Truth
Who are the Nazi Scholars?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, 28 October 2002
Hershel Shanks
Hershel Shanks is a magazine editor, who feels he has to defend the historicity of the bible against the attacks of scholars. Since the magazine he edits (Biblical Archaeology Review) is meant to be, in some sense, scholarly, his article in Ha’aretz magazine (November 5, 1999) is a bit of a joke. Shanks wrote replying to an article by Ze’ev Herzog in the previous issue.
Professor Ze’ev Herzog of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University wrote in Ha’aretz (October 29, 1999) that 70 years of intensive excavations in Israel, have shown archaeologists that the patriarchs are legendary, there was no sojourn in Egypt or Exodus, there was no Conquest, the empire of David and Solomon never existed. Many Jews and Christians will be unpleasantly shocked to know that the God of Israel, Yehouah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only late and not at Mount Sinai—if it is the one in Sinai.
Those in scientific work in the bible, archaeology and Jewish history agree that the history of the Jewish people is radically different from the biblical account. Even those who once went into the field looking for proof of the bible, like those of the Albright school of chicanery, now generally agree. William Foxwell Albright began excavating in Palestine in the 1920s aiming to prove that archaeology was the scientific way to uphold the historical truth of the bible, and refute its critics, particularly those of the Wellhausen school in Germany. These tendentious objectives are not scientific, and have led to vast damage to historic sites and understanding in the Ancient Near East.
The truth is the history of the Jews from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the passage to Egypt, the enslavement and the Exodus, to the conquest of Canaan and the settlement of the tribes of Israel, was deliberate mythologizing with a theological purpose. Many of the findings have been known for decades. Jews and Christians have been told these facts for years, but do not want to hear. They have no interest in truth, only God’s truth!
Shanks says Herzog’s article aligned him with the biblical minimalists, who are really the object of his attack. Minimalists argue that the bible is a fictional account that served other functions for the biblical authors, so it is worthless as a source of history for the periods under consideration. It was written hundreds and hundreds of years after the events it describes and tells us more about the time it was composed than the events it describes.
In disputing this, Shanks is kow-towing to his fans—the fundamentalist Christian right in the US who are financially funding the Zionist cause in the hope that it will stimulate the Parousia. Shanks rightly says:
In Israel as well as elsewhere in the world, the Bible has somehow become associated with the literalists, the fundamentalists and evangelical Christians, not with sophisticated academic scholars.
Academic scholars find it embarrassing, he says, and so, it seems, they hide their embarrassment by pretending the bible is something it really is not. These are sophisticated scholars, Shanks tells us, but he certainly does not think so himself, as he shows by his utterly unsophisticated rebuttal. It is the way these apologists argue that it embarassing.
What is the Argument About?
Shanks says Ze’ev Herzog is one of these embarrassed scholars. His argument is “simplistic and flawed”, but “it is also very clever”. That sounds such a contradiction that it cannot be true except in the twisted brain of the God-plussed homunculus. The one who is being clever as opposed to being scholarly is Shanks not Herzog. These biblicists are past masters at reversing motives and projecting on to honest scholars their own intention to deceive.
So what are Shanks’ arguments? He begins by conceding almost every important particular, leaving us wondering just what he is arguing about.
- The bible is a human composition, although with the possibility it was inspired, this latter proving that Shanks is not scientific.
- The purpose of the bible is primarily theological, not historical.
- The bible is tendentious. That means it is directed towards a particular end, not, as Shanks seems to imply, that it is prone to exaggerate—it does that too.
- The bible often speaks metaphorically when it appears to be speaking factually.
- The bible is fallible. It can be inaccurate.
Shanks ameliorates these points conceded by proudly admitting that it “preserves its own dissent”. He means that it is contradictory, because it often gives two or more different versions of its stories, hardly a point in its favour, but Shanks thinks it is. Shanks now says rhetorically:
It is in this context that we must ask whether there is any history to be found in it.
His answer, despite all he has conceded so far, is that those who deny it are “unwilling to do the hard work that the task requires”.
Now let us be clear. The minimalists have never denied that there is some history in the bible. Their point is that, in view of all the objections Shanks himself lists, the scholar cannot know, without additional information—from external history or archaeology, particularly that of Assyria and Egypt—what is true and what is not. Shanks cannot deny this, so he ignores it, and begins to list what might be true in the bible. He knows that what might be true is not history. All novels are fictional, but, other than out-and-out fantasy—a genre not absent from the bible, by any means—all novels must be plausible. That is what might be true means, and because something might be true certainly does not exclude that true fact that it is made up! Fiction is given the illusion of being true by setting it in an appropriate setting. It magnifies the illusion by mentioning some relevant anchors in time and space. That is what the bible does.
The Exodus
Shanks asks us to consider the Exodus, and immediately admits that, despite the biblical implication (Ex 12:37), two million Israelites did not cross the Sinai on their way out of Egypt. He adds that no Egyptian document mentions the Israelites’ presence in Egypt, nor the events of the Exodus. What is more, generations of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the encampments of the tribes in the Sinai desert. Herzog writes that despite these intensive efforts, not even one site has been found that can match the biblical account. If some researchers have discovered Mount Sinai in the northern Hijaz or at Mount Karkoum in the Negev, then the bible account is wrong. These events in the history of the Israelites are not corroborated in documents external to the bible or in archaeological findings.
The unbiased reader would imagine that there can be little left to show, but Mr Shanks, biblical editor, is not fazed! Shanks is not trying to do the impossible, namely defend the biblical account. He is trying to tell us that another account, not in the bible, is the true one. He is obviously, then:
- not a biblical literalist. Have fundamentalists noticed this about their Latter Day Saint George?
- making the same point that his supposed minimalist opponents are making. The bible cannot be relied upon to give true history!
He decides that because Egyptian documents mention nomadic shepherds entering Egypt during periods of drought and hunger:
It is at least plausible that the Israelites (or the Israelites in formation) were among these groups.
What is more, some of these shepherds came from Asia and settled in the area where the bible tells us the Israelites settled. That area is the closest patch of decent grassland to the Egyptian border, the most likely place where Egyptians would allow the Asian shepherds to sojourn in hard times. A four-roomed house has been found there that is like houses said to be Israelite.
So far so good, but Shanks gets on to dodgy ground by uncritically accepting the supposed argument of Kenneth Kitchen, a desperate Christian from Liverpool, who says the price paid for Joseph as a slave was the price typical of the time, but with inflation, later, when the story was composed, the price would have been higher. This argument is fatuous. Even common sense refutes it. Religious kernels rarely have any of it.
Shanks is trying to establish that it is plausible that stories like those of Jacob’s family actually happened. It is. They were not exceptional events, and happened sporadically over millennia. The biblical story is exceptional. A modest family of Aramaeans became a nation of two million in four generations. That is what Shanks does not want to remember, but that is the point of the story! God is working miracles. Shanks wants it to be still true if the group of Aramaeans who left was little bigger than it was when it entered. OK. But it was not the biblical Exodus. It follows that the biblical Exodus did not happen!
Again Shanks concedes that the story could have been invented years later—actually a millennium later—but “the reverse is equally possible”. Does that actually mean anything? Does he mean it could have been invented years before? All is possible for the Lord of Hosts.
Shanks speaks of his opponents using old canards, but does not hesitate to use them in his polemic when it suits himself.
When people invent histories for themselves, their ancestors are secret kings or princes or descendants of gods. Who would invent a history of their people as slaves, if there were not some truth in it?
Shanks puts the telescope to his blind eye, refusing to see that the Jewish scriptures were not the work of the native Canaanites he now takes to be the ancestors of the Jews—the people living in the hills west of the Jordan. The people who wrote the scriptures were intent on disparaging this people whom they were sent to rule as colonizers from Persia. It is in the bible. The scriptures were compiled after the so-called “Return” to oblige the Canaanite natives to be good! They were given a history by the colonists telling them they were wicked and apostate, except for a remnant, who were good and favoured by God. So, the Canaanites did not write their own history. It was written by a ruling caste of imposed priests.
Joshua’s Conquest
Shanks now does the same sort of pathetic demolition on the biblical Conquest, while supposing he is defending it. He points out that the bible gives us two “somewhat differing pictures” of the supposed occupation of Canaan in Joshua and Judges. Shanks explains to us that if we are looking for history, we must take into account not only the successful lightning attacks described in Joshua, but also the more gradual and incomplete settlement described in Judges. Why we must find true history in two utterly different accounts of the same occupation is hard to understand, unless, of course, the bible must be right whatever impossibilities it relates.
That the excavations of Jericho and Ai indicate there were no cities here at the time Joshua was supposed to have conquered them must be balanced against the fact that, according to Hebrew University archaeologist Amnon Ben-Tor, Hazor was indeed most likely destroyed and burned by the incoming Israelites, just as the Bible says (Josh 11:1-11).
Besides these archaeological instances for and against the bible, Shanks tells us that Jericho was indeed destroyed by the fall of its walls, but long before the Iron Age. That means it cannot have been the Israelites of the bible who destroyed the city, so Shanks has to wonder whether Israelites “somehow” were later thought to have destroyed the city. He thinks “it is possible”. Again he shows that the biblical minimalists are right. Shanks proves beyond doubt that it is impossible to know from the bible what is historic and what is not. Shanks thinks he is refuting them, proving that he is simply a hack for God.
Ze’ev Herzog writes that serious difficulties have been encountered in locating the archaeological evidence for Joshua’s Conquest. The biblical descriptions of the Canaanite cities supposedly being attacked are gross exaggerations. They are “great cities with walls sky-high” (Dt 9:1), yet all the relevant sites found were unfortified settlements, mostly a grand house and a few huts. The urban culture of Palestine in the Late Bronze Age disintegrated slowly over hundreds of years, not from military conquest. As more and more sites were uncovered and were found to have died out or been simply abandoned over time, honest researchers had to conclude the biblical story of the military campaign led by Joshua had no factual basis.
Nor could geopolitical reality in the region have allowed the stories to have happened then. The land was under Egyptian rule until the middle of the twelfth century BC. Gaza, Yaffo and Beth Shean were Egyptian cities, and the Egyptians also occupied the east bank of the Jordan. The biblical author obviously knew nothing about the Egyptian presence and could therefore say nothing of it. The heroic Conquest effected with God’s help is a theological fiction.
The archaeological evidence is all against any conquest from outside—unless the conquerors were happy to accept tribute in exchange for going away again. Permanent settlement would have had clear cultural consequences in the ground. During the period preferred by biblicists for the Israelite settlement (Iron Age I, 1200-1000 BC), hundreds of small settlements were surely established in the area of the central hill region of Israel, inhabited by farmers who worked the land or raised sheep, but culturally these people were the same as the locals—Canaanites. There are no signs of any cultural changes. Therefore there was no aliens settling at the time but only local people founding new farmsteads.
Perhaps “Israelite” meant something like pagan, peasant or yokel, and was a pejorative term applied to those who exchanged the urban life for the bucolic one. In fact, Israel Finkelstein, neither minimalist nor maximalist but an authority on the region’s archaeology, thinks these settlers were Late Bronze Age Canaanite shepherds whose isolated graves have been found, settling down because the valley cities were disintegrating, forcing them to grow their own grain and crops, and perhaps because the weather was getting rainier, allowing the previously arid hills to be cultivated for grain and vine. In any event, Israel emerged out of Canaanite society, not Egyptian.
Shanks does not refute this revisionist idea of the bible. He agrees with it. He says a careful reading of the bible does not support a Conquest. Ancient Israel emerged out of many groups. The Shechemites were circumcised to become part of Israel (Genesis 34). The conclusion is that the bible is more subtle than the critics thought.
The fact that many groups accreted and became part of Israel does not detract from the fact that some, whose story became the national story, came from Egypt where they had been enslaved.
Even though the Exodus and Conquest have been shown to be contrary to the evidence that exists, and therefore false—unless it stands for the banal observation that a few Egyptian administrators must have settled in Canaan during the hundreds of years that Egypt ruled it—this clever and objective editor, suddently finds “the national story” of the Exodus is “a fact!” That is called God’s truth, and it is why no one should believe anything that these religious deceivers say.
Despite it being a fact in this sentence, in the next one, Shanks suddenly becomes Uriah Heapish—very ’umble.
Certainty eludes us when we are talking about the history of ancient Israel. We must talk about possibilities, likelihoods, plausibility and, at most, probability.
Yes, indeed, that is just what minimalists say. If certainty eludes us, it is necessary to seek confirmation elsewhere. Shanks admits that he has not proved that there was an Egyptian sojourn and Exodus, but thinks it could still have happened! Perhaps it could, but since there is absolutely no evidence that it did, and strong evidence that it did not, why should anyone consider it likely? Yet Shanks says it cannot be disproved!
The deceit of this reasoning is palpable. How can anyone disprove an imaginary event? If it is imaginary, it never happened, and so it cannot be disproved—there is simply no real life evidence for anything that was only imagined. Let Shanks prove to us that the march of the Ents on Saruman happened. If he were to try, he would do what he has done here. He will find that certain events in history plausibly could have been the march of the Ents. Then Christians and religious Jews will believe it! Maybe, an Ent or two came out of Egypt and marched on Saruman. Well, they could have! Couldn’t they? You can’t ptove they didn’t. Ha!
The Patriarchs
Shanks wants us now to consider the patriarchal narratives. He admits that scholars once thought they had identified the patriarchal age, but were wrong. He tells his gullible audience that from this, “minimalists say there was no patriarchal age and that there is no historical truth behind the narratives”. He tells us that because no one can find any evidence of the patriarchs, it “does not mean that there was no patriarchal age”.
Shanks is being typically desperate. No one is suggesting that a whole period of world history never happened, if that is what he is trying to claim by accusing the minimalists of saying there was no patriarchal age. Even biblicists cannot agree on when the supposed patriarchal age was, though they seem happy to guess at dates from about 2000 BC to about 1500 BC, mainly to get some sort of rough fit with the bible chronology. It is quite clear that this period in world history existed. What there is no evidence for at all is that the patriarchs from Abraham to Jacob, ever lived in those years.
Israel Finkelstein, by no means a minimalist, says that archaeology is not just to decorate a biblical text—it has its own voice. It speaks with real-time evidence, and often provides the most important, and sometimes the only, evidence. Archaeology can say nothing about the existence of a patriarchal age. Finkelstein in The Bible Unearthed, written with Neil Silberman, insists that the bible has to be read from late to early.
The old teaching adage is to teach from the known to the unknown. The more recent periods are better known, so the scholar should understand the most recent times—in the bible, the time of the compilation of the text—then work back into earlier times. The historical value of the biblical accounts is of the time when they were put into writing—from the realities and toponyms mentioned, as late as the fifth century BC. There is no basis for seeking a patriarhal age more than a millennium earlier. The question about Abraham that should be asked, Finkelstein says, is why did the authors write a story about a man migrating from Harran to the Hill Country.
Citing an old canard, Shanks writes:
As is often stated, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This aphorism is not always applicable, but it is applicable here.
This aphorism is popular in the apologetic schools, and is certainly not applicable when a wealth of evidence is expected and yet is not found. That is true of many of the atonishing events described in the bible—the Exodus, the Conquest, the empire of David and Solomon. Nevertheless, Shanks gets back to his kiddies’ argument:
Nor has archaeology proved that the patriarchs never lived.
Can Shanks prove that the Golem—or the Gollum, for that matter—either lived or did not live? When was the “Age of the Titans?” Should we talk about the “Age of Aeneas?” Shanks is the editor of a magazine that pretends to be scientific, but he either hasn’t the least clue about scientific method, or happily ignores it to earn cheap bucks.
What does Shanks conclude about the patriarchal stories?
Doubtless, the stories contain legendary material… but they may well reflect an accurate historical context.
So that is it! The great advocate for the defence of biblical truth concludes that it “may well reflect an accurate historical context”. Doubtless, this will convince the flocks, after all they do not need any evidence to be convinced, but some might just think that a historical context that might well be reflected, but equally might not, is a pretty poor conclusion. It is exactly what the biblical minimalists are saying, and Shanks is proving it for them, even though he thinks he is undermining their position. Perhaps he’s getting old! They say God takes away a man’s reason before he dies.
United Monarchy
Now he comes to the so-called United Monarchy. In the bible, it is the zenith of the political, military and economic power of Israel in ancient times. Yet, evidence for this supposed empire simply does not exist. Herzog says, archaeological findings at many sites show meager constructions at this time when mighty castles and palaces are expected. Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, mentioned in the bible as Solomon’s, have been excavated extensively at the appropriate layers and show them to have been tiny cities compared with the huge ones of the Bronze Age. Only half of Hazor’s upper city was fortified. Gezer had only a citadel surrounded by a casemate wall covering a small area. Megiddo was not fortified with a wall. How does Shanks respond?
That the kingdom of David and Solomon was not as glorious or as extensive as the Bible indicates is certainly arguable and even probable.
Sometimes, it gets quite hard to guess exactly what Shanks is arguing about. He agrees it is “arguable and even probable” that the empire of David did not exist. That is what the minimalists say. The fact is that he cannot argue against the minimalists. There is no evidence for this unlikely empire. Instead, he criticises some scholars for questioning the authenticity of the monumental stele excavated by Avraham Biran at Tel Dan.
Once again Shanks proves that he and his biblicist mates haven’t a clue about scientific method. The foundation of science is skepticism. the foundation of religion is belief. The two are diametrically opposed, and that is why no believer can be an honest scientist. Not only is skepticism right, it is right to be particularly skeptical when singularly fortuitous “discoveries” are made. All Shanks can do is disparage those who look askance at this inscription turning up in a country that simply does not often yield such inscriptions at all, let alone ones that are so pertinent to current arguments. Needless to say, the circumstances of the discovery are in doubt, as they often are in biblical archaeology by biblicists.
In any case, the stele at best can refer only to a place called Beit David. It says nothing about any emperor called David. It is equivalent to saying that the existence of a small town called Robin Hood’s Bay proves that there was a Robin Hood. They might be connected in history or legend or have quite independent origins. No one knows. That is all the minimalists are saying about the bible stories. They might be history, but who can tell without additional data.
Monotheism
Shanks now feels he has to defend monotheism in the tendentious history of the bible. Archaeology has shown that Yehouah, the Israelite God, had a consort. Herzog explains that, at two sites, Kuntilet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and Khirbet el-Kom, Hebrew inscriptions from the eighth century BC mention “YHWH and his Asherah”, “YHWH Shomron and his Asherah”, “YHWH Teman and his Asherah”. They saluted a pair of gods, YHWH and his consort Asherah, and sent blessings in the couple’s name. Thousands of clay figurines of a goddess have also been excavated, including in Jerusalem. It means that the Canaanites who were called Israelites in the bible had a goddess as well as a god. It is therefore unarguable that they were not polytheistic.
Shanks says that these finds actually prove the bible. As the prophets said, Israel was a nation of “backsliders”. Shanks concludes, on the basis of the bible, and contrary to the archaeology, that not all ancient Israelites were monotheistic. We are back into the kiddies’ game of supposition. It might be true that there were some monotheistic believers in ancient Israel, but we have no evidence for them other than the bible. We have a lot of evidence that these people worshipped a goddess.
Shanks finishes with the apologists’ prayer—“archaeological evidence is minute compared to what we don’t know, and is subject to change tomorrow.” Shanks is like them all—Micawberites—something will turn up. Turn to the alter of Micawber and offer a sacrifice. Golden plates will turn up with the full history confirming the bible written in letters of flame. Shanks says:
Some archaeological facts are closer to certainty than others. But it is not always easy to identify one from the other.
Why then does he not freely accept that some biblical facts are closer to certainty than others, and some are so close to uncertainty that they can safely be disregarded as false? Shanks admits that “very little” has been found from the period of the supposed United Monarchy, especially amazing because Jerusalem is the most excavated city in the world. Herzog tells us that much of the city has been excavated over the past 150 years. Digging has revealed impressive cities in the Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age II, the kingdom of Judea. In between, the period of the United Monarchy, no buildings have been found, only a few pottery sherds. Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon not only was not the capital of an empire, it barely existed. Jerusalem became important after the destruction of Samaria in 722 BC.
Shanks thinks he is refuting something by saying that nevertheless Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron found a large wall and two or three major towers that protected the Gihon spring in about 1800 BC, that previous excavators failed to find. Certainly, this is a ray of hope for the Micawberites, and the possibility is not denied by minimalists, but 1800 BC is not 1000 BC. It is not evidence for the Davidic empire, so the altar of the Micawberites is still running red with the blood of sacrificial victims. The scientific position is not in the least opposed to the need to revise hypotheses in the light of new evidence. In the meantime, the hypotheses should be based honestly on the evidence we have, not on imagination and delusion. Believers simply cannot do this. Yet what do we read now from Shanks?
The archaeological picture is never complete and is often revised. The next generation of archaeologists may well do to do the current doubters what they have done to such eminent scholars as William Foxwell Albright.
Quite so, Mr Shanks, but until they do, the evidence on the table should be the basis of history, not ancient myths even if they are Jewish ones.
Merneptah Stele
Shanks finishes up by referring to the Merneptah stele that mentions “Israel” as a people in Canaan in 1208 BC. He thinks this “makes the minimalists squirm”. Well, he he should know all about squirming. Everything else he has discussed has had the biblicists squirming. No minimalist will deny that the word “Israel” must have started to be used at some time in history, and evidently it was about then, if it is correctly dated! Shanks tells us:
Without this chance find, you can be sure the minimalists would be arguing that there was no such entity as Israel at such an early period.
He seems to think there is something devastating about this repost, but it is, of course, correct. Without it, there would have been no external evidence to suggest there was anything called Israel at this early time. That is correct methodology, the methodology the minimalists are advocating. It so happens that this find has confirmed that some Canaanites seem to have been called Israel in the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah. The minmalists are arguing that this is how the bible should be used.
Shanks must be arguing against this that because the bible is sometimes right, it is always right, yet he has accepted over an over again that this is not the case. His own arguments show that external confirmation is needed before anything in the bible can be safely believed. That is minimalism.
Reversing the Argument
Shanks concludes:
All this doesn’t prove that the minimalists are wrong, only that we must be very careful in reaching our conclusions. History, and especially ancient history, is unfortunately very complicated… Just as it is unjustified to conclude that the Bible is literally true in every detail, so it is unjustified to throw it out as historically worthless, especially when that view is so vigorously pursued by a few scholars with a political agenda.
These remarks are revealing ones. It is typically biblicist to utterly reverse the argument when it suits them. Notice:
- The minimalists are corrected for not being careful in reaching conclusions. They are telling the biblicists that they are the ones who are not being careful.
- Ancient history is complicated, but it is biblicists who think it is very simple—it is what the bible says. Again the minimalists are warning biblicists that they are complacent, but Shanks reverses the argument.
- Minimalists, not biblicists, are warning that the bible cannot be assumed to be true in any, let alone every detail, unless it is confirmed by external evidence.
- Minimalists are not saying that the bible is historically worthless, but that it is impossible to know what is valuable without external confirmation, and Shanks successfully shows that whole swathes of the bible cannot be relied on to be true.
- Minimalists are talking about interpreting evidence. It is biblicists, and particularly Zionist and fundamentalist ones who raise political agendas, because they are obviously the ones that have them.
The truth in the allegations against the minimalists is that they alone are interested in truth. The religionites are interested in God’s truth. The methodology for establishing truth is the same as that for testing the bible. It is checked against reality. That is what these deceivers do not like, and that is why they descend into the cesspit of bad-mouthing and threatening their opponents. They cannot win an honest debate, and if their God is truly good, they will soon be feeling the fires of Gehenna. Not that they could care less. They do not fear the Jewish God. For professional religionists, gold is their god. God is a convenient myth to keep them from having to plant potatoes or repair cars.
Who Are the Nazi Scholars?
Reversing the truth as usual, Shanks tells us that Ze’ev Herzog, Niels Peter Lemche, Thomas L Thompson, and other minimalist scholars—he admits “most” of them are scholars—“have a political agenda. They are anti-Zionist, anti-bible and anti-Israel:”
Professor Avraham Malamat of Hebrew University publicly described one of them as both “anti-Israel and anti-Bible”. At the extreme, they can even be viewed as anti-Semitic. One of their number has written a book entitled, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. That about says it all.
Indeed it does. It says something about Shanks and Malamat—they have lost the argument, and are desperately trying to divert attention from the fact. For Thompson, these slanders, personal attacks, ridicule and dismissal are meant to hide undiscussed issues, not yet taken up in the debate.
It also says what it says—if mythology is taken to be history, then history is silenced. In case the reader has forgotten, Shanks admitted that the purpose of the bible was theological not historical. What annoys Malamat, Shanks and their ilk is that the history being recognized as mythology is Jewish history—scriptural history. All other sophisticated peoples have accepted centuries ago that their foundation stories are myths. Bigoted Jews and Christians with their own agendas refuse to accept it of the scriptural myths, even though liberal Jews and Christians have no trouble with it. They realize that these people are not worshipping God but a myth. They are idolizing a book of fairy tales.
It is part of Shank’s derogation of the minimalists that they are some sort of terrorists, nazis, communists, or saboteurs, maliciously intent on hating Jews and poor Christian fundamentalists, who want to do nothing more than bring about the Eschaton. He publicises slurs, but he is not alone. It is plain that a co-ordinated campaign was launched against the minimalists, and the only people motivated, willing and able to organize such fatuous campaigns are Zionist propagandists and Christian fundamentalists.
At a conference in October 1999, at Northwestern University, just before Shanks wrote his piece, William Dever accused Thomas L Thompson, Professor of Old Testament, University of Copenhagen, and others critical of biblical interpretation, of no longer being “honest scholars”. It is a rich accusation coming from those of shrill and intemperate language chagrined that anyone should challenge the Jewish scriptures without God’s written permission.
The language is designed to provoke Zionist and biblical fundamentalist hot heads into threatening behaviour. Ancient Albrightian, Frank Moore Cross, is quoted as saying he is bothered that critical scholars “are kept alive by anti-Semitism”, apparently implying that the scholars who question the validity of the bible as history are financed by anti-Semites, and Shanks adds that:
The minimalists often take on a conscious anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian cast.
That is not so, but these provocateurs pin the label on to their opponents, intending to intimidate them into silence, because they cannot argue on the facts of the case. By wallowing in the trough of political invective, these people show they have lost the argument.
Shanks declares that the minimalists are motivated by interests other than pure scholarship, but is not honest enough to tell his readers that traditional biblicists like Frank Moore Cross, of schools like Albright’s, were themselves motivated by interests other than scholarship—namely their uncritical belief in the essential God-given truth of a collection of ancient propaganda books. The Albrightian school has been financed for decades by people with a vested interest in upholding the truth of the bible. They say they have not been swayed by this, but somehow everything they ever found upheld the bible! Modern more criticial scholars realize they were considerably less than honest, and have made a pig’s ear out of ANE archaeology.
It seems even Jews can be anti-Semitic, and the Semites being considered are not Arabs but other Jews! Netty Gross accused Jewish archaeologists, Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin, of encouraging the arguments of the Palestinian Authority’s director of antiquities, Moain Sadek, who is himself accused of using archaeology for political purposes—and following the Copenhagen School! She too is accusing a school of scholars, of by no means a unified outlook, of being united in their anti-Semitism. She asserts that the Copenhagen School make claims that “have no scholarly basis”, because mainstream scholarship accuses them of “anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and even intellectual dishonesty on the scale of holocaust denial”.
To his credit, Finkelstein, who even Shanks describes as a centrist and so is not a minimalist, made no attempt to hide his exasperation if not contempt for Shanks in an interview in BAR, which at least Shanks published, saying:
You, Hershel, play a major role in the incitement. You have to admit this. You play a really important role in inciting people against each other.
Another outrageous example of attacks on the integrity of critical scholarship by Jewish and Christian scholars of the “biblicist” persuasion are the words of Magen Broshi, former director of the Israel Department of Antiquities:
Apparently there is a certain book that he (Thomas L Thompson) does take seriously. A mutual acquaintance told me that Thompson confided in him that he is a staunch believer in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.The Jerusalem Post 24 December 1999
The book Broshi mentions is the forgery based on an earlier French satire which was used by fascists including Henry Ford before the war to attack Jews. Norman Cohn called it a Warrant for Genocide. Broshi was accusing Thompson of being a Nazi. Thompson is not a Nazi or even anti-Jewish, so why should Broshi suggest that he is? Because Broshi wants to silence Thompson.
As Thompson says in his own defence Broshi follows well-established rules of propaganda—if you have to lie make it a big one, and repeat it often enough and it will become true. The Big Lie was the method used by Goebbels, and so Broshi is in fact the one using Nazi methods. Broshi’s Big-Lie technique must be utterly offensive to Jews whose parents and their friends, at the insistence of the previous Big Lie experts, the Nazis, are involuntarily fertilising the lush grass of Auschwitz. When prominent Israeli scholars like Broshi come out with such outrageous and outlandish statements, is it surprising that scholars elsewhere look upon discoveries like the Tel Dan inscription as potentially forged? Such people will do anything.
Whose is the Political Agenda?
What is the root of all this hysteria? It is not really that the Jewish scriptures do not stand up as historical when external evidence is considered, especially in those parts preceding the kingdom founded by Omri. It certainly undermines the cherished beliefs of fundamentalist Jews and Christians who want to assert, contrary to the evidence, that the bible is entirely or largely historically true. Mythology will not do for these neurotic people. But the bulk of normal Jews and Christians can hardly stifle a yawn at it all.
More important is the political need for those who support the Israeli state to have a historical basis for Israeli claims. Many Israelis justify their position with reference to the bible, and so, if the bible is not history, their position is unfounded. Their fear is that the Israelis have no historical claim, and particularly no religious claim, to the land now called Israel, if Moses is a myth. That above all makes these people not neurotic but psychotic. For Broshi that means Thompson and other scholars of the same outlook are anti-Jewish and have to be labelled it so that there can be no mistake. The reason, however disgusting it might sound to liberals, is that they want to feel that God has given them a right over these lands that will excuse their use of tanks and helicopter gunships to maintain their claim, and even nuclear weapons should they be necessary.
The fact is that Israelis have the tanks and helicopters, and, with the support of the economically and militarily strongest nation on earth, that should be enough in the modern world to maintain any claim. But whether might is right or not, truth is right by definition, and good men should not allow truth to be destroyed to uphold a political claim. Scholars should have nothing to do with such political posturing, on whatever side it is.
To establish what is true is no crime, political or otherwise, but to cover up what is false certainly is. Shanks’ excuse is that there is a “certain current faddish lack of pride in Israel’s history, both modern and ancient”, proving his stupidity or dishonesty—and he is not likely to be stupid—because he utterly ignores the central point that much of Israel’s ancient history recounted in the bible is not history, it is mythology. That is what the minimalists are showing.
If a believer is faced with the uncomfortable fact that the bible is false, pretending it is not does not uphold God but Satan. Clerics maintaining the lie will fool naïve people into thinking God is on their side, perhaps, but it proves the utter cynicism of the clergy and their appointees who are supposed to be educated and pious. It will prove they are not in the least interested in God except for propaganda purposes, which is curious, because it is just why Judaism was set up in the first place.
The Persians set it up for propaganda reasons, to control the hearts and minds of the people. The defenders of the faith continue the same tradition today. They are propagandists and manipulators, and have the funds to do it. Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1963, Senator J William Fulbright said five million tax deductible dollars donated annually by American citizens to Israel was sent back to the US to organisations influencing public opinion in favor of Israel. The sums are much greater today and feed the Christian right of Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. The biblicists are backed by these right wing US fundamentalist TV evangelists with their ill-gotten millions, and opportunist vote-grubbing Senators both of whom have their own vested interest in upholding the bible, true or not.
But the Zionists playing this foolish game ought to take care. In walking with the Christian fundamentalists, they are keeping company with footpads whose openly stated aim is to bring about the Parousia of their supposed God, and to do it the enforced conversion of Jews to Christianity. The religious allies might defeat the Moslems on the fundamentalists’ insane route to the Eschaton, but do the Zionists seriously think that they will then be able to take on the Christian right of America, when they should be showing an inclination to fall into the arms of Jesus? If they do, it shows that both parties are insane, and the rest of us will doubtless have to suffer while maniacs try to bring about the end of the world.
