Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 20 May 2004

Three Books in One?

The book is a good read, and breezily written but rather irritating and frustrating. The reason is that it is really three books, two of which I did not want to read. On the face of it, it is a book about archaeological excavations of a site thought by the author to have been the original temple of the Israelites. However, it is described in the blurb as a “personal journey with political and religious implications for all of us”. The personal journey is of course the author’s personal exodus, in which he travels from an orthodox Jewish hotel manager to trying to be a scientific archaeologist, but cannot give up his juvenile obsession with orthodox Judaism to do it properly.

The political part is an apology for the behaviour of the Israeli state and government, and a constant bleat at the Arabs for not being grateful to be attacked by tanks, rockets and helicopter gunships, awful monsters that they are—fighting to recover their own countries occupied by Israelis and Americans. That will explain to the liberal reader, at least, why this book can be annoying.

Here, the book under review is the one about archaeology which, except for the introduction of Adam Zertal, the leader of the excavation, does not begin until the third chapter on page 69. Book publishers these days are keen on “yooman inerest”, as the American call it, but not all of us who want to read about archaeology and history want to hear pages and pages about the author’s trials and tribulations. But doubtless many do. They will enjoy this book, then, though a novel or a purer biography might be more suitable for them. In fact, the author’s experiences, or a suitable fictionalization of them, might make a good novel, and his easy-reading style would lend itself to such a book. Novelists have done well at later ages than fifty seven.

Zvi Koenigsberg

As to the theory this book is meant to explain, the author, Zvi Koenigsberg (ZK), was brought up as an orthodox Jew and remains as committed to the Jewish scriptures as any Moslem is to the Quran. He is a biblicist, one of those curious people who think the bible is true despite the vast array of evidence to the contrary, and feels the need to prove it is. At the end of his personal exodus, it is no longer through religious conviction but through pride in his origins—all very well if the myths of origin are true history!

The biblicist outlook is not conducive to objective thinking, and leans steeply towards ultra-conservatism, blinding biblicists to any alternative view. That is how the author is. His first reaction to any discovery seems to be to look for a biblical text to which it could, by stretching chronology or circumstances, fit with. He ends up, having departed from strict orthodoxy to let his theory fit his idea of the archaeology, but still a believer in the biblical epic of the Israelite migration into Canaan thus alienating himself from his scientific peers who can see no convincing evidence for it. He thinks both ends of the opposing spectrum are biased and unreasonable, failing to consider that the lack of consistency and reasonableness might be his own. His chum, Adam Zertal, seems similarly disposed, appearing to be a biblicist rather than a scientifically objective archaeologist too.

ZK says he expected the Talmud “to deal with the problems [of scriptural interpretations] with absolute divine precision”. Such naïvetë and lack of rigour stems from a lifetime of indoctrination and self indoctrination into the imaginary value of books that are a late human compilation of many comments, the originals of which are themselves attributed to legendary Rabbis, and none of it to God, except as the usual delusion. It illustrates fully how the biblicist attitude is anathema to scholarship. ZK repeats twice that he started reading the Jewish scriptures at the age of three, a great shame, for if he had studied hotel management from that age he might have been running the Ritz, or by studying archaeology from that age, he might have been making genuinely astounding discoveries. It seems the Rabbis discovered Loyola’s dictum separately from the Jesuit. By the end of his book, ZK seems to appreciate that his indoctrination was wrong, but it does not dent his commitment to it!

Preconceptions

No one joins the study of ancient Israelite and biblical history without bringing certain preconceived notions. All biblical researchers have grown up within certain environments, and each environment implies certain attitudes that colour subsequent interpretation of evidence.

Zvi Koenigsberg, The Lost Temple of Israel

It is inevitably true, but it is not an argument against the goal of being objective. Honest historians try their darndest to know what their own preconceptions are, and make allowances for them. Not biblicists however. They know they have preconceptions and are so proud of them they know they are not preconceptions but “the Truth”. Why they need to be biblical historians or archaeologists when they know what is true anyway is a conundrum. Though they know the truth already because God has told them, they still want to prove it, as if they are not really sure that God is right, or because they get personal kudos from God by proving Him to be right. Objectivity has to be rejected because they know full well they are not only not being objective and they are not testing their preconceptions, they are making the data fit the biblical jug. Students of the bible cannot be objective—“Period”!

So, we must all agree with ZK that it is all right, then. Sorry, mate! Just because people are happy with the prejudices they have grown up with does not mean they have been educated properly. Agreed, it is better to admit them to the reader, because then the reader can be skeptical about everything deduced, though it is better when the scholar will highlight the deficiencies of his own thought. It is better also because so many biblicists simply pretend they are being objective when they know they are as prejudiced as any other believer, that their readers are left thinking their scholarship is objective when it is not. So, maybe a single cheer for ZK in at least admitting his orthodox Jewish foibles.

Jewish Neighbours

The author identifies the Samaritan sect with the Samarian people, the inhabitants of Samaria, dating it therefore to about 700 BC, a date that few would agree with. The origins of the Samaritans are unclear, but it is obviously related to Judaism, and cannot be pre-Persian if Judaism was founded by the Persians. Archaeological evidence suggests the Gerizim temple was founded when the Persian empire fell, so the Samaritan’s own claim—that they were the original people of the hill country when the Persian colonists returned and refused the locals’ offer of co-operation in building the temple—might be true in the sense that they formed an anti-Jerusalem tradition that could only be realised when the Persians were no longer in power. At a later date, Torahs were altered to make one sect the original one, and the other renegades. This must have been in or after the third century when Moses was given the present extended saga we now read. Samaritans are not Samarians. It is simply another illustration that ZK would rather believe his bible than the findings of the archaeologists.

The Samaritan Pentateuch differs in 6000 ways from the Jewish one, all of them Samaritan alterations such as changing Ebal into Gerizim to suit themselves. It might be so, although why could the change have not been made from Gerizim to Ebal, to eliminate a strong point for the Samaritans when the Jews and Samaritans began their hatred for each other? Since ZK says Moses preceded Samaria by 500 years, why would the Samaritans have not picked the holy mountain Moses mentioned in the Torah as their own holy place? In circular reasoning, ZK says the discovery of the “temple” on Ebal proves the Samaritans to be the frauds.

ZK thinks the Philistines disappeared by 850 BC. It seems not to be true, unless he means they had acculturated to the Canaanite lifestyle. There were Philistines still in Persian times, and it is hard to understand how Hadrian could have named the whole region Palestine if he did not know the place on the coast was called Philistia, even if the Philistines were indistinguishable from the Semites by the second century AD. The idea that the Philistines were the Phoenicians seems far-fetched.

A Mound of Stones on Ebal

Chapter three, where the story really begins, is called “Leviticus”, and the author shows something of his personality when he admits that Leviticus, the book of temple procedures, irrelevant old hat to most modern Jews and Christians, is for him the most fascinating in the Jewish scriptures. Fate, or God’s providence in this context, must have been lending a hand, because the author was to become obsessed by an ancient mound of stones he thought was the first temple of the Israelites.

Adam Zertal, a young archaeologist, undertook a fieldwalking survey of Samaria about a quarter of a century ago. It proved to be particularly difficult because Zertal had been seriously wounded in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 leading a charge across the Suez Canal for general Ariel Sharon. A year in hospital left him walking on crutches, but Zertal was determined enough to see that walking was the way to strengthen his shattered limbs and so he undertook the difficult survey. He noticed a large mound of stones north east of Mount Ebal, one of the twin mountains, Ebal and Gerizim, that overlook the ancient city of Shechem (the modern Arab town of Nablus). Zertal’s fieldwalking skills told him that the pottery sherds visible on the ground at the site—of which there were many—dated to the Iron I age, with some from the LBA.

The structure was built of unhewn stones, ordinary field stones apparently, which must have made excavation tricky because it was filled in with the same sort of stones. No mention is made of mortar being used, and, if the structure was made of dry stone walling, then it must have been hard to know what was fill and what was the original structure. What is more, in only the third approximately month long period of excavation, Zertal was drawing a diagram of what he expected to find! One can hardly avoid having expectations, but sharing them among co-workers, many of whom were inexperienced, can only be predisposing them to find what the leader expected! Above all studies, archaeology should be allowed to tell its own story. Even, worse, the author realises Zertal’s drawing is similar to the illustrations of the altar of the Jerusalem temple as described in the Mishnah, a sixth century AD Jewish commentary on the scriptures. Thereafter, one wonders whether they were excavating a structure or building it.

Now Ebal is said to mean “bare” in Hebrew, but it looks like the eastern Semitic for “House of Baal” or “House of the Lord”, if “baal” is itself translated as Lord. So, there is, in the name of the mountain, an aetiological suggestion that once there was a shrine there to Baal, the Canaanite Lord. Why would it be named in the eastern Semitic dialect? The most obvious reason is that it was named by the “returners from exile”, the Persian colonists sent in to Yehud in the fifth century.

Excavations at the site revealed large amounts of bones burnt on an open fire, “the bones of animals the bible designates as suitable for sacrifice”. It is disingenuous to say this because it proves nothing that the author would like it to prove. The acceptable sacrificial animals throughout the ancient near east were the same ones, goats, sheep and cattle, usually young animals, but not pigs. If the rules of sacrifice are uniform in the region, it follows that they are not characteristic of the Israelites. The site could, on that criterion have been Canaanite.

Deuteronomy and Joshua

Deuteronomy 27:5ff describes the ceremony prescribed by Moses that later was conducted by Joshua (Josh 8:30f). These texts become the scriptural core of the author’s idea that the structure on Ebal (or “in” it, the preposition being important to the theory because the structure was on the side of Ebal not on top of it) was the first Israelite temple built in the Promised Land. A reading of the verses does not incline anyone to think that the structure was built on the side of Ebal in a position that did not relate it to the ceremony described, which was held directly between the two mountains, Ebal and Gerizim. The site was to the north east, when something to the south or the south east would surely have been more appropriate to a ceremony held due south of Ebal in the saddle of the Shechem valley between the mountains. Gerizim is not visible from the proposed cult site even though it had an equal part in the ceremony. That seems odd.

In biblical chronology, Shechem already existed and had its own shrine just down the valley. And Abraham, in a supposed earlier myth had built another altar on another nearby mountain considered to be Elon Moreh. Elon Moreh is Jebel Kabir, the Great Mountain, though it is not as great in height as Ebal and Gerizim. It is “great” in the Moslem tradition precisely because God appeared to Abraham there, ZK thinks. Of course, Moslem traditions date only from the seventh century AD, some 2500 years after the supposed act of Abraham. In fact, these myths are from the fifth century when the Persians took over from the Babylonians, and a set of new myths were invented for various shrines that then existed, or had existed but now were ruined, and were accepted by the Persians as sacred spots.

Doubtless, to a biblicist, the shrine of the Shechemites was unsuitable for God’s purpose, but surely that built by Abraham was not? Of course, the whole problem with believing myths is that the believer has to explain them in terms of God’s actions when there is not the least sensible reason why anyone should think God is directing primitive men to build altars at all. Human beings build altars out of superstitions spread by priests and princes to keep the ignorant masses in check. No God has anything to do with it. The maturity of human beings can be measured by the degree to which they believe what is unbelievable.

The author says that Moses’s instructions in Deuteronomy 27:2-8 are “opaque”. It sounds as though the altar was to be built as soon as the Israelites had crossed the Jordan, but then it mentions Mount Ebal, twenty miles away and over 3000 feet up! The unhewn stones had to be coated with plaster and have the words of the Torah written upon them (Dt 27:8). Joshua 8:30-32 makes it clear that these stones were the stones of the altar. Little is said of plaster at the site itself. ZK apparently found a pit with plaster in it, seemingly used to mix plaster, and somewhere is a mention of slabs of plaster, but considering they ought to be vitally significant to the hypothesis, nothing particular is said about them. It is clear, though, that no words of Torah have been found inscribed on the slabs, or indeed anywhere else, nor is there any other inscription on the site except those on Egyptian scarabs. ZK remains optimistic that words will be found, but optimism is not evidence.

Though the Mishnah was written down 1500 years as a minimum after the event ZK is trying to describe, it is reliably preserved over that time presumably by a miracle of God. Since it is reliable, ZK can use it to clarify the Torah passages and Joshua. It turns out, from this source, that the Torah was not written on the plaster of the stones of the altar in just one language but in all seventy supposed languages of the ancient world. So, plenty more slabs of plaster can yet be expected at the site, it seems. ZK hopes it has been buried in a sort of Iron Age geniza, which remains yet to be found and confound the skeptics.

Even supposing this were possible, it is impossible that bits of plaster were not left in the rubble of the site, around the base of the walls, for example, where the plaster was being chipped away. Even in this cold and damp climate in the UK, Roman plaster is often found after 2000 years of lying in the damp soil, and the colours and designs on it can still be seen. At Ebal, the site was protected by boulders.

The Mishnah contradicts the archaeology in making out that the altar was used once only, then was dismantled and removed to their camps by the tribes. The altar under consideration was apparently used 70-100 years. ZK seems unfazed by this. He just ignores the Mishnah in this respect. Moreover, the camps were notionally 60 miles away at Gilgal by Jericho, a problem for the hypothesis. No problem! Zertal found another Gilgal just a few miles away. Problem solved. ZK, using Deuteronomy 11:26-30, claims the proper Gilgal is east of Ebal and Gerizim near Elonei Moreh. This is the mountain where Abram came into Israel, before it was Israel, of course, passing Shechem and building an altar (Gen 12:6). Then God appeared and said: “To your offspring I will give this land (Gen 12:7).”

This is the deed of entitlement to the land of Israel claimed by all Israeli Jews whether observant or secular. ZK tells us it is “the entire and sole foundation of Zionism”. If that is so, the Zionists have conveniently forgotten that the Arabs in this myth are also the offspring of Abraham, via his son Ishmael. Zionists do not wish to know that. If the myth is to be taken literally as the word of God, then observant Jews ought to accept that the will of God was that the land should be shared by the offspring of Abraham, and the two sets of people with the same mythical ancestor should be working together.

Biblical Chronology

The author makes a virtue out of the Rabbinic claim that the scriptures were not chronological. It is an interesting revelation because the scriptures have an obvious chronology. The Rabbis must be saying it is not the true one, an admission that suits the Persian origin of the Jewish myths with Deuteronomy, followed by a false history based on Assyrian chronicles, and set into a false history from Genesis to Judges a lot of which was written last of all. The Rabbis can pick bits of the scripture from anywhere and claim it illustrates something from quite a different place and time. Such are the ways of God.

The author likes this ruse because it allows him to claim that Jacob’s blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim, where he deliberately crosses his hands to rest his mighty (right) hand on the younger one Ephraim, symbolises the temple passing from the tribe of Manasseh (at Ebal) to the tribe of Ephraim (at Shiloh). In the biblical chronology, this transfer happens about 500 years before the temple is even founded on this theory, but that is no trouble to the biblicist—God knows! If God does not know, then the stories of the patriarchs were written long after the swap actually happened, and they therefore are not contemporary accounts, but are myths. Plainly this action of swapping the blessing symbolises something. The whole crux of the matter is what it does symbolise. It might be a simple reference to the wicked king Manasseh, who had to be symbolically disowned. It might symbolise the disappearance of the northern state of Israel while the more southerly one remained. Power transferred from north to south. In short, it is impossible to be certain about such abstract interpretations.

Settlement Period

ZK and, from what he says, Adam Zertal, repeatedly speak of the “Settlement Period”, begging an important question. Was there one? “Scholars mark the 13th century BCE as the beginning of the Settlement Period”. Scholars? Who are these scholars? Simply believing the biblical myths requires no scholarship. It does require ingenuity to find excuses for them being incoherent. Scholars are people who use all valid evidence to test their beliefs. That is why it counts out biblicists. Proper scholars do not think there was ever a settlement period in the biblical sense—a particular time when a new people calling themselves Israelites entered Canaan from Egypt and settled down there. So, ZK’s “scholars” are just old-fashioned biblicists like himself.

The same thing happens with references to Solomon and David, kings who are invisible in the archaeological record, but prominent in the Jewish scriptures. Without any Solomon or David apparent in the record of history, to speak of the “time of David” and the “time of Solomon” assumes what no scientist should assume. The settlement period is controversial, ZK admits, but dates it to 1300 to 1000 BC. Joshua, in its first part, makes the conquest of Canaan rapid—a blitzkrieg campaign, all the tribes, like the Nazi panzer divisions, sweeping down on the innocent Canaanites, who, until then, had believed the land was rightfully their own. This did not need 300 years.

Elsewhere in Joshua and in Judges, it is not a blitzkrieg but a piecemeal occupation of the land, tribe by tribe taking its own allocation by its own efforts. This is a much slower process than the blitzkrieg, to be sure, but it hardly can be said to have taken 300 years, can it? The scriptures tell us that most of that 300 years was taken up by the settled Israelites fighting off the Philistines who evidently thought they would do to the Israelites what they had done to the Canaanites. They were also fighting each other, some apostates in rebellion, some Canaanite stragglers, an unknown king of Canaan, and so on. It is the “period of the Judges”.

All of the latter is better applied to the dark period from the victory of Cyrus over Babylon to the dedication of the temple by Ezra, a period of a hundred years when nothing certain is known about Yehud. The Jews believe they had been told to return from exile by Cyrus but few did, and little definite is known of those that did. They had been told to restore their religion, but it proved too difficult, it seems, and many, apostatized, the cult centers were fierce rivals, factional infighting took place, and the whole place was a mess. All of it seems to have been administered by magistrates, whether or not there was a Persian governor, ruling like the magistrates or “Suffetes”, ruled in Tyre and Sidon, and even Carthage. The Hebrew word is “Shophet”.

Cyrus did not have enough capable men to rule his conquests and had to rely on local appointments, many of whom were unreliable. Later Shahs changed the system, and the period of “Judges” was over. Can this be shown to have happened when it did according to the bible’s own Chronology? No! Why then do we have to hear from responsible archaeologists of the “time of the conquest”, the “time of the settlement”, the “time of the Judges”, and so on? Biblicists would not accept the truth, if God hit them with it. Perhaps He is doing just that! Whatever their chosen form of patriarchy, Judaism, Christianity or Islam, they all so lack any comprehension of God that they persist in killing each other in His name. No doubt God is happy to let them get on with it, but He shows no compassion for those caught in the crossfire.

Pottery

The author and Zertal seem certain that the pottery types found were unquestionably thirteenth and twelfth century. The only doubt there could be about it is whether the pig’s ear that biblicists have made of biblical dating and the pottery sequences they deduced from them are actually valid at all. Dating in the whole region is utterly circular, and no one seems to care less. All of it is dated by the supposed incursions of the Pharaoh Shoshenq of Egypt, assumed to be the Shishak of the time of Jeroboam. Destructions in the layers that seem suitable are attributed to Shishak and are accurately dated from the bible! Thus, pottery in this layer is accurately dated, and the sequences above and below it have an accurate anchor date allowing the sequence of pots to be used for dating for hundreds of years. Perhaps it is valid, but the tenth century Jeroboam looks like the eighth century one written back 200 years into a mythical epoch. If that is the case, this Shishak is not the tenth century Shishak but Akheperre Shoshenq V who reigned 773 to 735 BC, at the same time as Jeroboam II of Israel (781-754 BC). Then the pottery sequences will have to be adjusted by 200 years, or so.

Scarabs of Thutmose and Rameses II were also found. These pharaohs lived 250 years apart in history, but Thutmose scarabs seem to have become valued as charms. Baruch Brandel of Hebrew University dated both of them and a seal to the time of Rameses II, one of the the favoured times for biblicists to place the exodus from Egypt. The scarab illustrated is that of Rameses, and the author’s blurb says only three identical scarabs have been found, two in Egypt and one in Cyprus, all associated with building work by Rameses. He concludes that, because this site is not Egyptian, the scarab must have been brought into Canaan by an escaping Israelite slave who had been building for Rameses in Egypt.

The period of activity of the Ebal temple was the reign of one of the most powerful pharaohs ever, Rameses, together with some of his successors. Rameses was perhaps the greatest king of Egypt, so can it be said that his scarabs too were not used as charms or heirlooms, so that the dates are not really later than it suggests? Even, if the dating is all sound, it yields a date when Canaan was under the Egyptian yoke. In this time Canaan was an Egyptian colony. What then is so peculiar in finding Egyptian artefacts there? The territory had often and for long periods been ruled by the Egyptians, and ZK himself notes that only a hundred years before the date given here, the Amarna correspondence of Akhenaten proves this part of Canaan was subject to the Egyptians. It does not seem likely that a great king like Rameses would have yielded up this important buffer state between Egypt and its Asian rivals.

Indeed, Merneptah, a son of Rameses, braggs on a stone monument that he has laid waste to Israel, declaring his seed or sons are not, in what is believed to be the earliest historical mention of Israel. But this Israel is a landless people, though they live in a place called Hurru. It suggests that they are not a settled people at all but are Bedouins or shepherds following the seasonal rains with their animals. They must have been worshippers of the Canaanite high god, El, if their name is anything to go by, at that time. It seems to mean, “we are the sons (literally “seed”) of El”, in which case Merneptah’s comment on his stele is a parody of the Israelites own name.

Zertal found a clay penis at a site north of Ebal dating to the twelfth century. It offered more proof the Israelites were in the land because of its indications of circumcision! Zertal thinks only Israelites were ever circumcised, yet it is hard to find people who then were not, and in particular, the Egyptians, of whom there were a lot, practised circumcision, and also occupied the country at the time.

Types of Settlement

ZK thinks the peaceful infiltration idea of some modernists, thought broadly to justify the piecemeal settlements described in Judges, implies that Canaan was unpopulated. He wants to find a reason why the idea of peaceful infiltration must be wrong. The country was populated. Both the bible and the archaeology show that powerful cities with fortifications existed at the time. A rag-bag of escaped slaves could never have been allowed to settle peacefully or otherwise, while such states were powerful.

But the whole point is that the peaceful infiltration was not by outsiders but by the Canaanites themselves. The Israelites had been 400 years in Egypt. Culturally, they must have been Egyptians, but certainly could not, after that time, have been culturally identical to the people who remained in Canaan. Yet there is no archaeological evidence that convinces the best authorities that any culturally novel people arrived. Settlements there were, but nothing found in them distinguishes the settlers from the native Canaanites. The settlers settled in the marginal lands between the cities and their farms in the valleys. The minor differences that have been found, such as in the quality of their pots, and so on, are attributable purely to their poor and marginal existence, and not to their having arrived from some quite different country with different ways of doing things.

Fortunately for ZK’s hypothesis, the conquest by Joshua does not fit it, and is discarded by modern scholars. A common error of the biblicists of the Albright school was to assume that any destruction layers of about the right levels in the strata must have been caused by the Israelites. Well, sure enough, they found a lot of suitable destructions, but as ZK rightly says, a destruction does not have to be by the Israelites. There were plenty of other potential conquerors, including the obvious ones, the Egyptians and the Philistines, and the less obvious ones, the other rival city states. Moreover, some of the cities of the time were not attacked and destroyed. Shechem, the city only a few kilometers from Ebal, was not ransacked in the “settlement period”. It was damaged later, around 1100 BC. The circularity of these dates has been mentioned, but ZK thinks the pottery dating sequences have been improved since they were invented by Albright, et al. Perhaps they have, but have they been improved enough? What anchor dates do they have, if they reject the one they formerly used that applies to a mythical set of kings in Israel, and an assorted set of them in Egypt?

Anyway, ZK thinks the Ebal site is plainly Israelite, and the Canaanites in Shechem did not mind them running it only three miles away on the side of the mountain. He is so obsessed with his temple descriptions in the bible that he will not let the Ebal site be Canaanite. When people like M D Coogan think it, he berates them. Yet, immediately, ZK denies the accuracy of the scriptures. The Israelites had been commanded to destroy the shameful phallic stones worshipped by the Canaanites (Dt 12:3; Ex 34:13), but archaeology shows they did not destroy one in the Canaanite temple at Shechem. It still exists. So, the model for ZK must have been peaceful infiltration, and the Jewish scriptures are, at least partly, wrong. All the bombast about conquest and destroying the lives and culture of the Canaanites must have been the ravings of some biblical megalomaniac, but God liked it and so allowed it to remain in His holy word, even though it made Him seem a monster.

The distribution of the settlements is taken to suggest that that the Israelites came across the Jordan east of Shechem, not 60 miles to the south at Jericho, as the bible says. There are more settlements in the north (Manasseh) than in the south (Ephraim and Benjamin). So, the invaders came in from the north! Deuteronomy 11:29-30 is taken as scriptural evidence of it.

And it shall be when Jehovah your God shall bring you into the land to which you go to possess it, that you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim, and the curse on Mount Ebal. Are they not beyond the Jordan, behind the way of the sunset, in the land of the Canaanites that live in the Arabah, opposite to Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh?

Dt 11:30 Lit

The description is taken to be that of someone looking directly west across the river precisely east of Shechem, and therefore in direct line with Ebal and Gerizim. May be! Like all biblicists with speculative ideas, ZK is fond of weaselly expressions like “might have”, “could well have”, and so forth. Up to a point such vaguenesses are inevitable in trying to reconstruct the past, but biblical reconstructions are particularly replete with them, often because they have to find incredible ways of justifying what is unlikely or impossible. ZK also, at this point admits his approach has not been legitimate by either scientific or traditional criteria. Tradition, which means biblical belief, does not allow the bible to be questioned, and science, it seems, is too fixed.

And now, it turns out that “there is no question” that Israel fought with the locals even if the settlement had started peacefully. He even cites the destruction of the cities as evidence of this aggression, though earlier he had accepted that such destruction could be by anyone around. Zertal seems to agree that the invasion began peacefully before violence erupted. So, Zertal also cannot get into his head that there is no unequivocal evidence of the sort that ought to be there, if there were outside invaders whether peaceful or violent. They cannot answer the problems associated with the idea of an invasion because they will not believe science instead of the bible. ZK will not accept what archaeology has shown, unfettered by his biblical preconceptions. It shows that biblicists cannot be historians, but make excellent novelists.

There is evidence of settlements where there had been none. Why does it mean that the settlers had come into the land from outside to do the settling? No reason except that the bible says so! Zertal and ZK seem to want to believe the bible rather than their own brains because it suits their political choices, not necessarily because they are devoted to God.

ZK now says that Zertal’s survey demolishes the idea that the Canaanites settled their own marginal spaces. The “proof” is that there is no population shift from the coast to the hills! The argument seems to be that the Canaanite cities were on the coast. The settlements were in the hills. So the population must have shifted from coast to hills. It did not, QED!? Since when were all the Canaanite cities on the coast, or even the most important ones? Why does settlement in the hills imply a population deficit on the coast? What stops Canaanites dissatisfied with life in the cities like Hazor, Megiddo, Bethshan and Jericho from trying to work the hills, previously the domain of seasonal shepherds, to grow olives and vines for the city markets? They might have been Canaanites trying to get away from city corruption, or given inducements by city ateliers who would buy their produce from them for sale in the cities. They might have been city paupers jumping at the chance of making a free living and enjoying a simple but hard bucolic existence. There is no need for invaders at all.

What of the supposed direction of travel from east to west, shown, Zertal claims from the evolution of pottery in the journey westwards from primitive pots to more sophisticated pots. If this is the extent of the evidence, what is to stop the precise opposite supposition—the townies moving from the coast to the hills were initially skilled in pottery but over the generations it took them to settle further east, they lost their sophisticated urban skills and ended up making poor quality pots. Alternatively, the quality of the pots might be related to the marginality of the land, the rapacity of the landlords, if there were any, and so on. All of this still ignores the type of pottery being distinctly Canaanite, whatever its quality, and so too therefore were the settlers.

Israelites were not Canaanites—Official!

Now, it turns out that Zertal had actually found a cultural marker, and so had demolished the arguments against invasion. The pottery was, in fact, a different type of pottery from that used by the indigenous people, and it was introduced precisely at this time of settlement, a conclusive finding. It is a devastating discovery for all those archaeologists who had never been able to see any difference in the pottery. This astounding discovery ought to have preceded any further discussion because it refutes all critical arguments about the subjugation of the Canaanites to a new people with a new culture called the Israelites. The bible suddenly has a new respectability.

Yet, why has only Zertal ever noticed this new pottery? He began fieldwalking in Samaria in 1977, and ZK’s book appeared in 2002, 25 years later, and in the meantime no one seems to have found the same pottery characteristic of the Israelites that Zertal did. The collared rim pots found in Israel were once thought to be typical of the Israelites, but now are known not to be because they have been found in places where no Israelite had then trod.

ZK and Zertal are miffed to be ignored by the archaeological community, and it begins to seem clear why. They are making claims that one else can confirm. It is not the obtuseness of their colleagues but their own unrealistic claims. There are still many biblicist archaeologists of both Jewish and Christian convictions that would leap at a chance to confirm Joshua, but no one seems to have turned to Zertal’s astoundingly unique pots to do it. Who is being perverse? The pottery was continuous, according to a swath of experts of different conviction. Even William Dever, God’s Bulldog, accepts it. The claim is so astounding and flies in the face of the archaeological discoveries of the period, that to make the claim with a joke on page 108 seems bizarre in itself.

Now, ZK claims that the “sociological model”, of the Canaanites being the same people as the Israelites, implies the Canaanites made mass conversions to the Israelite religion. Why is the assumption necessary? The Canaanites and the Israelites were polytheistic until about 620 BC in the biblical chronology. In reality, they were polytheistic until 417 BC, and some Jews in distant parts, like Egypt, remained polytheistic even after that, and it is known from sound historical evidence.

It seems the surveys show that 31 LBA settlements expanded to 140 in Iron I. Unless someone moved in, ZK sarcastically says the Canaanites began breeding like “super-rabbits” and built 140 towns while revolting against their masters. It is a puerile staement, and depends upon the reader’s ignorance. The settlements have suddenly become towns to sway the reader.

Just what was a settlement? How many people lived in them? The answer is that mostly they were individual farms or hamlets of a few families. If an average of 35 people lived in each one, the 140 settlements constituted about 5000 people in total. If the settlements were about the same size in the LBA and in Iron I, then the increase of 4x or 5x in 200-300 years is a growth rate of less than one percent per annum! It is entirely within the limits of normal population growth. Why the need to make absurd claims about “super-rabbits”? It is simply that poor arguments have to be presented in an exaggerated manner.

Deuteronomy and the Centralized Cult

ZK contrasts traditional and scientific scholars, saying that by “tradition” he means those who believe the bible account sufficiently to want to try to uphold it in essence, whereas “scientific” means something else, but what is not clear. It ought to mean those who base the history of the Jews on established historical and scientific fact, but here ZK uses it for those who accept De Wette’s opinion that Deuteronomy was what Josiah found and acted upon. Since the aim of the bible seems clear enough in wanting to suggest that a missing scroll of the law was found and acted upon, those who believe it are being no less traditional than the traditionalists, and are not using any science at all.

Deuteronomy constantly speaks of “the place that He will choose” as the center of the cult. ZK notes it appears 34 times, 19 of which are in the original law chapters (12-26). W M L De Wette, a German theologian, observed in 1805 that the center of the cult of Judaism could not always have been Jerusalem. When Deuteronomy was written, the Jewish cult was plainly not centralised at all, and, though the book itself does not mention the city, it is concerned that some cult center should be found. The choice had therefore not been made, and it was evidently not automatic. It is not the general impression given by the bible, nor the general impression that believers have. For them, Jerusalem was the Holy City, and must have been an automatic choice when the temple was founded by David’s son, Solomon. Deuteronomy relates directly to the time when Judaism became centred on Jerusalem. The cult therefore cannot have been founded on Jerusalem when the believers think it was. When was it, then?

It just does not hold water that Moses meant to centralise the cult at Jerusalem before Jerusalem was even in the hands of the invaders, and would not be for several hundred more years, the bible tells us. When the law was really read out to the inhabitants of these hills in the fifth century, Jerusalem was there but was ruined, and other places like Shechem, Shiloh, Bethel, Mizpah must have seemed more compelling places to set up as the center of the cult, assuming too that the borders of the temple state had not been agreed either. The rivalry between existing cults, allegorized in Judges was perhaps a factor in selecting Jerusalem. The quotation cited by ZK:

But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel…

Jeremiah 7:12

will reflect the fact that Shiloh was the intial choice, but had to be abandoned. Jeremiah itself is therefore fifth century and not sixth, and the events in it are not the attacks of Babylonians but the Persian response to the fifth century uprisings in the region. Pseudepigraphic authors always pretend their work is set in the past, Daniel being the obvious example to everybody except biblicists.

In reference to Joshua 22, ZK says Israelite worship had been centralised at Shiloh when the transjordanian tribes built their own altar, yet this is “before the Israelites entered the land”. The shrine at Shiloh therefore could not have been an Israelite one. ZK is certain—“their crime is clear”—the transjordanian tribes had violated the exclusivity of the imagined Israelite shrine at Shiloh. It is clear all right that this is a dispute about shrines, but it fits the squabbles of the Persian colonials than anything 800 years before.

De Wette thought the answer to the time of centralization was in the bible itself. It was when Josiah was told an unknown scroll had been found, and one which altered Judaism utterly. Josiah urgently undertook to reform and centralize Judaism on Jerusalem. Deuteronomy is the only scroll of law that could have been meant and, acting on it, Josiah is supposed to have centralised the cult. If this version is true, then Jerusalem was only the center of the cult of the Jews of Judah for a few decades before the city was trashed, and the temple left in ruins! It hardly seems long enough to form a tradition that could withstand a long exile in a distant and far more prosperous country.

The obvious purpose of such a fiction is to legitimize the changes made by a later ruler, claiming therefore that nothing new was being done, for the last good king of Judah had already implemented the changes before the fall of Jerusalem! The next ruler of Judah was the Persian Shah! In fact, what we read is consistent with Deuteronomy being the law of Moses, itself, but brought into Yehud by Ezra and read out to the assembled natives as the law to be obeyed, or else. When it was formulated, the decision to centralize the cult on Jerusalem had not been made, but Nehemiah and Ezra had the decison from the Persian Shah, and went ahead to build the temple and fortify the city. That is when Judaism began, and the bible was written around Deuteronomy. The temple at Jerusalem was opened by Ezra in 417 BC, but in the decades before Nehemiah and Ezra organized the renovation of Jerusalem as a buttress against Egyptian intransigence, there had been no centralized cult. Other places had served as co-equal cult centers, Shechem, Shiloh, Bethel and perhaps others, and the Ark of the Covenant was a mobile shrine taking the vassalage treaty between the Judahites and the Shah from site to site to be read out. This procedure was then centred on Jerusalem, and the service there involved readings of the law which included the vassalage treaty itself.

Deliberate Burial

The weight of ZK’s argument falls on the fact that no one could have known of the site centuries later in the time of Josiah, or more relevantly Ezra, because the site was hidden. If it was not hidden and this is indeed the site being described, then the biblical authors had no problem. If some other but uncovered site was being described, again there is no problem for the authors. Everything depends upon it being the right site and being soon covered for good, when it could not have been known by later biblical authors, and must have been described when it was used in the twelfth century BC. Yet, if Zertal is to be believed on this, there is doubt about which mountain was which at the time!! Ebal might have been Gerizim, or Kabir, and the site could not have been the right one.

If it is, despite these doubts, then the question of the covering is crucial. How certain is it, it was covered for all this time? A dating method like obsidian dating might have been used,but now that the archaology has messed up the site, it cannot be done. At 2500 feet up the mountain the site does not seem likely to be attracting passers by, and this might be the essential point. No one would be going out of their way to visit an abandoned and remote site whether it was covered or not. It was perhaps briefly used in the fifth century to announce the formation of the Persian colony, and was then covered up so that there could have been no rivals to Jerusalem.

It seems the pottery sherds and the C-14 tests on the animal bones show the site was deliberately buried when it ceased being used. If so, it could not have been incorporated into later aetiological myths, or myths of origins, and so this is an important point, if the identity of the site as that of Deuteronomy and Joshua is correct. No line drawings of typical pottery rims, decorations or jug handles are given as evidence, and no C-14 data at all. This is, after all, a popular book, but another example of it being almost novelistic rather than serious. A few data could hardly put off potential buyers, could they?

On the web, Adam Zertal says fallow deer, and the bones of a couple of specimens described as wild animals were found onsite, having apparently died there. Zertal also gives no proper data, no doubt intending to publish it all at the right time, but dates of the bones of the wild animals and the situations they were found in are valuable bits of information, potentially revealing whether the assumption that the site was buried is correct or not. If it was accessible to wild animals, then the site might not have been covered. It is precisely evidence like this that precludes amateurs from excavating valuable sites. All they do is mess it up for the professionals. That though, seems to be the object of a lot of biblical archaeology, and professional Christians are happy to take their US bible bashing punters on to biblical digs for a suitable fee.

The argument is that no later pottery or bones were found, so the site must have been covered in. Yet, no more charred bones could be expected, and broken pots would be peculiar, once the site stopped being used, but lost items could have been found. A covering of rocks would deter people from wandering around the site, but even so, in 3000 years, with a substantial town not far away, it seems remarkable that the odd object was not lost among the boulders to be found later. On the other hand, ZK describes the site as remote, even though Shechem is not far off, so perhaps it is not surprising that nothing later was ever dropped there. But, if the site was that remote, would anyone have ventured there even if it had not been covered up? The remoteness of the site and not the covering of boulders might have been the reason why the site stopped being used, and even visited. Moreover, old sacred sites often become taboo to later people, either through reverence or fear, just as derelict Churches seem to be feared by the people of modern Christian societies.

So, could the site have been left for 800 years, unattended and feared by the people of nearby Shechem, until it was filled in by the Jerusalem authorities once the Jewish cult was centralized at Jerusalem? Can this be absolutely ruled out by the situation onsite? Could the Samaritans have covered the site when they opted for Mount Gerizim as their own temple Mount? If either is possible, it is possible the scribes who wrote the relevant parts of Deuteronomy knew about the ruined site, and wrote it into their mythical history.

ZK thinks these possibilities are not at all possible, noting that the events are not mentioned again in the bible after Joshua, now putting his faith in the biblical chronology, that previously it had suited him to ignore. In fact, the Mosaic sagas we now have including the bookends that were fitted around Deuteronomy are part of some of the latest compositions in the bible, along with most of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and parts of Joshua. That is why Moses himself is only rarely mentioned outside of the specific books that deal with him, even though, outside the bible, he never ceases to be spoken of as the father of the Jews.

Eventually, though, we discover that, in the center of the rectangular edifice, was a smaller round stone structure. It was discovered “early in the project”, and later other structures were found around it. This round structure was “carefully built”, but what this means relative to the rest is not explained, and was “filled with a material” that has apparently not been identified 20 years later. The site must have been started by aliens from Mars or somewhere! Is this amateurish or not? The rectangular platform was apparently built around this central structure at a second phase of construction. Immediately, the possibility arises that the central round structure was the thirteenth century one associated with the pottery finds and the charred and dated bones, and the platform was added to it much later, but never, or hardly ever, then used. Possibly, the added structure was only used once, and then filled in—but in the fifth century! Whatever the explanation, the whole was not the purpose built altar claimed in Deuteronomy and Joshua, it was an adaptation of one that already existed, and so does not match the Mosaic instructions. ZK has to admit, this looks as if it had been a traditional site before its extension.

First temple of Israel

ZK had a flash of gestalt and realized that the structure on Ebal was the First Temple of Israel. The first temple had never been built at Jerusalem as the bible made out. The bible was wrong! The implication in the bible that the Ebal temple was built only for a single event was also disproved by the archaeology, though the thought would not have even occurred to anyone that it had unless they had been reading the bible! Deuteronomy and Joshua could not be right to argue that anyone would put up an altar with plastered walls and the Torah written out in seventy languages, or even one, if it was to be demolished immediately a single ceremony had ended, and carted off in bits. The biblical authors were inventing explanations for places and objects they knew of in the land, and the names traditionally given them. If this is the structure described in the Jewish scriptures, their authors knew of it and wrote it into the prologue and epilogue of Deuteronomy and Joshua.

Deuteronomy was written before the cult center had been agreed and Ebal, with its nearby servicing town of Shechem, might, at one stage, have been considered but was then discarded. The propaganda called the scriptures therefore made out it was always intended to be a one-off shrine, and not one meant to rival Jerusalem. If ZK is right that Ebal was set up as the first temple and the central site of the Israelites from the outset, it is a problem that it was only used for 70 years. It signified the start of the nation, specified by Moses as God’s prophet, the scriptures tell us, yet was regarded so indifferently that it was swapped for another place relatively quickly. Such a place could hardly have been abandoned so readily unless the authority of the scriptures is utterly confounded, and if that is so, there is little reason left to believe in the exodus, and so on. It is easier still to think it was a Canaanite site of some sort, probably associated with Shechem, which eventually superseded it.

The site is ringed by two sets of concentric walls, yet the drawing shows only one concentric wall and the walls of the structure itself, part of which is the altar platform. ZK compares it with the temple at Jerusalem with its courts, but the temple at Jerusalem was itself an enclosed space, unlike this one which was open. Other biblical specifications are:

1. A burnt offering altar. There can be few ANE cults that did not make such offerings.
2. An incense altar, not made of wood or stone, but made of metal. The supposed incense altar at Ebal was made of stone!
3. The outer walls could not have been defensive in intention being only 1.5 meters high. Plainly, it demarked the sacred space.
4. The Ark of the Covenant. There was no trace of it on the site, although it was mentioned in Joshua 8:33, which is good enough for a biblicist.

The match on the ground is not impressive, but ZK “felt in his bones he was right”, doubtless a strong motivation to go on trying, but hardly evidence of anything except obsessive behaviour in itself.

Ebal looks like a cult center and one that ended, according to archaeology, about the time that the one at Shiloh started, though there is nothing unequivocal that shows the site was for Israelites worshipping in a new way, and not Canaanites. Despite special pleading, Canaanites cannot be excluded and are actually more likely founders of the site than any Israelites. The handcrossing of Jacob cannot be certainly linked to the succession of Shiloh after Ebal. It is quite out of context, and is doubtless a reflexion of the reality of the time the myths were written down, but no one now knows what. Believers always know!

Biblical Descriptions of the Altar

The bible specifies a ramp rather than stairs as access to the altar, supposedly so that no onlooker would be shocked by the enormity of a glimpse of a priest’s manhood! Were people at this time, and that had just come from Egypt where people walked about naked or in flimsies in the heat, really so prudish? The excuse is much more likely to have been invented in Hellenistic times. The Jews opposed Hellenization, a feature of which was a pride in athleticism and the naked body, and naked gymnastics were encouraged in the gymnasia being built. The original reason why the altars had ramps and not stairs was so that the sacrificial beasts could be conveniently driven up them for slaughter. Animals tend not to be too good negotiating stairs.

ZK tells us that three meters is ten biblical cubits, so the giant Goliath at four cubits and a span was about four feet six high! If he was six cubits and a span then he could justifiably have been called a giant at six feet six inches tall. The cubit here is about a foot but surely it was about eighteen inches, making Goliath as tall as nine feet six. The height of the altar is specifed as ten cubits and so this one should have been about five meters high, and at a mere three meters is too small. The author himself says this is a critical point, but, if so, he has described it wrongly somehow.

A ledge about a meter wide leads round the block which constitutes the altar and about half way up it. It too, like the main ramp, slopes down to ground level on the side where the ramp slopes down. The prescription for the altar requires its four corners to be sprinkled with blood, and ZK surmises that the ledge permits access to the four corners of the altar to allow the sprinkling. Yet sprinkling is usually done from above and the four corners can be adequately accessed for sprinkling from the altar platform itself.

The drawing of the complex in the book signed by L Ritmeyer shows a block of stone protruding above each corner of the platform. The priests would most obviously sacrifice the animal by cutting its throat and bleeding it into a bowl which the officiating priest would have sprinkled on to the stones protruding at the corners thus fulfilling the biblical prescription. The ledge is more likely to have been to allow the servants of the temple to wash away stale blood spilling down the corner stones. If the stones were not regularly cleaned, the residue of 50-70 years of sacrifice ought to have been evident on the corner stones.

Moreover, access to the corner stones by the priest would have been cumbersome, if he had to descend to the ledge to sprinkle the blood offering. He had to walk down the main ramp and up the half level ramp, surely an absurd procedure. And, if beasts were separately sacrificed on the ledge by the corners, the dead animals cannot have been manually raised up without considerable effort to the main platform to be burnt. It makes no sense compared with the beasts being driven up the ramp to the platform, sacrificed there and all of the ceremony taking place there.

Prescriptions in Leviticus

To get a handle on his supposed Israelite temple at Mount Ebal, ZK now turns to Leviticus, his favourite biblical book. Leviticus 1:11 prescribed that goats and sheep had to be killed northward of the altar before God. The prescriptions of Leviticus were for the Jerusalem temple, and have been retroscripted into the words of Moses supposed to be a millennium earlier to give them authority, but it stands to reason that a book of elaborate prescriptions like Leviticus could not have been written until there was an elaborate priesthood and developed cult to use them. None of it could have been true of a cult just being newly set up for the Israelite invaders on a temporary altar at Mount Ebal.

The square altar at the temple in Jerusalem was oriented with its four sides more or less east-west and north-south. In fact, it was turned a few degrees anti-clockwise, so that the sides did not direct precisely eastwards but a little north of east. The prescription was that goats and sheep had to be killed on the northern edge of the altar platform. The shape and orientation of the altar at Ebal was quite different. It was rectangular, not square, being 9 meters by 7 meters, and two of its corners, not sides, were directed precisely north and south, meaning that the remaining corners were not directed east and west. No diagram or plan showing the orientation is given, another deficiency in the book, but it is possible, from the description, that the corners roughly east-west are about 14 degrees north of east, or 14 degrees south of east, the former roughly matching the orientation of the Jerusalem temple. So, the corners seem the important alignments of this temple, not the sides.

ZK explains that temples were oriented with their corners north and south, only in Mesopotamia, home of Abraham, not in Egypt or Canaan. Presumably, this is supposed to have been remembered by the enslaved Israelites from the time of Abraham about 600 years before! God does these things, if you are a biblicist, but historians are not so gullible. If this orientation betrays Babylonian influence, it was put up by people with that direct experience themselves. The Persian colonists in the fifth century being the obvious contenders.

If this is the explanation of the orientation, it means the platform structure and the pottery and sacrifices found around it are unrelated! The platform therefore must have been built on a site already existing but from a much earlier time. If this seems too far-fetched, then the orientation of the corners cannot have anything to do with Mesopotamia.

Anyway, the point of all this is the prescription of killing the goats and sheep on the north side of the altar. It seems Zertal had found blood in the earth by a flat stone at the north corner, and took it as proof the priests of Ebal were following the prescriptions of Leviticus. Again this seems crazy. If the blood was found in the earth beyond the altar platform, the dead beast would have had to have been hauled up the ramp to the sacrificial fire. Barmy! The prescription in Leviticus could not have meant the animals were killed beside the altar then manhandled on to it for burning. The Israelites must have been half-wits, if they did this. The killing happened on the altar platform, at its northern side, not beyond and below the altar to the north of it. Moreover the instructions plainly say “side” not “corner”, so, if blood was found where it was, and Zertal is right about what it meant, the priests were not following Leviticus.

Regarding the blood that was found, was it scientifically confirmed as blood? If so, was this C-14 dated? If not could it have been rust? How were the animals killed? Using knives of iron, bronze or flint? Iron was forbidden in the making of the structure so, it ought not to have been used in sacrifice. Yet, a new and amazing metal like iron could have been seen as a gift of God. The realization that it was a gift of God to the warrior as much as anything else, sounds like a later judgement. The walls were made of unhewn stones for practical reasons, not for fear of polluting them with a murderous metal. If iron tools were used in killing and butchering the sacrifices, the stain could have been rust, the flat stone being where the whetstone was set up. Were knives found? Whether iron, bronze or flint was used, some must have been lost or discarded and so should have been found.

Anyway, believing the site fits the description in Leviticus, ZK completes the usual biblicist’s circle by claiming that Leviticus must have been written to fit the Ebal site. Leviticus is therefore proved to have been written in 1250 BC. At least it proves, too, that Moses did not write this part of the Torah!

House of David

ZK decides to find cult references that pre-date Jerusalem, and to do so has to look to the tenth century because he thinks the bible is telling true history! The evidence on the ground offers no evidence there was a city on the site of Jerusalem in the tenth century. Jerusalem did not become a significant place until the sixth century. That Ebal was a cult center seems quite reasonable, but ZK wants to show it is the cult center of Judaism before Judaism was centralized at all. It is unlikely that primitive priests would make it hard for their people to worship, such as having to stomp 40 miles or so to attend church around 1000 BC! There had to be a big power behind any such centralization. It was the Persians.

ZK says that Jerusalem has been the only real capital of Israel. Jerusalem was never the capital of Israel until the country was reinvented. Samaria was the capital of Israel. No one knows what the name of the invisible “United Monarchy” was, but since it was never visible, it does not matter. Even so, ZK tells us that the “House of David” ruled from Jerusalem for four centuries. No one knows anything about David or his house, except what is in the mythology called the Jewish scriptures. A broken stone apparently inscribed by a victorious Aramaean king has the word “bytdwd” inscribed on it. It is eagerly read as meaning House of David, but, if that is what it is, it is the only extra-biblical mention of it, and it is not certainly a reference to a dynastic House of David, or to a house or a David. If it is not a completely unrelated word of unknown meaning, it could still mean a temple of a god, a palace of a king, or a country of a king or a god, as well as a dynasty, and the name could be David or Dodi, or could be the title, “The Loved One”, or the adjective “beloved”—among others. Moreover the stone could be a forgery, but no independent authorities have been allowed to perform forensic tests on it to authenticate it. In short, David remains mythical, Tel Dan stone or not.

Most biblical scholars agree that by the time of David, around 1000 BCE, the tribes had blended and become a single nation.

Zvi Koenigsberg, The Lost Temple of Israel

This comes at the beginning of the concluding chapter, but there is nothing scholarly about it. Biblical “scholars” might think it, but no scholars do. It is more biblicism. Nothing is known about any Davidic “United Monarchy”, as has already been said.

Some Critics

ZK complains that no one, even 14 years after Zertal’s preliminary paper, not even his mentor, Benjamin Mazor, a doyen of Israeli archaeology, has supported his conclusion that this was an Israelite sacrificial site. Mazar always remained cagey about the claims about this structure, and never committed himself to them. ZK was proud to bragg to Mazar that he and Zertal could prove the bible. Mazar replied, profoundly impressing ZK, that “we don’t have to prove the bible, we have to understand it”. Does Mazar take the bible to be true by definition but unclear? Or does he imply that some bits might be true and other bits fiction, and we need to understand which are which. The latter is the rational approach, but not that taken by the author of this work. By understanding the bible, we might have to understand it to be false.

ZK wonders whether Zertal is “far removed from reality”. “Not at all!” It is the corpus of opinion that is removed from reality! Zertal’s survey “leaves no doubt”. The settlement of Manesseh was by a joint process of infiltration and conquest, and the conquerers were Israelites. They were not Canaanites because they reflect no cultic tradition that was Canaanite. Canaanites evidently did not sacrifice animals because the only cultic tradition for this site was judged to have been for sacrificing animals.

Yet, Canaanites had similar altars, even according to the bible, called “high places” (bamahs) because they were al fresco altars, usually on a hill or mound. Surely, if this site was an altar, it was one of these Canaanite ones. No, evidence has nothing to do with it, according to ZK, it is because the academics are idle to a man and cannot be bothered having to revise their lecture notes! Either all these academics are lazy and Zertal and Koenigsberg are correct, or Zertal and Koenigsberg are cracked pots, and the rest of academia can see that they are.

The archaeologist, Aharon Kempinski, categorized the Ebal structure as an Iron Age watchtower. ZK thought he was being harsh, but all the more likely explanations have to be eliminated by the evidence before a less likely possibility can be admitted as a solution. You do not have to be Sherlock Holmes to know this. Perhaps it was a watchtower in Egyptian occupied Canaan, and served as a base for a platoon of the army, or irregulars keeping a lookout. The pots and the burnt bones might have been from feeding these men for a century. Kempinski must have had good reason for thinking it might have been a watchtower, even if ZK thinks he was unfair. Apparently Zertal rebutted the argument, but ZK does not bother.

The Scientific Outlook

ZK acknowledges that scientific theories “invalidate the historicity of the biblical narrative” and have “logical legitimacy”, but goes on that these theories put a stranglehold on any research that might disturb them. The main stranglehold on biblical historical research is the insistence of the believers that they are right whatever history or archaeology might say. In so far as ZK is right about science, it is his misunderstanding about how science works, as it is for most believers.

Science seeks the best available hypothesis, that is, the one which best explains the most significant events. It cannot be beholden to figmentary fathers or sons, and indeed is bound to find explanations that exclude the supernatural because history shows no signs of being run by supernatural creatures. If the best hypothesis has been found, it might seem frustrating to someone like ZK that no scientific historian will consider his. The reason is that his hypothesis is not as good as the currently held ones.

The specific reason, in this case, is that the ZK hypothesis requires biblical historians to reject what they consider is proven. It is that the Israelites came into Canaan from outside. Nothing proves this and the evidence that is taken to suggest it is dubious. Israelites were Canaanites, and so a hypothesis that requires them to have been Egyptian slaves that escaped from Egypt to move into Canaan cannot be considered unless the evidence for it overwhelms the evidence for the currently held paradigm. The point about the scientific approach is that it can change, given compelling evidence. The biblical one cannot without proving the bible to be wrong. Believing bits of the bible on faith but arbitrarily altering other bits to make the “theory” fit is not scientific or legitimate.

God’s Truth

An interesting bit of information is that the only biblical scholars accepted by orthodox Jewry are the gadols, some sort of Jewish theologian. No gadol would support what ZK and AZ were saying, and so they were getting nowhere with the orthodox community. ZK relates that he explained his views and the evidence to one gadol, hoping for his support, but he replied:

I have to agree with your conclusions, but, if I live a thousand years, I will never admit it out loud.

This is remarkable as an admission that Jewish theologians, like Christian ones, would sooner lie than admit the truth. No Jewish biblical “scholar” wants to admit that the original temple could have been in Samaria and not in Jerusalem, so they will not.

As long ago as the fourteenth century, Ibn Ezra, the Spanish Rabbi, pointed out that Moses cannot have written Deuteronomy as tradition had dictated because it begins:

These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel, on the other side of the Jordan.

The writer is already on the west bank, looking towards Nebo, while relating the words that Moses said while he was on the eastern side of the river. The author of these Torah passages was therefore not Moses. ZK revealingly goes on after explaining this that Ibn Ezra instructed anyone who notices this to stay silent! The Rabbinic lack of interest in truth obviously parallels that of professional Christians. They are interested in God’s Truth, which they agree upon among themselves. They have no interest in or respect for anything contrary to their own preferred religion. For all they know God could be desperately tryiing to reveal their error over 3000 years but Satan is too clever for them. Like the three wise monkeys they will not apprehend evil, except that it is truth they refuse to consider.

At the end, ZK gives a citation from the thesis of G A Danell on the name Israel in the Old Testament. It backs up the idea that the first choice of a temple mount was Ebal, and later the change was made to Jerusalem. Danell thinks Deuteronomy has northern Israelite features, meaning it is Samarian, backing up the suspected change from Gerizim to Ebal. Gerizim became intolerable to the Jerusalem priesthood, but obviously Jerusalem could not have been substituted for Gerizim, so Ebal was substituted instead. Of course Danell was not a gadol, so his views were worthless.

The bible is propaganda, written long ago to give the Jews a deed of entitlement to the land they had been given as Persian colonists. ZK’s sub plot is precisely to show this entitlement, contrary to Arab claims to Palestine. Plots of land bought 3000 or 4000 years ago prove the land is Jewish. The Arabs who have lived here for 2000 years can just clear off. God said so!

A marvellous thing belief. God’s Truth, indeed! Believers will enjoy this book, and perhaps some historians too.

From Zvi Koenigsberg

I am truly sorry for asking for your comments, and exposing in your attitude the very trait I accuse academia of in my book, namely, dealing with the matter of the body, and not the body of the matter. For one, you do not know what a Biblicist is, if you think it includes someone who contends that Genesis 48 never happened, but was an allegorical coverup. Apparently a Biblicist to you is anyone not enamored of the Persian theory you espouse. As for calling Zertal a Biblicist, that is pitiable at best. Even his greatest detractors, including and especially Finkelstein, do not for a moment accuse him of scientific dishonesty. For you to be right, an entire series of professionals had to have conspired with Adam. It sounds eerily like the faith many in the Christian and Muslim worlds have in the historical "legitimacy" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Of course, with your views on Israel, you may very well believe in them as well. I cannot begin even to critique your "understanding" of Samaritan vs Samarian etc. It does not deserve my attention. At least I now understand how many well-wishing Western Europeans could actually have nominated and awarded Yasser Arafat a Nobel Peace prize. It is the same kind of intellectual "honesty" which drove your last comments.

These are my last words to you. I promise that I will at least not embarrass you by quoting you by name in any future article or book I may write. I am truly sorry for you.

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History