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Page 1
Journal of Biblical Literature
VOLUME 122, No. 3
Fall 2003
Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology Preserves
What Is Remembered and What Is Forgotten
in Israel’s History
ELIZABETH BLOCH-SMITH
401–425
The Woman of Substance (
lyjAt`a
): A Socioeconomic
Reading of Proverbs 31:10–31
CHRISTINE ROY YODER
427–447
Geography and History in Herodotus and in Ezra-Nehemiah
THOMAS B. DOZEMAN
449–466
Are There Imperial Texts in the Class? Intertextual Eagles
and Matthean Eschatology as “Lights Out” Time
for Imperial Rome (Matthew 24:27–31)
WARREN CARTER
467–487
Matthew 27:52–53 as Apocalyptic Apostrophe:
Temporal-Spatial Collapse in the Gospel of Matthew
KENNETH L. WATERS, SR.
489–515
“To Die Is Gain” (Philippians 1:19–26): Does Paul
Contemplate Suicide?
N. CLAYTON CROY
517–531
The Locutions of 1 Kings 22:28: A New Proposal
KEITH BODNER
533–543
6Q30, a Cursive Šîn, and Proverbs 11
HANAN ESHEL
544–546
Book Reviews 547 — Index 600
US ISSN 0021–9231
Page 2
JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE
SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
(Constituent Member of the American Council of Learned Societies)
EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL
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Book Review Editor: TODD C. PENNER, Austin College, Sherman, TX 75090
EDITORIAL BOARD
Term Expiring
2003:
SUSAN ACKERMAN, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755
MICHAEL L. BARRÉ, St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore, MD 21210
ATHALYA BRENNER, University of Amsterdam, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
MARC BRETTLER, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02254-9110
WARREN CARTER, St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, MO 64127
PAUL DUFF, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052
BEVERLY R. GAVENTA, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542
JUDITH LIEU, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom
KATHLEEN O’CONNOR, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031
C. L. SEOW, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542
VINCENT WIMBUSH, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711
2004:
JANICE CAPEL ANDERSON, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844
MOSHE BERNSTEIN, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201
ROBERT KUGLER, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219
BERNARD M. LEVINSON, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0125
THEODORE J. LEWIS, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218
TIMOTHY LIM, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 2LX Scotland
STEPHEN PATTERSON, Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO 63119
ADELE REINHARTZ, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, OH N2L 3C5 Canada
NAOMI A. STEINBERG, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614
SZE-KAR WAN, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 92459
2005:
BRIAN K. BLOUNT, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542
TERENCE L. DONALDSON, Wycliffe College, Toronto, ON M5S 1H7 Canada
PAMELA EISENBAUM, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO 80210
STEVEN FRIESEN, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211
A. KATHERINE GRIEB, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA 22304
JEFFREY KAH-JIN KUAN, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA 94709
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75275
DAVID L. PETERSEN, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322
ALAN F. SEGAL, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027
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Page 3
JBL 122/3 (2003) 401–425
ISRAELITE ETHNICITY IN IRON I:
ARCHAEOLOGY PRESERVES
WHAT IS REMEMBERED AND
WHAT IS FORGOTTEN
IN ISRAEL’S HISTORY
ELIZABETH BLOCH-SMITH
bloch-smith@msn.com
123 Upland Terrace, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
Earliest Israel remains terra incognita, literally and from the ground
down. The Merneptah Stela Stanza VIII proclaiming Egyptian suzerainty in
the southern Levant documents Israel as a noteworthy foreign enemy by the
end of the thirteenth century
B
.
C
.
E
.
1
Except for this mention, neither contem-
porary epigraphic nor archaeological evidence explicitly points to a late-
thirteenth-century
B
.
C
.
E
. “Israel.” However, conservatively dated biblical and
archaeological evidence has been invoked to attest to Israel in the twelfth to
eleventh centuries
B
.
C
.
E
. Frank Cross and Tryggve Mettinger, among others,
date the Bible’s earliest testimonials, the Song of the Sea (Exod 15) and Song of
Deborah (Judg 5) to the late twelfth or early eleventh century
B
.
C
.
E
.
2
Ironically,
it was Israel Finkelstein, now leading a revisionist contingent, who claimed to
validate the early dates with archaeological evidence. In his central highlands
survey, Finkelstein identified as “Israelite” the hundreds of hamlets and farm-
A portion of this essay was presented before the Colloquium for Biblical Research at Duke
Divinity School in August 2001. I wish to thank the members of the colloquium for their helpful
criticisms and suggestions. This paper also greatly benefited from discussions with my husband,
Mark Smith, of New York University, and with Ilan Sharon of The Hebrew University.
1
Donald Redford, “Egypt and Western Asia in the Late New Kingdom: An Overview,” in
The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment (ed. E. Oren; Philadelphia: University Museum,
2000), 5.
2
Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Reli-
gion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 121–24; Tryggve Mettinger, The
Dethronement of Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theologies (trans. Frederick Cryer;
Lund: Gleerup, 1982), 26–27.
401
Page 4
steads founded in the twelfth and eleventh centuries
B
.
C
.
E
.
3
Although the Iron
I material culture, cultic practices, burial customs, and architecture continued
Late Bronze Age “Canaanite” traditions, the founding population was readily
identified as Merneptah’s “Israel” and biblical “Israel.”
4
Nearly two decades
later, not a single feature of those settlements may be conclusively identified as
exclusively “Israelite.” Aside from the founding of new settlements in territory
allegedly settled by Israel, nothing decisively links the new settlements to
Merneptah’s Israel or biblical Israel.
In view of this impasse, this article pursues an alternate route in search of
ethnic Israel of the premonarchic period. After demonstrating the limitations
of the Culture Area approach to ethnicity currently employed by most archae-
ologists, I will present the Meaningful Boundaries approach, stemming from
Fredrik Barth’s work. This model will, in turn, be expanded to incorporate
Jonathan Hall and Stephen Cornell’s work on a group’s crafting of its history as
a process that fosters ethnic identity. Based on the new model that weds
archaeology and text, the Tell-Tale approach, datable archaeological features
with biblically attested significance will be proposed to indicate the crafting of
Israel’s history from as early as the twelfth to eleventh century
B
.
C
.
E
.
The biblical and archaeological evidence of Israelite interaction with the
Canaanites and Philistines shows that the process of formulating collective
memory regarding the Philistines differed from that of fashioning reminis-
cences of the Canaanites. Two distinct literary processes may underlie the vary-
ing accounts.
I. Two Archaeological Models of Ethnicity
Defining Ethnicity
An ethnos is a group of people larger than a clan or lineage claiming com-
mon ancestry. While cultural or biological kinship may reinforce the bond, a
fabricated “collective memory of a former unity”
5
or “putative myth of shared
descent and kinship”
6
ultimately conjoins the various lineages. Primordial as
Journal of Biblical Literature
402
3
Israel Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Explo-
ration Society, 1988).
4
For examples, see William Dever, “Proto-Israelites” (“Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Ques-
tion of Israel’s Origins,” BA 58, no.4 [1995]: 200–213) and I. Finkelstein, “Israelites” (Archaeology
of the Israelite Settlement).
5
Geoff Emberling, “Ethnicity in Complex Societies: Archaeological Perspectives,” Journal
of Archaeological Research 5, no.4 (1997): 301–4.
6
Jonathan Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997).
Page 5
well as circumstantial traits, both self-ascribed and promulgated by others,
define the group. Primordial features are perceived by the group to have
existed from the beginning; in other words, they are the “collective memory of
a former unity” or a common heritage. Kinship, territory, or select traditions,
including religion, often define the group’s origins. In contrast to primordial
traits, circumstantial factors are variously activated in response to changing sit-
uations. Material culture or relations with other groups exemplify circumstan-
tial factors. Though self-ascribed identifying features may change, shifting
social constructs distinguishing “us” from “them” shape continuing ethnic affil-
iation.
7
Ethnicity is, in A. Gidden’s words, “a dialectic of ‘structure’ and
‘agency.’”
8
The quest for early Israel is a study of ethnogenesis. “Shared interests,”
often political or economic, spur often unrelated clans or lineages to amal-
gamate into the nucleus of an ethnos.
9
To define and legitimate itself, the
resulting group asserts a (fabricated) common ancestry and adopts a culture
legitimating the group’s past, both real and alleged, spanning the distant to
recent history. In other words, the formative group undergoes a conceptual
shift; the “almost unconscious ‘way of life’” becomes “tradition,” and the emer-
gent culture assumes an underlying “ideology of authenticity.”
10
Such myths of
ethnic origins serve to establish and perpetuate ethnic claims of ancestry and
other primordial features such as territory.
11
“Shared institutions” are necessary
to perpetuate the group after the initial reasons for affiliating have dissipated.
These institutions function as the organizing mechanism for the group to
achieve its interests, practice the culture, and maintain its identity.
12
Geoff Emberling discusses the relationship between ethnogenesis and
political states in second-millennium Mesopotamia. According to his schema,
mobile or migrant groups may attain a distinctive identity in a new environ-
ment. Along with the autochthonous population, the various tribes, peoples, or
groups adopt a history of “former unity” in the process of incorporation into a
state. While the state is a political construct, in contrast to the allegedly kinship-
Bloch-Smith: Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I
403
7
For bibliography of literature on ethnicity, see Bruce McKay, “Ethnicity and Israelite Reli-
gion: The Anthropology of Social Boundaries in Judges” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1997),
33–59.
8
Quoted in Mark G. Brett, “Interpreting Ethnicity: Method, Hermeneutics, Ethics,” in
Ethnicity and the Bible (ed. M. Brett; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1996), 10.
9
P. Spickard and W. Burroughs, “Introduction,” in We Are a People: Narrative and Multi-
plicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity (ed. P. Spickard and W. J. Burroughs; Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2000), 8–9.
10
Jack D. Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict: An Anthropological Perspective on
International Ethnic Conflict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 30.
11
Hall, Ethnic Identity, 40.
12
Spickard and Burroughs, “Introduction,” 10.
Page 6
based ethnos, it may build on ethnic history to promote national loyalty and, in
some cases, religious fidelity. Once incorporated within the state, the ethnos
may be preserved and enhanced or suppressed to promote state interests, ren-
dering state control and ethnic preservation potentially opposing forces. Gen-
erally, the degree of state control is inversely related to the power of the ethnos.
With the dissipation or dissolution of state control, ethnic groups once again
may reassert their influence.
13
Emberling’s discussion lays the groundwork for constructing the Tell-Tale
paradigm for early Israel. In place of a single point of origin and unilinear tra-
jectory, over the centuries early Israel amalgamated multiple constituent
groups each with its own primordial features. Incorporating new populations
into the evolving ethnos likely entailed retrojecting or incorporating some of
their primordial traits into the “collective memory.” Thus, primordial features
may change comparable to circumstantial factors. Even the religion of early
Israel, allegedly a primordial feature (Gen 17:1–8), underwent changes
through time, as cogently presented by Mark Smith.
14
The deity worshiped
and/or the name by which he was known is a parade example. Earliest Israel
likely consisted of a federation of clans worshiping El as their chief deity. El and
Yahweh converged when the people Israel became Yahweh’s nation; thereafter
worship of Yahweh and/or El defined Israel. The evolution from polytheism to
monotheism provides a second example. Through the period of the judges and
the monarchy, Israel worshiped Yahweh, El, Baal, Asherah, Astarte, the sun,
the moon, and the stars.
15
Not until relatively late in Israel’s recorded history,
from the late preexilic and the exilic periods, does the biblical text express
“unambiguous expressions of Israelite monotheism” (e.g., Isa 45:5–6).
16
An expanding entity in the process of consolidation and state formation,
early Israel repeatedly updated and revised its history to incorporate circum-
stantial features as well as select primordial features of new constituent groups.
The process may be endemic to ethnic emergence. Jonathan Hall affirmed the
importance of written and verbal discourse in constructing and maintaining
ethnic identity in ancient Greece, and Stephen Cornell labeled the process
Journal of Biblical Literature
404
13
Emberling, “Ethnicity,” 304–10.
14
Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 7–12.
15
Smith, Early History of God, 145; Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger collect the rele-
vant iconographic evidence in Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God: In Ancient Israel (Minneapo-
lis: Fortress, 1998); John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (JSOTSup 265;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 226–33; Z. Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis
of Parallactic Approaches (New York: Continuum, 2001), 648–52.
16
Smith, Early History of God, 152–54; idem, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s
Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 151–54.
Page 7
“narrativization” as practiced by Native Americans.
17
Over the centuries, Israel
supplemented, redefined, reinterpreted, and perhaps expunged or forgot pri-
mordial as well as circumstantial traits and features in crafting its “collective
memory.”
This more flexible understanding of ethnicity provides greater latitude in
moving from Merneptah’s Israel to premonarchic and monarchic ethnic Israel.
At each stage, a group considered itself “Israel,” yet the defining features may
have significantly differed. Textually and archaeologically attested traits from
Iron II need not have pertained in Iron I. This proviso also helps bridge the
widespread abandonment of “Israelite” highland rural settlements in the
eleventh to tenth century
B
.
C
.
E
. and discontinuities in material culture (see
below).
Viewing early Israel as an ethnos raises several questions. What circum-
stantial “shared interest,” in contradistinction to the primordial “common her-
itage,” forged the bonds for Iron I Israel? After the initial impetus for affiliation
ceased, what “shared institutions” perpetuated group identity? Is it possible to
discern within the group’s recorded narrative either episodic components or lit-
erary processes signifying authors/redactors constructing a history, the process
of which fostered ethnic identity?
E
XCURSUS
: T
HE
M
EANING OF
“I
SRAELITE AND
P
HILISTINE
Before reviewing the models of ethnicity currently employed in
archaeological studies, use of the terms “Israelite” and “Philistine”
requires qualification. Biblicists and archaeologists share limitations in
distinguishing and interpreting internal variability. For biblical scholars,
texts such as the various tribal accounts, conquest narratives, and judges’
episodes are all regarded as “Israelite” by virtue of their inclusion in the
recorded history, though they may have originated with distinct groups
later incorporated into the Israelite nation. The same limitation in distin-
guishing internal variability plagues the interpretation of archaeological
finds. Settlements and material culture in the Iron I central highlands
(1200–1000
B
.
C
.
E
.) are all attributed to a single culture and people, vari-
ously labeled “Proto-Israelite” (William Dever) or “Israelite” (Israel
Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar). Studies of inter- and intrasite variability lack
the necessary quantities of data and refinement of analysis to distinguish
different peoples resident in the highlands. For convenience, archaeolo-
gists resort to the acknowledged misnomer “Israelite” for all central high-
Bloch-Smith: Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I
405
17
Hall, Ethnic Identity, 2; Stephen Cornell, “That’s the Story of Our Life,” in We Are a Peo-
ple, ed. Spickard and Burroughs, 43–44, and see n. 1 for bibliography on the link between identity
and narrative.
Page 8
lands territory and material culture. The term “Philistine,” the biblically
perceived dominant culture among the Egyptian-attested Sea Peoples,
functions similarly for the territory and material culture of the coastal
plain from roughly the Yarkon River south to Gaza.
The Culture Area Approach:
Distinguishing “Israelites” from “Canaanites”
Current archaeological studies of Israelite ethnicity employ the anthropo-
logical paradigm known as the Culture Area approach.
18
According to this
model, the ethnos is identified with “a complex of cultural traits common to a
population inhabiting a specific environmental zone.”
19
As is evident from the
above discussion of ethnicity, systemic difficulties compromise the explanatory
value of this model. Difficulties include (1) distinguishing cultural complexes of
traits and delimiting their boundaries; (2) identifying features of ethnic rather
than economic, social, or political origin; and (3) allowing for variability in the
complex of traits through time and space. A further limitation of this approach
is the difficulty in demonstrating the meaning or significance of the isolated
traits for the members of the group. Without meaning, the traits cease to func-
tion as part of the “cultural complex.” Fortunately, texts—in our case the
Bible—testify to what constituted a meaningful trait (though documentation
was not intended to be comprehensive), at least in retrospect.
Israel Finkelstein’s work is illustrative of this approach. In 1983 he claimed
to have identified early “Israel” in his Tel Aviv Ph.D. dissertation entitled “The
Izbet Sartah Excavations and the Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country.”
20
Nearly twenty years later, not a single feature of the highland settlements
attributed to early Israel may be conclusively identified as exclusively “Israel-
ite” or as distinguishing “Israelites” from neighboring peoples such as the
“Gibeonites” or “Canaanites.” Despite growing evidence to the contrary, Cul-
ture Area advocates continue to promote the “pillared” or “four-room” house
and “collar-rim” store jar as traits of the Israelite cultural complex. Abstinence
from pork, recently added to the list, is also problematic (see below). None of
these traits was exclusive to a conservatively delimited Iron I highland Israel
and so is not necessarily a marker of an ethnic Israelite individual or family.
Journal of Biblical Literature
406
18
William Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What
Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); I.
Finkelstein and N. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel
and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001); Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel.
19
Emberling, “Ethnicity,” 297.
20
Finkelstein extended the scope of his studies in his subsequent works (The Archaeology of
the Period of Settlement and Judges [Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing, 1986] and
Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement).
Page 9
Furthermore, texts are mute as to whether or not Israelites considered house
plans and store jars meaningful cultural traits; only abstinence from pork
appears in the collective memory (Lev 11:7–8; Deut 14:8). The silence of the
texts regarding the significance of house plans and collar-rim store jars plus
their relatively restricted distribution favors an economic or functional rather
than an ethnic impetus and no subsequent importance.
To topple the reigning paradigm, the distribution of pillared houses and
store jars and the absence of pork in the diet will be shown both temporally and
spatially to exceed the parameters of early Israel. At newly founded Iron I (ca.
1200–1000
B
.
C
.
E
.) highland sites, settlers commonly constructed a pillared
house, commonly referred to as the “four-room” house. These square to rectan-
gular dwellings enclosed a rear broadroom and a front courtyard divided by one
or two longitudinal rows of pillars (1.1–1.8 m. high) demarcating side rooms
often paved with flagstones. Low arched doorways, occasional troughs between
the pillars, and the flagstone paving suggest that the side rooms sheltered ani-
mals. Ovens and hearths in the central courtyard attest to cooking and baking,
leaving the back room for storage and sleeping. Many houses likely had at least
a partial second story.
21
While this house type may have predominated in the Iron I highlands, it
was not the exclusive model at sites including Afula, Tell el Far>ah (N), Ai,
Bethel, Beth Shemesh, or Tell Beit Mirsim.
22
Houses at Tell el-Far>ah (N),
Bethel, Beth Shemesh, and Tell Beit Mirsim, all continuously populated from
the Late Bronze Age into the Iron I, lacked pillars and at 100–200 m. sq. cov-
ered more than double the floor space of the Ai and Khirbet Raddana pillared
dwellings. The simplistic equation between Israelites and pillared houses is
without foundation. At highland sites generally considered Israelite, such as Ai
Bloch-Smith: Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I
407
21
For an extensive discussion and bibliography, see John Holladay, Jr., “House, Israelite,”
ABD 3:308–18; Lawrence Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” BASOR 260
(1985): 1–35.
22
Afula IIIB House XXVIII (twelfth century), see Moshe Dothan, “The Excavations at
>Afula,” Atiqot 1 (1956): fig. 3; Ai Houses 17, 152, 207 (twelfth to eleventh century), see J. Marquet-
Kraus, Les Fouilles de ‘Ay (et-Tell) 1933–1935: Resurrection d’Une Grande Cite Biblique (Biblio-
thèque Archéologique et Historique 45; Paris: Guethner, 1949), pl. XCVII; Bethel House 35 (end
of thirteenth to beginning of twelfth century) (twelfth century ), see Frank Braemer, L’Architec-
ture Domestique du Levant A L’Age Du Fer (Editions recherche sur les civilizations 8; Paris:
A.D.P.F., 1982), 201–2; Tell Beit Mirsim B2 House SE 12/3, see William F. Albright, The Excava-
tion of Tell Beit Mirsim, vol. 3, The Iron Age (AASOR 21–22; New Haven: ASOR, 1943), 19–21, pls.
2 and 11a; and Braemer, L’Architecture Domestique, 28–29, 181–82; Beth Shemesh III Houses 24
and 28 (twelfth to eleventh century), see Elihu Grant, Ain Shems Excavations 1928–1931 (Biblical
and Kindred Studies 3, 4; Haverford: Haverford College, 1931), pl. XXV; and E. Grant and G. E.
Wright, Ain Shems Excavations (Palestine) (Biblical and Kindred Studies 8; Haverford: Haverford
College, 1939), 51–55, fig. 6; and Braemer, L’Architecture Domestique, 198–99; Tell el Far>ah (N)
Houses 163 and 180 (eleventh to tenth century), see Braemer, L’Architecture Domestique, 211–17.
Page 10
or Bethel, either Israelites constructed houses of differing plans or non-
Israelites resided there as well, in which case the settlements should not be
considered exclusively Israelite. If Israelites chose from among various house
models, then the pillared house may be a function of socioeconomic considera-
tions rather than ethnicity.
The distribution of pillared houses was also not restricted to Israelite sites;
pillared houses were erected at the Late Bronze II and Iron I sites of Tell
Ta>anach, Izbet Sartah, Tell Batash, Tell es-Shariah, Tel Masos, Sahab, and
Medeinet Mu>arradjeh on the Kerak plateau, arguably non-Israelite sites.
23
Ironically, the excavators’ identification of many of these sites as Israelite rests
solely on biblical testimony; archaeological remains suggest otherwise. Thus
falls the first pillar, or material culture attribute, distinguishing ethnic Israelites
from Canaanites and other peoples resident in the highlands.
William F. Albright identified the collar-rim store jar as a highland feature;
Yohanan Aharoni held the form to be exclusively Israelite.
24
Date and distribu-
tion, however, negate Aharoni’s qualification.
25
Collar-rim store jars are now
known from sites outside of and predating Israelite control, in the lowlands
(Tell Keisan, Tell Nami, Aphek, Tell Qasile, Megiddo, Beth Shan) and on the
Transjordanian plateau (Sahab, Tell el-Umeiri, the Amman-Hesban region).
26
Journal of Biblical Literature
408
23
Tell Ta>anach twelfth-century pillars in a partial structure and the Drainpipe Structure,
see Paul Lapp, “The 1968 Excavations at Tell Ta>anek,” BASOR 195 (1969): 34–39; and Braemer,
L’Architecture Domestique, 286; Izbet Sartah II (end of eleventh century), see M. Kochavi and A.
Demsky, “An Israelite Village from the Days of the Judges,” BAR 4, no. 3 (1978): plan p. 26; and
Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 75–78; and Braemer, L’Architecture Domes-
tique, 238–39; Tell es-Sharia Str. VIII, E. Oren, “Esh-Sharia>a (Tel Sera>), EAEHL 4:1064–65, plan
on p. 1066; Tel Batash VII, LBII “Burnt Building,” see G. Kelm and A. Mazar, “Three Seasons of
Excavations at Tell Batash-Biblical Timnah,” BASOR 248 (1982): 9–13; Tel Masos Str. III House
74 (end of thirteenth to mid to late twelfth century), Str. II Houses 2, 88, 167 and 1065 (late twelfth
to eleventh century), see A. Kempinsky and V. Fritz, “Excavations at Tel Masos (Khirbet el
Meshash): Preliminary Report of the Third Season, 1975,” TA 4 (1977): 138–42; and Braemer,
L’Architecture Domestique, 251–55; M. M. Ibrahim, “Third Season of Excavations at Sahab, 1975
(Preliminary Report),” ADAJ 20 (1975): 69–82; J. Sauer, “Iron I Pillared House in Moab,” BA 42,
no. 1 (1979): 1.
24
W. F. Albright, “Further Light on the History of Israel from Lachish and Megiddo,”
BASOR 68 (1937): 25; Yohanan Aharoni, “New Aspects of the Israelite Occupation in the North,”
in Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck (ed. J. A.
Sanders; New York: Doubleday, 1970), 264–65.
25
See the summary in Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 280–82.
26
For bibliography, see Israel Finkelstein, “Pots and People Revisited: Ethnic Boundaries in
the Iron Age I,” in The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present (ed.
N. Silberman and D. Small; JSOTSup 237; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 224–25; for
Tell al->Umayri, see Larry Herr, “The Settlement and Fortification of Tell al->Umayri in Jordan
During the LB/Iron I Transition,” in The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of
James A. Sauer (ed. L. Stager, J. Greene, and M. Coogan; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000),
167–79.
Page 11
A suggested mode of dispersal also precludes use of the jar as an ethnic marker.
Based on distribution, Doug Esse proposed itinerant kin-based potters, likely
Israelites, selling collar-rim store jars to Israelites and Canaanites alike.
27
If
Esse is correct, the general availability of collar-rim jars shatters the myth of
their restricted ethnic use. Thus falls the second pillar or attribute of ethnic
Israel’s identity manifested in material culture.
Zooarchaeologists seemingly rescued the early Israelites from obscurity.
The apparent abstinence from pork in fulfillment of the biblical injunction (Lev
11:7–8; Deut 14:8) was embraced as the elusive marker of Israelite ethnicity.
28
Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish tabulated percentages of pig bones among fau-
nal collections from Israel, Syria, Iraq, eastern Anatolia, and Egypt, spanning
the ninth to the first millennium.
29
Relevant to this discussion are their findings
from second- and first-millennium Cisjordan. Their efforts are hamstrung by
the small number of faunal assemblages analyzed, samples of widely varying
size (from 47 to 3,950 bones), and the variability of intrasite distribution
depending on context. Isolating the results of southern Levantine sites, five
Middle Bronze Age sites demonstrated “intense exploitation” of pig, from 8 to
34 percent of identified animal bones in domestic debris. Late Bronze Age sites
yielded “scant” Late Bronze Age evidence, with the sole highland site of Shiloh
yielding a mere 0.17 percent (one bone). Pig was rare but present in Iron I
highland sites: 0.7 percent at Shiloh, one bone each at Ai and Khirbet Raddana,
and “some” from the City of David (none from the Ophel). By contrast, the pig
samples of 18 and 19 percent respectively from Iron I Tel Miqne and Ashkelon
constitute incontrovertible evidence of Iron I Philistine pork consumption. At
all Philistine sites analyzed, Ashkelon, Tel Miqne, and Tell Batash, pig exploita-
tion decreased through the centuries, beginning in the eleventh century
B
.
C
.
E
.
Overall, Hesse and Wapnish’s results demonstrate reliance on pig in the Middle
Bronze Age, with greatly diminished use from the Late Bronze Age through
the Persian period except for Iron I Philistia, with a return to pork as a dietary
Bloch-Smith: Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I
409
27
Douglas Esse, “The Collared Store Jar: Scholarly Ideology and Ceramic Typology,” SJOT
2 (1991): 99–116.
28
Diana Edelman, “Ethnicity and Early Israel,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Brett, 49;
Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know, 113; Finkelstein, “Pots and People,” 228–30; Finkel-
stein and Silberman, Bible Unearthed, 119; Larry Stager, “The Impact of the Sea Peoples in
Canaan (1185–1050
BCE
),” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (ed. T. Levy; New York:
Facts on File, 1995), 344.
29
Brian Hesse, “Husbandry, Dietary Taboos, and the Bones of the Ancient Near East: Zoo-
archaeology in the Post-Processual World,” in Methods in the Mediterranean: Historical and
Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology (ed. D. Small; Leiden/New York: Brill, 1995), 197–
232, esp. 217–30; Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish, “Can Pig Remains Be Used for Ethnic Diagno-
sis in the Ancient Near East?” in Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, ed. Silberman and
Small, 238–70.
Page 12
mainstay in the Hellenistic and later periods.
30
Based on these findings, those
who seek to identify Israelites on the basis of abstinence from pork are hampered
by the single Late Bronze Age highland site with a “trace” of pig, which precludes
distinguishing the Iron I highland “Israelites” from their predecessors.
A further limitation of the Culture Area approach is its inability to bridge
the mid-twelfth- and eleventh-century
B
.
C
.
E
. highland abandonment and dis-
continuity in material culture. Entire regions of Manasseh, Ephraim, Judah,
and the Shephelah were abandoned not long after having been settled.
31
Finkelstein’s 1997 claim that “over 90% of the Iron I sites [in the central high-
lands] continued to be inhabited, undisturbed, until the eighth century BCE” is
not borne out by excavations, others’ surveys, or his own earlier work in the ter-
ritory of Ephraim.
32
Of the few Iron I sites excavated, many were abandoned
either briefly or permanently (Mt. Ebal, Izbet Sartah, Shechem, Shiloh, Ai,
Khirbet Raddana, Tell en-Nasbeh, Giloh, Umm et-Tala, Jebel el-Habun/Allon
Shevut, Tell Beit Mirsim). Tell el-Far>ah (N), Khirbet ed-Dawwara, and Izbet
Sartah lasted into the tenth century
B
.
C
.
E
. before being abandoned. Only five
highland sites supported continuous settlement into the Iron II period (Bethel,
Tell el-Ful/Gibeah, Gibeon, Jerusalem, Tell er-Rumeideh/Tel Hebron).
33
Sur-
vey results also challenge Finkelstein’s purported continuity of settlement.
Archaeological surveys of Ephraim found, on average, a 36-percent Iron I site
abandonment rate, with rates as high as 50 percent in the east and 44 percent
along the south central ridge.
34
Avraham Faust’s focus on rural settlement
paints an even bleaker picture than that presented by Finkelstein. According to
Faust, Iron II villages were not established before the demise of their Iron I
410
Journal of Biblical Literature
30
Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish, “Pig Use and Abuse in the Ancient Levant: Ethno-
religious Boundary-Building with Swine,” in Ancestors for the Pigs: Pigs in Prehistory (ed. S.
Nelson; MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology 15; Philadelphia: Museum Applied
Science Center for Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthro-
pology, 1998), 123–35.
31
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Beth Alpert-Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron
Age I,” Near Eastern Archaeology 62, no. 2 (1999): 70, 73, 77–78.
32
Finkelstein, “Pots and People Revisited,” 223; idem, Archaeology of the Israelite Settle-
ment; Avraham Faust, “Abandonment, Urbanization, Resettlement and the Formation of the
Israelite State” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the ASOR, Boulder, Colorado, Novem-
ber 2001; forthcoming in Near Eastern Archaeology).
33
For charts summarizing comparative stratigraphy of Iron I and Iron II sites, see Amihai
Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000–586 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 1990),
table 6, p. 301, and table 7, pp. 372–73.
34
Avi Ofer, “‘All the Hill Country of Judah’: From a Settlement Fringe to a Prosperous
Monarchy,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel
(ed. I. Finkelstein and N. Na’aman; Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, Israel Exploration Society;
Washington: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994), figs. 4 and 5. Percentages for Ephraim were tab-
ulated from survey data in Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 140–77, 187–91.
Page 13
counterparts, so that no rural settlements existed in the late eleventh/early
tenth century
B
.
C