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Episode Twenty-four: The Deuteronomistic History and Archaeology
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- čas přidán 14. 08. 2024
- Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein
Episode Twenty-four: The Deuteronomistic History and Archaeology
Israel Finkelstein is a leading figure in the archaeology and history of Ancient Israel. Over 40 years of work and research, he has helped to change the way archaeology is conducted, the bible is interpreted, and the history of Israel is reconstructed. Matthew J. Adams, Director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, sat down with Israel over several sessions to talk about how a lifetime of work has informed the story of Ancient Israel. These conversations became the series Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein.
Written and Produced by Israel Finkelstein and Matthew J. Adams.
Cinematography and Editing by Yuval Pan.
Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein is made possible with a grant from the Shmunis Family Foundation.
Thank you. These are by far the best videos on CZcams about biblical archeology. What you did will remain as a worth seeing document on one of the most interesting, obscure, and seminal topic of the entire human history. Thank you again from Italy
Great, informative and thought-provoking interview and presentation. The initial remarks made me think of the following idea. The notion that you can talk about or assess (with absolutely surgical precision) (perhaps informed by the hard sciences and.or historicist approach to "reality") what “really happened” (as in the case of the so-called Deuteronomistic History or based on any approach to the past) without inserting ideas to frame the meanings of events, people, and circumstances to determine what took place, at the end of the day, cannot be separated from the necessary interpretations and the attribution of meanings. Even a historicist approach to the past taking into account that past and from a present location has its own ideological presuppositions. It is not less or more ideological than say a “theological” approach. Thanks
Methodologically, the idea of “ideology” (understood a set of formal and informal ideas that make analysis and knowledge somewhat possible and that function of criteria to achieve this goal) is behind and in front of both “theology” and “history.” In this sense, neither angle is more “ideological” than the other or not necessarily more “historical”; they are aspects in “tension” as Finkelstein rightly point. But, from this perspective, they are not necessarily “opposites,” they are “different” to say the least In the narrator(s) assessment of Ahaz, Hezekiah and Manasseh, for instance, the labels used to name these two approaches (theological and historical as defined in the presentation), somewhat in a fused tension, are two differentiated positioned ways of understanding and/or evaluating what “happened.” Again, events in themselves without interpretation have no meaning. And interpretation and the attributed meanings are, at the end of the day, “social constructions of reality,” not reality in itself.
@25:48 Finkelstein says: "we have not discussed maybe enough the Judahite, the Southern patriarchal tradition of Abraham" - True.
@26:03 "there is a dispute in biblical scholarship about the rise of the character of Abraham ... (about Jacob) ... I don't think that there is a possibility to describe the two Hebrew kingdoms with patriarchal tradition only in one of them ... I would say that the character of Abraham and the early narrative comes from late monarchic Judah" - does that mean already before 722 when there was some contact between the kingdoms, or only after 722 when Judahites became more familiar with Jacob and might have felt envious they didn't have anything alike?
. . . Is there any evidence, biblical or archeological, for the Abraham narrative before 722? Before 587?
@5:19 Finkelstein asks: "How many editions are there of the Deuteronomistic History, which means the composition and the redactions of the story? When was it composed for the first time?"
. . . What does "compose" mean in this context? I would be surprised if the two books of Samuel, great legends, and the two books of Kings, a more pedestrian recount with some highlights, were "composed" by the same author, even if there were many redactions afterwards. If the Deuteronomistic history is indeed a product of the time of King Josiah, then it seems more likely that the great legends of the books of Samuel were already present in written form and that some later author embedded them in his own idea of history.
. . . Finkelstein himself mentioned earlier that the stories in the books of Samuel are sometimes very critical of David and praise Saul and that this would NOT fit into the time of King Josiah when a Judahite view of history had come to dominate. But that it would fit into a time after the exodus of some of the educated elites of Israel to Jerusalem after the fall of Samaria. Then the two contradictory memories of Saul and David were still present within Jerusalem, and neither could be suppressed. Once written down, the stories gained their own weight and could not be easily rewritten anymore.
. . . Maybe it's similar with the development of the Book of Judges that might be based on an earlier written Book of Saviors, as Finkelstein mentioned in an earlier video about Judges as possibility. The Book of Judges is part of the "composed" Deuteronomistic History, but maybe largely lifted from earlier other writings and "explained" with Deuteronomistic ideas.
@33:30 Finkelstein says: "we don't have enough information from Bethel. Please remember that the main target of the cult reform in the time of king Josiah is the very much hated Northern temple at Bethel, which posed some sort of a cult threat to the traditions of Judah ... there is a very detailed description of Josiah's move to the North to Bethel, destruction, annihilation of activities there ... however, we have no information about this on the ground"
. . . Why don't we have not more archeological information from Bethel? Has nobody dug there ever? Can't anybody dig there today, because it's part of the occupied territories? Or have people dug there and haven't found anything? Or, worse, dug there and found that there can't anything be found due to special circumstances like erosion?
Can archeology estimate how many people living in Judah of 695 BC were refugees from the North and their descendants? More than 50%? Even if they were a minority, they must have been many, and many educated among them.
. . . I wonder how they saw themselves: maybe as only temporary residents of Judah that God would lead back into their homeland? Had some of them the keys of their house doors with them, like Palestinians after the Nakba in 1949, teaching their sons never to forget their origin and tribe? (If doors had already keys in 722, which I don't know.) The many refugees and their descendants could have become a political problem for the Judahite kings. How to channel their wishes and frustration into support for Judah?
. . . @9:31 Finkelstein says the Deuteronomistic history was definitely a Jerusalemite composition that might express the hopes of Judah. But a large part of it could have been the hopes of the Northern descendants living in Jerusalem. They might have desired or even demanded a Joshua leading them back to their homeland with force. Their allegiance to their land was strong but their allegiance to their former kings non-existent after their defeat and many years without them. A Davidic king would do.
. . . Finkelstein mentioned as two important points of the Deuteronomistic history: the Territorial Ideology, the wish for a whole Israel, virulent since the fall of the Northern kingdom (plus the central cult) @11:32 Finkelstein says when the Assyrians pulled out, the opportunity to fulfill territorial ideology seemed to open up. A group within the descendants from the North might have pushed the king of Judah to use it now or never, maybe pushing with some support from Judahite in-laws. The Deuteronomistic history might have been their party program. And it shouldn't surprise us so much to see political leaders opposing a political party, like here King Manasseh, being called The Worst.