Israeli settlements have been excavated for the last 60 years, and information on any signs of occupation from the Stone Age to the Ottoman period were recorded in order to study the highland’s long-term settlement history. The early Israelites appear to have been pastoral nomads, who settled on the fringe of the desert they once roamed, and became seasonal farmers. They eventually settled in these hill-top acres and became herders and farmers, with a simple culture of subsistence, around 1200 B.C.E.
No traces of religious beliefs or cultural traits by which to assess their distinctiveness were found. The same material culture can be seen in Moab, in Edom, and Ammon, so what distinguishes the Israelites from their neighbors and defines their unique ethnicity? To date, we have no evidence of particular distinction, and no evidence the Ark of the covenant’s existence.
Was there a Jewish Exodus out of Egypt?
In the story of the great exodus of the Jews out of Egypt, the biblical hero Moses is said to have been the spiritual leader of the Israelites who led them out of Egypt after confronting the tyrannical pharaoh, in an attempt to deliver them to the “promised land.” So important is this story of the Israelite’s liberation from bondage that the biblical books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, (a full four-fifths of the central scriptures of Israel) are devoted to the momentous events experienced by a single generation over a span of forty years. During these years occurred the miracle of the burning bush, the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the appearance of manna in the wilderness, and the revelation of God’s law on Sinai, all of which were the “visible manifestations of God’s rule over both nature and humanity.” The God of Israel, “Yahweh,” previously known only in “private revelations” to the patriarchs here reveals himself to the nation as a universal deity. But if there were no patriarchs, as we have demonstrated, then there is no basis for this revelation, which means that this narrative is entirely a myth, the same way the patriarchs of Israel were based on ancient local legends.
If these stories were based on historical realities, then let us consider archaeological evidence to discuss these biblical episodes. The stage is set for this dramatic exodus out of Egypt at the end of the book of Genesis, with the sons of Jacob living in security under the protection of their brother Joseph, who had come to power as an influential official in the Egyptian hierarchy. They were prosperous and content in the cities of the eastern Nile delta and had free access back and forth to their Canaanite homeland. After the death of their father, Jacob, they brought his body back to Canaan and set it in the tomb alongside his father Isaac and grandfather, Abraham, in the cave of Machpelah in Hebron, Judah. Over a period of four-hundred years, the descendants of the twelve brothers and families grew into a nation, just as “God had promised” and according to the Bible were known to the Egyptians as the Hebrews. But this biblical story tells us that times changed and eventually a new pharaoh came to power, “who knew not Joseph.” If Joseph had been a powerful and influential official in the Egyptian hierarchy, how is it that this new pharaoh did not know of him? Why did this pharaoh suddenly enslave the Hebrews, forcing them into construction gangs to build the royal cities of Pithom and Raamses?
The Egyptian inscriptions do not mention the Hebrews in Egypt. In fact, the only people identified by the Egyptians during the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled from about 1670 to 1570 B.C., (the time which the Bible dates the Hebrew bondage) were the Hyskos, a Semetic group from Canaan. Recent archaeological excavations in the eastern Nile delta have confirmed this and indicate that the Hyskos “invasion” was a gradual process of immigration from Canaan to Egypt, rather than a lightning military campaign. The most important dig has been undertaken by Manfred Bietak of the University of Vienna, at Tell ed-Daba, a site in the eastern delta identified as Avaris, the Hysklos capital. The Tell ed-Daba finds are evidence for a long and gradual development of Canaanite presence in the delta, a situation uncannily similar to the stories of the visits of the patriarchs to Egypt and their eventual settlement there. Egyptian inscriptions of the sixteenth century B.C. that recounts the exploits of Pharaoh Ahmoses of the Eighteenth Dynasty tell us that he sacked Avaris and chased the remnants of the Hyskos to their main citadel in southern Canaan, Sharuhen, near Gaza.
The expulsion of the Hyskos is generally dated on the basis of Egyptian records and the archaeological evidence regarding the destruction of Canaanite cities, around 1570 B.C. But the Bible tells us that the Hebrews, after their Exodus out of Egypt, constructed the Temple at Jerusalem in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, which would be 480 years after the Exodus. According to this date, this roughly places the Exodus in 1440 B.C. That is more than one hundred years after the date of the Egyptian expulsion of the Hyskos, around 1570 B.C. Furthermore, the Bible speaks about the forced labor projects of the children of Israel and mentions in particular the construction of the city of Raamses, (Exodus I:II). In the fifteenth century B.C. such a name is inconceivable. The first Pharaoh named Ramesses came to the throne in 1320 B.C. more than a century after the traditional biblical date.
The earliest mention of Israel in texts found in Egypt in the stele describing the campaign of Pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramesses II, was at the end of the thirteenth century B.C. If this is the case, then we have a problem! No mention of the name Israel has been found in any of the inscriptions or documents connected with the Hyskos, nor is it mentioned in later Egyptian inscriptions, or in an extensive fourteenth century B.C. cuneiform archive found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, whose nearly four hundred letters describe in detail the social, political, and demographic conditions in Canaan at that time. As we know now, the Israelites emerged only gradually as a distinct group in Canaan, beginning at the end of the thirteenth century B.C. There is no recognizable archaeological evidence of Israelites presence in Egypt immediately before that time.
A late thirteenth century B.C. papyrus records how closely the Egyptian commanders of the forts monitored the movements of foreigners as follows: “We have completed the entry of the tribes of the Edomite Shasu, (the Bedouin) through the fortress of Merneptah-Content-with-truth, which is in Tjkw, to the pools of Pr-Itm which are in Tjkw for the sustenance of their flocks.” This report is important in many ways: First, it names the two most important sites mentioned in the Bible in connection with the Exodus. Succoth, (Exodus12:37, and numbers 33:5) as we now know is the Hebrew form of the Egyptian Tjkw, a name referring to a place or an area in the eastern delta that appears in the Egyptian texts from the days of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the Dynasty of Ramesses II. Pithom, (Exodus I:II) is the Hebrew form of Pr-Itm, (the House/Temple of the God Atum.” This name appears for the first time in the days of the New Kingdom in Egypt. Two more place-names that appear in the Exodus narrative seem to fit the reality of the eastern delta in the time of the New Kingdom. The first would be the city of Raamses, (Pi-Ramesses) or “The house of Ramesses,” in Egyptian. This city was built in the thirteenth century as the capital of Ramesses II in the eastern delta, very close to the ruins of Avaris. Secondly, it tells us that the border between Canaan and Egypt was so closely controlled, that if a great mass-exodus of fleeing Israelites had passed through the border fortifications of the pharaonic regime, a record should exist. Yet in the abundant Egyptian inscriptions describing the time of the New Kingdom in general, and the thirteenth century, in particular, there is no reference to the Israelites, not even a single clue! These inscriptions have given us details of the nomadic groups from Edom who entered Egypt from the desert. The Merneptah stele refers to Israel as a group of people already living in Canaan, but they give us not a single clue or word about early Israelites in Egypt. Israel is absent from Egyptian walls, temples, tomb inscriptions, and papyri, either as friend or foe of Egypt, or as an enslaved nation. As the Israeli archaeologists have pointed out, the escape of even a tiny group from Egyptian control at the time of Ramesses II seems highly unlikely, given the fact they would have had to cross an entire desert to get to Canaan! The Egyptian grip on Canaan was firm. In the el-Amarna letters Egyptian kings tell us that a unit of fifty Egyptian soldiers was big enough to pacify and contain the unrest in Canaan.
The annals of the great Egyptian conqueror Thutmose II tell us that he marched with his troops from the Eastern delta to Gaza, a distance of about 250 kilometers, in ten days. A relief from the forts and water reservoirs in the form of an early map that traces the route from the eastern delta to the southwestern border of Canaan were uncovered in the course of archaeological investigations in northern Sinai by Elizer Oren of Ben-Gurion University in the 1970′s. These remains prove that each of these road stations, closely correspond to the sites designated on the ancient Egyptian relief. We can hardly accept the idea of a flight of a large group of slaves from Egypt through the heavily guarded border fortifications into the desert and then into Canaan in the time of such a formidable Egyptian presence. Any group escaping Egypt against the will of the pharaoh would have easily been tracked down not only by the mighty Egyptian army, but also by the Egyptian soldiers in the forts in northern Sinai and Canaan. The biblical narrative hints at the danger in attempting to use the coastal route, hence the only alternative would have been to use the desolate wastes of the Sinai peninsula, and even that possibility is contradicted by archaeology. According to the biblical account, the children of Israel wandered in the desert and mountains of the Sinai peninsula, moving and camping in different places for a full forty years. Even if the enormous figure of six-hundred thousand fleeing Israelites given in the Bible is an exaggeration, some archaeological traces of their generation-long wandering in the Sinai should be apparent. Yet, except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a single campsite or sign of occupation has ever been identified in Sinai. Repeated archaeological surveys in all regions of the peninsula, including the mountainous area around the traditional site of Mount Sinai have yielded nothing. Not a single sherd, no structure, no house, no trace of an ancient encampment. One might argue that a small group of wandering Israelites cannot be expected to leave material remains behind. But modern archaeological techniques are quite capable of tracing even the very meager remains of hunters-gatherers and pastoral nomads all over the world.
According to the biblical narrative, the children of Israel camped at Kadesh-barnea for thirty eight of the forty years of the wanderings. The location of this place has been described in the Bible, (Numbers 34) and it has been identified by archaeologists with the large and well-watered oasis Ein el-Qudeirat in eastern Sinai. A small mound with the remains of a Late Iron Age fort stands at the center of this oasis. Yet repeated excavations and surveys throughout the entire area have not provided even the slightest evidence for activity in the late Bronze Age. Even Ezion-geber, another place where the children of Israel supposedly camped during the Exodus era, and mentioned in the Bible as a port town on the modern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, has been excavated repeatedly and has revealed no trace of the wandering Israelites.
Two hundred years of extensive excavation and study of the remains of ancient Egyptian civilization that has given us a detailed chronology of the events, places, and personalities of the pharaonic times, which should have yielded some evidence of the Israelite exodus. Yet, archaeology has only provided us with historical migration patterns of the Semites who came to Egypt during the Bronze Age from southern Canaan. The reasons for their migration to Egypt are varied but largely due to famine, and the great Nile delta offered them fertile grounds by which they could sustain themselves during the drought years.
Archaeology has shown us no traces of Israelites wandering in the areas the Bible mentions, and all the cities named in the story of the Exodus were built in the seventh century B.C. (hundreds of years after the reported Exodus took place) which means the biblical writers pieced these legends together to create a starting point from which the Israelites could unite and construct their history during their exile in Babylon. If there was no Jewish Exodus out of Egypt then there was no Moses.
The Mythical Dynasty of David and Solomon-
The biblical epic of Israel’s transformation from a period of judges to the time of the monarchy begins with a great military crisis, as described in I Samuel 4-5, in which the Philistine armies destroyed the Israelite tribal levies in battle and carried off the “Ark of the Covenant” as booty of war. The Israelite legend depicts David of Judah fighting the goliath of the Philistines, killing him with a single stone from his sling-shot. The biblical David emerges as the new hero of Israel, and once he is declared king over all of Israel he defeats the Jebusites who occupied Jerusalem at that time, and makes the city his capital. Before he dies, David establishes his great dynasty, which is inherited by his son, Solomon. His son Solomon then consolidates the Davidic dynasty and organizes it into an empire and accumulates great wealth and constructs a temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem. For all their reported wealth and power, neither David nor Solomon is mentioned in a single known Egyptian or Mesopotamian text, and the archaeological evidence in Jerusalem for the famous building projects of Solomon is nonexistent. Apparently nineteenth and early twentieth century excavations around the temple mount in Jerusalem failed to identify any traces of Solomon’s fabled temple or palace complex. Yet the bible describes Solomon’s rebuilding of the northern cities of Megido, Hazor, and Gezer. All three sites have been excavated extensively Megido in particular was excavated by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the 1920′s and 1930′s. At first, some of the impressive Iron Age remains were attributed to Solomon. Located in a strategic spot, where the international highway from Egypt in the south to Mesopotamia and Anatolia in the north descends from the hills into the Jezreel valley, and links to Egypt, (Isaiah’s Highway?) Megido was one of the most important cities of biblical Israel. In this expedition archaeologists believed they found the famous palaces and royal stables of King Solomon, but the truth became unavoidable after a few decades of excavations.
Most of the archaeological evidence is actually dated to the early 9th century B.C.E., decades after the death of Solomon, and some fall in the 10th century B.C.E., long after the time of David. The Davidic dynasty seems to be a myth and there’s no compelling evidence for a historical existence of a vast united monarchy, centered in Jerusalem and encompassing the entire land of Israel. The fame of the Davidic dynasty, however, could not be a complete legend, to the extent that in 1993 a fragmentary artifact was found at Tel Dan in northern Israel, and the inscription written in Aramaic tells how king of Damascus Hazael, kills Jehoram son of Ahab, king of Israel of the “House of David,” which historically establishes David’s name in the region. The stables and the palaces found belonged to a later city built by King Ahab of the northern kingdom of Israel in the early ninth century B.C. and is confirmed by the ninth century Assyrian inscription which describes the great chariot force of king Ahab of Israel.
It seems that King Ahab, the son of the great Omri, and his notorious wife, Jezebel, the Phoenician princess, were the mighty couple who first brought the Kingdom of Israel to prominence, building magnificent cities to serve as administrative centers of their expansive kingdom. They succeeded in building one of the most powerful armies in the region, with which they conquered a great deal of territories in the north.
All the glory that should have been bestowed by the biblical writers upon the famous Omri dynasty was showered on the Davidic dynasty instead, to support Josiah’s ambition of expansion of the northern Israelite kingdom. The biblical writers, especially the Deuteronomists tried to replace the glorious work of the Omri family and to establish the legitimacy of Josiah, a Judahite, as the true heir of the Davidic Dynasty. Moreover, the biblical writer’s motives seem to have been exclusively tied to the de-legitimization of the northern Israelite’s Mesopotamian cult worship and to replace it with the centralized worship of Yahweh at the temple in Jerusalem.
There is hardly a doubt that Samaria was indeed built by Omri, since later Assyrian sources call the northern kingdom of Israel “the House of Omri,” an indication that he was the founder of its capital, Samaria. Omri and his successors earned the hatred of the Bible precisely because they were strong, and had succeeded in transforming the northern kingdom of Israel into an important regional power that overshadowed the poor and marginal kingdom of Judah. The fact that Israel had emerged as a power in the region, had consorted with other nations, married foreign women, built Canaanite type of shrines, supported a diverse culture and religion, was unbearable and sinful to the Judeans. As we have demonstrated in part I of this article, the priestly writers of the Bible had tried to glorify Judah and its hero David, and had condemned the northern kingdom of Israel, its priests, its kings, defining them as heretics precisely because they would not yield to the power and prejudice of the Judahite priests. The Omri dynasty worshipped Mesopotamian Gods, they collaborated with Assyrian kings, and they built a glorious kingdom in the northern territories of Israel with the help of the Assyrian kings. This earned them the hatred of the Judahite priests who wrote much of the Bible and who glorified their Judahite heroes, David and his son Solomon.
Israel, as a state, enjoyed natural wealth and extensive trade connections that distinguished it from the impoverished Judah. Israel, under the Omri dynasty, had the necessary organization to undertake huge building projects, establish a powerful army, and to develop a complex settlement hierarchy of cities, town, and villages. This made it the first full-fledged kingdom. Its goals and achievements were dramatically different than the kingdom of Judah, therefore, it has been totally obscured by the Bible’s condemnations, and supports the claims of the later, southern and Davidic dynasty, for predominance. In this manner, the Bible has demeaned and misrepresented nearly everything that the northern, Omride dynasty did.
Jezebel is demonized in the Bible by the Judahite priests because she was not Jewish, and therefore a foreigner who supported the Mesopotamian cult worshipped by the northern kingdom of Israel. Her husband, king Ahab did not support the racist ideologies of the Judahite priests, and earned their hatred for his open-minded and revolutionary social, political, and religious programs he instituted in the northern territories. This famous couple was at odds with the so-called prophet Elijah and his protégé, Elisha, two famous “prophets of Yahweh” who condemned Jezebel and Ahab for their reforms and revolutionary ideas. Elijah plotted to dethrone this famous couple by claiming that “Yahweh had instructed him to destroy the House of Omri.” The biblical narrative regarding Jezebel and Ahab is so filled with inconsistencies and anachronisms, and so obviously influenced by the theology of the seventh-century B.C. biblical writers, that archaeologists and biblical scholars have suggested that “it must be considered more of a historical novel than an accurate historical chronicle.” Among other inconsistencies, the reported invasion by Ben-Hadad of Damascus did not take place during the reign of Ahab. The key to this new understanding is the sudden appearance of monumental inscriptions that directly refer to the kingdom of Israel. The first mention of the northern kingdom of Israel in the time of the Omrides is not accidental. The westward advance of the Assyrian empire from its Mesopotamian heartland, with its long tradition of recording its ruler’s acts, profoundly influenced the culture of crystallizing states like Israel, Aram, and Moab. Beginning in the ninth century B.C. in the records of the Assyrians themselves and those of smaller powers in the Near East, we at last gain some first-hand testimony on events and persons described in the biblical texts.
In the time of David and Solomon, political organization had not yet reached the state that it did during the Omri dynasty. But a century after David and Solomon, the internal economic and political pressures had brought about the rise of fully-developed territorial and national states in the Levant. In the ninth century and after, major political events were recorded, and these inscriptions are crucial for establishing precise dates for events and personalities mentioned in the Bible.
There is some dramatic evidence from Assyrian sources that the Omrides became powerful in Israel. The 9th century B.C. Shalmaneser III stele, known as the Monolith Inscription, found by Henry Layard at Nimrod in the 1840′s, describes an anti-Assyrian coalition led by King Ahab of the Omri dynasty, confronting the Assyrian army on the Orontes River in Syria. This stele depicts the famous battle of Qarqar, in which the greatest Assyrian ruler King Shalmaneser III, who ruled from 858-824 B.C., is advancing his army and there he sees the enemy of “1200 chariots, 700 cavalrymen, 10,000 foot soldiers of Irhuleni from Hamath, 2,000 chariots, 10,000 foot soldiers of Ahab, the Israelite, 500 soldiers from Que, 1,000 soldiers from Musri, 10 chariots, 10,000 soldiers from Irqanata.”
With the help of archaeological evidence and the testimony of outside sources, we can see how the vivid scriptural portraits that doomed Omri, Ahab, and Jezebel to ridicule and scorn over the centuries, skillfully concealing the real character of the first kingdom of Israel. Yet, the “rebel” Jehu, is pictured in the Bible as “God’s instrument” to destroy idolatry in Israel, is shown in the famous “black obelisk” of Shalmaneser bowing low to the ground at the feet of the great king of Assyria. Shalmaneser III wrote: “The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri, I received from him silver, gold, a golden saplu-bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king.” Jehu, in the Bible is depicted as the reported exterminator of the Omri family, but the fact that Shalmaneser III defined him as “son of Omri” means that he ruled a vassal kingdom whose capital city, Samaria, was founded by Omri, his grandfather, not David, nor Solomon.
The fall of the Omri Dynasty did not end or eliminate the Mesopotamian Baal cult, nor did any king after them abolish it. In fifteen years, four Israelite kings were assassinated, with Pekah’s assassin and successor, Hoshea, being the last king of the kingdom of Israel. Hoshea, at first, proclaimed his loyalty as a vassal to Assyria and offered tribute to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V, but secretly sought an alliance with Egypt. When Shalmaneser V learned of this, he took Hoshea captive and invaded what was left of the kingdom of Israel. Assyria captured Samaria in 730 B.C. and deported the Israelites to the Assyrian empire. Only the kingdom of Judah, its temple, and its Davidic dynasty survived.
This period was followed by a brief occupation of the kingdom of Israel by the Arameans through the conquests of king Hazael and his son Bar-Hadad III, kings of Aram-Damascus, at the second half of the ninth century. But in 811 B.C, a new reigning Assyrian king, Adad-Nirari III, having seized Damascus and crushed its power in the region, ended the Syrian hegemony. The northern kingdom of Israel had pledged its loyalty to Assyria since Shalmaneser III, and it now became the favored Assyrian vassal under Adad-Nirari III. Now the northern kingdom had an opportunity to recover economically and regain its lost territories from Aram-Damascus and the expansion continued under Jeroboam. This is how the northern kingdom, around 800 B.C. achieved its Golden Age.
Critical evidence comes from the Assyrian sources which reveal that the kingdom of Israel was famous for breeding horses and its chariot forces long after king Ahab faced Shalmaneser III with two thousand chariots at the battle of Qarqar in Syria in 853 B.C. The Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has found convincing evidence in Assyrian records that some of the empire’s vassal states specialized in horse-breeding and export of horses used in chariot and cavalry warfare. At Megido, archaeologists found the architectural remains of an important horse-breeding farm. It is possible that in the days of Jeroboam II Israel bred horses not only for its own military requirements but for chariot units throughout the Assyrian empire. A clue comes to us from a period immediately after the conquest of northern kingdom by Assyria. A special Israelite chariot unit was incorporated into the Assyrian army, In fact, Stephanie Dalley’s research on Assyrian tablets provides information from the “horse list”, in which officials, officers, and units of the Assyrian army in the days of Sargon II were employed by conquered people. The Israelite’s chariot brigade was the only foreign unit permitted to retain its national identity. The Assyrian King Sargon II says it best, “I formed a unit with two hundred of their chariots for my royal force.” This indicates that the Israelite chariot units were given a special status in the Assyrian army. The information from the Horse list mentions an Israelite commander named Shema, probably a chariot commander, who served in a high post in the Assyrian army and was a member of the king’s entourage.
The resurgence of Israel under Jehu’s grandson, Joash had more directly to do with the Assyrian humbling of Damascus than “God’s reported change of heart” as described in the Bible. The end of the regional hegemony of Aram-Damascus gave the northern kingdom of Israel, which had pledged its loyalty to Assyria during the reign of Shalmaneser III, a splendid opportunity to be recognized as Assyria’s most favored vassal. Under the leadership of King Joash the northern kingdom quickly recovered and started regaining its territories that had been lost to Damascus. Under the Assyrian protection, the expansion of Israel continued under Jeroboam II who extended Israel’s kingdom’s boundaries well into the former territories of Aram. The kingdom began to prosper around 800 B.C and this is reported even by the Judahite priests of the Bible. The biblical author of the book of Kings was forced to find an explanation for this otherwise puzzling good fortune enjoyed by the “sinful” northerners. He explained the turn of events by the sudden compassion of the God of Israel, (2 Kings 14:26-27) but we can now see that a more likely reason was the Assyrian aggression against Damascus and Israel’s eager participation in the growing Assyrian world economy.
It is at the height of wealth and prosperity of the northern kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam II rule that we have the first record of “prophetic” protest. The oracles of Amos and Hosea, two self-proclaimed prophets, who denounce the “corrupt” and “impious” aristocracy of the northern kingdom of Israel serve to document the opulence of this era and to express for the first time ideas that would exert a profound effect on the emerging Deuteronomist ideology. Amos condemns those who “have built houses of hewn stone” and his contemporary, Hosea speaks out against those who “multiply falsehood and violence; they make a bargain with Assyria.” Afraid of this prosperity and the influence it might have on the Israelite changing society, Hosea declares, “Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses; and we will say no more, “our lord God,” to the work of our hands.” These “prophetic” condemnations affected the followers of Amos and Hosea and their cries took on a new meaning in light of words declared by these self-appointed prophets and their criticism of the wealth and its effect of foreign ways of life of the people of Israel shifted the social and political tides.
With the death of Jeroboam II in 747 B.C., and the coming of a new king in Assyria, Tiglath-Pileser III, (also known by his Babylonian name, Bel, Pell, Pul) the structure of Israelite society changed dramatically, as Israel became a more controlled vassal of Assyria. Pekah joined the rebellion of Damascus against Assyria and things went down hill from there on. By the time Tiglath-Pileser’s death in 727 B.C., most of the territory of the northern kingdom of Israel had been annexed directly to the Assyrian empire. Yet Hoshea, the assassin of Pekah and the last king of Israel, having quickly offered tribute to Assyria, began a disastrously dangerous plot. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser III and the accession of shalmaneser V, Hoshea sent secret word to one of the Egyptian lords, hoping Egypt would now be ready to join the anti-Assyrian coalition. Taking the ultimate gamble, Hoshea ended his tribute to the new Assyrian king. Shalmaneser V immediately started a campaign of liquidation. He laid siege on the city of Samaria and deported its population to the Assyrian empire. There is considerable debate among scholars whether Shalmaneser V survived to see the capture of Samaria or whether his successor, Sargon II, who came to the throne in 722 B.C. was responsible for the coup de grace. But it is from Sargon II that we have the fullest account: “The inhabitants of Samaria, who agreed and plotted with a king hostile to me not to endure servitude and not bring tribute to Assur and who did battle, I fought against them with the power of the great gods, my lords. I counted as spoil 27,280 people, together with their chariots and gods, in which they trusted. I formed a unit with 200 of their chariots for my royal force. I settled the rest of them in the midst of Assyria. I repopulated Samaria more than before. I brought it people from countries conquered by my hands. I appointed my commissioner as governor over them. And I counted them as Assyrians.” Samaria and what was left of it became an Assyrian province.
With the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah flourishes, with its king Hezekiah at the throne of David. Hezekiah implements dramatic religious reforms and Judah becomes the center of the Hebrews. In 705 B.C. the venerable Assyrian king Sargon II dies, leaving his militarily untested son Sennacherib to inherit the throne of Assyria. Hezekiah, in his illusion of power and glory, with the “might of Yahweh” on his side declares Judah’s independence from Assyria, and rebels against the new Assyrian king Sennacherib. Judah enters the anti-Assyrian coalition, backed by Egypt, (2 Kings 18:21; 19:9). Four years later, in 701 B.C. Sennacherib comes to Judah with a formidable Assyrian army. Hezekiah’s revolt against Assyria proved to be disastrous! Though untested, Sennacherib more than adequately proved his battlefield talents. King Hezekiah of Judah was no match for him. The combined Assyrian records and archaeological excavations in Judah adequately confirm the intensity of the systematic campaign of the siege of Judah. The grim archaeological remains mesh perfectly with Assyrian texts. A vivid illustration of the Assyrian siege of the city of Lachish is preserved in extraordinary detail on a large wall relief that once decorated the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh. Its short inscription reads, “Sennacherib king of all, king of Assyria, sitting on his throne while the spoil from the city of Lachish passed before him.” Archaeological evidence also reveals that Judah and its outlying areas never recovered from Sennacherib’s campaign.
The two kingdoms of Israel and Judah were thus destroyed and the majority of their population deported to the Assyrian empire. After the Assyrian period came the Egyptian yoke, until the Babylonian dynasty of Nebuchadnasser, king of Akkad, in 597 B.C. seized Judah and exiled the remaining Judeans. The Babylonians allowed them some form of autonomy and religious freedom until the Babylonian empire crumbled and was conquered by the Persians in 539 B.C.
Apparently Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses allowed the tribes to return to their land and rebuild their temples, and they even enjoyed autonomy under the Persian rule. Upon their return, the northern Israelites sought to reunite with their Judean brothers, but they were not allowed to participate in rebuilding the temple due to the Judean’s belief of having “divine right” to determine the character of Judean orthodoxy. Since the Judean priests had gained prominence in exile they once more became the leaders of the people of Israel, leading the Israelites in religious and national affairs.
Archaeological and scientific evidence proves that most if not all of the biblical stories are inaccurate and based on the prejudicial views of the biblical writers from the Judahite kingdom of David and Solomon, yet the biblical writers weave the stories together in such a way as to preserve the identity and religion of the ancient Israelites and to give the people a history by which they can uphold their cultural and religious traditions to this day. There were no prophets in Israel with the exception of those self-designated prophets who saw the northern tribes of Israel as sinful and wicked, consorting with foreign leaders and establishing socio-economic reforms and creating political alliances with the two great empires of Egypt and Assyria.
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