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Pre-Exilic Material

Page history last edited by John F. Felix 14 years, 10 months ago

The Provenance of the "Pre-Exilic" Material: Canaanite Paganism

 

 

The "pre-exilic" literature incorporated into the Bible, namely what is commonly called the Primary History, Genesis-2 Kings, in their present form, is a late composition. The composition does contain older elements, but these are Canaanite, not Judean, for the so-called kingdom of Judah did not exist as portrayed in the texts. Most of the supposed exploits of the kings and princes were re-worked information brought by refugees from the destroyed northern kingdom of Israel. These materials were adapted in the "post-exilic" compositional period. There was nobody in Palestine who would even write the literature represented in the Bible, except Canaanite city-states in the south absorbing refugee baggage for the only real kingdom that ever existed in the region: Israel in the north. There were no "Jews" until the Persian relocation project involving the "Juddin." The rank-and-file Judean was just a Palestinian, a Canaanite, whereas only the functionairies for the Temple, religion and the scribal classes could be considered "Jews." The "people of the land" worshipped Yahweh, Baal, Ashteroth, and a host of others as they saw fit, in the old Canaanite way. The Bible's ranting against idolatry was a constant reminder that only the priests, prophets and scribes believed in the notion of Jew. The rest were Hebrews, or Arameans, etc.

 

The Hebrew literature, what we call the OT, almost certainly contains "pre-exilic" elements, but underwent a process resulting in scripture, the impulse directing this evolution originated from Persia.

 

What is the provenance of the supposed "pre-exilic" materials, purportedly giving the history specifically of the Judahites, but also of neighboring peoples, and especially the alleged "united monarchy" and the northern kingdom of Israel. What is known about when these materials were first composed?

 

 

Torres maintains that the Bible "is not Persian influenced at all, it was written ca. 560 BC. Persia came into contact with the Jews after Babylon was captured by them ca. 539 BC." (09/26/06 e-mail from the author.) Philip Davies but it bluntly in his online article, 'Minimalism, "Ancient Israel," and Anti-Semitism',

Let me reinforce this claim in respect to my own work. The mainstream view of critical biblical scholarship accepts that Genesis-Joshua (perhaps Judges) is substantially devoid of reliable history and that it was in the Persian period that the bulk of Hebrew Bible literature was either composed or achieved its canonical shape. I thus find attempts to push me out onto the margin of scholarship laughable. My views about David and Solomon may differ from those of many, but my arguments are traditional enough and the historicity of, at the most, four biblical books hardly represents a major split from the mainstream. Indeed, my impression from reviewing scholarly literature over the last ten years is that the later dating of much biblical literature is gaining slightly in fashion. And the historicity of David is rightly questioned.

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My conviction that the writings are not to be approached as history is based not on some obscure prejudice and does not imply that there are no historical elements whatsoever: only that the picture as a whole is ideal, not real, that there never was a society (more strictly, societies) such as the Pentateuch or Joshua or Judges depicts. My theory is that the canonized writings represent a monumental project, partly conscious and partly unconscious, of defining the origins and nature of a society re-established in a small province of the Persian empire, a society composed of a group of Aramaic-speaking immigrants and a large number of indigenous, Hebrew-speaking "people of the land." The process of creating a nation, a religion, a society, took centuries but began essentially after the period of independent statehood had disappeared. (I have spelled out my account of the growth of the biblical canon in Davies 1998). You will not find a critique of this rather detailed argument in any of the writings of Dever or Shanks because it has little to do with archaeology and goes far beyond simple-minded questions of "is the Bible true or not?"

So, are the canons of scripture based on some kind of real history, however distorted and lately recorded? What is the provenance of the content of what became the epic of the Jewish state, especially in light of the fact that historically the events as described could not have happened?

 

Copyright (c) 2008 by John F. Felix. All rights reserved.

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