The infant Moses is taken from his basket by Pharoah's daughter (3rd century B.C. fresco from the synagogue of Dura-Europos). Victory inscription mentioning "Beit David," 9th century B.C.E.

"The Past that Shapes the Present: The Creation of Biblical Historiography in the Late First Temple Period and After the Downfall" by Nadav Na'aman, published as part of the Yeriot series in memory of Yitzhak (Isik) Hess, "Essays and Papers in the Jewish Studies Bearing on the Humanities and the Social Sciences," 128 pages, NIS 61



From the 1990s to the present, a group of researchers around the world has been trying to deny the existence of ancient Israel. One of the principle means in this unflagging effort, which is not devoid of ideological tendencies, is the establishing of dates of the historical writings in the Bible. The more the argument is accepted that a certain text was written in a later period, the greater the doubts about the sources that were at the disposal of the writer, and the inevitable conclusion will be that the author is unreliable.

According to this group of researchers, which makes use of its own interpretation of archaeological discoveries and ignores prolonged and complex historical-philological research, nearly the entire period of the First Temple has become a hallucination that is a figment of the imaginations of later writers.

Nadav Na'aman's text was written in response to this trend. This is a considered piece of research, which tries to present biblical historiography in the context of the huge amount of information that has accumulated in the scientific fields of history, archaeology, sociology and anthropology about the periods with which the historiography deals, as well as other periods that served as the background to its writing.

Na'aman, who is among the most critical of researchers and who judges biblical texts with a sharp eye, declares at the outset: "It is my intention to base the discussion, insofar as possible, on extra- biblical data, and in this way to try to break through the vicious circle of intra-biblical discussion." The considerations that guide him have to do, then, with the social structure, the economy, the development of urbanization, the spread of literacy, the development of religion and cult in Israel in the time of the First Temple, and the connections among these phenomena.

Na'aman stresses that not every description of the past is the writing of history. Historiography is "the writing of a comprehensive description of events of the past in a narrative way, in an attempt to find a connection among the discrete incidents and to look for their common denominator and their significance in the framework of the historical continuum." Thus, historiography reflects elements of evaluation, interpretation and judgment. In accordance with this definition, one of the important contributions of Israel to the cultures of the ancient East was the creation of this genre of writing.

According to this definition, the range of biblical historiography is from the creation of man and the appearance of Abraham through the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, but Na'aman has chosen to devote his study to a single work, known to researchers as "the Deuteronomist history" - a work comprised of the Book of Deuteronomy through the Books of Kings, meaning a work that was influenced by the world of ideas in Deuteronomy and that deals with the depiction of the history of Israel from the period in the desert, as it is expressed in Moses' farewell speech (Deuteronomy), through the conquest of the land, the settlement (Joshua and Judges), the establishment of the monarchy (the Books of Samuel), the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, and the destruction of the First Temple (the Books of Kings).

Need for documentation

A key question in any discussion of the writing of history is when does the need to document its past arise in a society. Hellenistic historiographers like Herodotus and Thucydides - and Yosef ben Matityahu (Josephus) might also be mentioned - took the trouble to declare at the beginning of their texts what the motives were for their composition. The biblical literature, however, is an anonymous literature and the reader does not know who wrote the various texts it contains or when they were written. No wonder that these questions have always been asked, and among those who answer may be found the sages in Baba Batra, Spinoza in his "Theological- Political Treatise," and representatives of critical research during the past 250 years.

Modern researchers have also understood that the writing of a historiographic text requires certain conditions, first and foremost literacy. Therefore, after the introduction, Na'aman devotes a comprehensive chapter to the subject of "The Development of Alphabetical Writing in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea." The examination of the corpus of epigraphic findings (royal inscriptions, weights and seals with inscriptions, inscriptions on pottery vessels and more), the examination of the development of illustration, and the comparison with the royal courts of the ancient East and with ancient Greece show him that up until the eighth century B.C.E., the knowledge of reading and writing in the kingdoms of Israel and Judea was quite limited. Before then, it was restricted to immediate practical needs of the governing center and was exclusively in the hands of professionals.

This conclusion helps him to plot the assumption that is common in the research that the beginning of the writing of history should be connected to the days of the united kingdom. This is because a developed historiography is dependent on a circle of writers that is the product of a developed urban culture, a culture that developed in the kingdom of Judea only in the eighth century B.C.E. As he sees it, the beginning of historiography in Israel should be linked only to the end of the seventh century B.C.E., i.e., to the period during which Josiah instituted a cultic reform, the aim of which was to concentrate the cult in Jerusalem and to purge Judea and Jerusalem of any signs of foreign cults (chapter four). As early as 1805, German scholar Wilhelm de Wette showed that Josiah's reform was only the fulfillment of the cultic demands of the Book of Deuteronomy. From another perspective, a comparison between several portions of the Book of Deuteronomy and Assyrian materials also shows a clear influence.

Therefore, one of the accepted arguments in the world of research, which has become an Archimedes fulcrum, is that the Book of Deuteronomy was written in the seventh century B.C.E. In this context it should be noted that the Book of Deuteronomy represents a unique and innovative perception with regard to the Deity (monotheistic, transcendental), his cult (concentrated in one location) and the connection between him and his people (a covenant that is tested throughout history). In Na'aman's opinion, the appearance of the new religion in the seventh century B.C.E. is what engendered new modes of expression, one of which was the biblical historiography, beginning with the Deuteronomist historiography.

Two levels

In the wake of scholars who preceded him, Na'aman too is convinced that the continuum from the Book of Joshua to the Books of Kings was shaped in the spirit of the ideas in the Book of Deuteronomy, but contrary to the prevailing opinion, Na'aman does not believe that the entire text post-dates the destruction of the First Temple, but like the researcher Frank Cross (1973), he points to two levels in the work: the main level that was written in Josiah's time in connection with the reform he instituted in Judea, and the complementary level that was written after the downfall, and which includes the historical description from the death of Josiah to the release of Jehoiachin from prison, as well as additional portions in which there is awareness of the downfall, which have the role of suiting the text to the needs of the post-exilic period. Therefore, Na'aman does not postpone the composition of the main level to the Babylonian exile, but argues that this level was written in conjunction with the reform and the ideological it brought.

Na'aman is first and foremost a historian, and therefore the question of the nature of the sources and their quality is central for him. From where did the Deuteronomist historian draw his information? Did he have archival material at his disposal? An examination of the archives that have been discovered from the ancient East show that documents were preserved for a limited time only and mostly for relevant needs. Hence, the writer of the Deuteronomist history, too, did not have at his disposal rich archival resources. Na'aman believes that the materials that served him were a variety of documents that had been collected over the generations in the Temple in Jerusalem, as these texts served priests and scribes for purposes of study and reference.

Na'aman is influenced by the model of the Babylonian priest Berossus, who in the third century B.C.E., wrote a chronicle of the antecedents of the Babylonians, and Manetho, the Egyptian priest who chronicled the history of Egypt, and argues that the writer of the Deuteronomist history was also a priest, educated and with high status at the Temple - a position that afforded him access to all the written sources that had been accumulated at the Temple library.

However, as the time between him and the period that is described became greater, the number of sources decreased and then the writer had to use all the sources at hand, including legendary stories and oral traditions; he even had to fill in gaps with the help of his creative imagination, which was no doubt influenced by the reality in which he lived. Thus, the historical reliability of the stories of the early kings of Israel (the books of Samuel) - stories that were written down centuries after they occurred - is cast in doubt, and today many researchers avoid using them for recreating the past.

With respect to later periods (the books of Kings), it must always be remembered that the didactic purpose for which the Deuteronomist history was written, was to create a new historical-religious consciousness among its readers. Na'aman is not among the extremists who argue that Saul, David and Solomon were not historical figures, but, as a historian who asks what sources were at the disposal of the writer and what his intentions were, he is convinced that the text as we have it before us today is a combination of written and oral stories to which a great legendary dimension was added and additions from the writer himself - all these were adapted and shaped in order to present a large, strong united kingdom, with the aim of convincing the inhabitants of Judea and Israel in Josiah's time that the unification promised achievements and hope.

`Scarlet thread'

Na'aman also asks how it happened that the Judean elite accepted the picture of the past that the Deuteronomist fashioned and adopted it (chapter seven). His answer: "Its success derived from the fact that he fashioned a clear and unified picture in a place where there had previously been only fragments of traditions and scattered literary collections, and this picture reflected a clear and crystallized message of belief and was formulated in clear and comprehensible language ... The continuous, broad and convincing panorama of the course of history, the high literary quality and the clear and unequivocal religious message that runs through the text like scarlet thread - all these contributed to the result that the picture of the past of the people of Israel and its historical consciousness were shaped from then on according to this composition."

At the same time, Na'aman is aware that in the Jerusalem of the end of the First Temple period, during the exile and at the beginning of the Second Temple period, there were circles among the priesthood and the establishment who evinced opposition to the concentration of the cult and to other ideas in the Book of Deuteronomy. Expressions of these circles are, for example, the Books of Genesis through Numbers (the Tetrateuch), and he does not go into the question of who was responsible for them and when the two compilations were joined together. It is important to Na'aman to note that alongside the Deuteronomist school, there were also other and different voices that sanctified cultic sites throughout the land and therefore depicted the patriarchs of the nation above all as builders of altars. From a different perspective, Na'aman has no doubt that the exile of Judea and the destruction of the Temple a short time after the reform (about 36 years) served as factors that accelerated the internalization of the messages of the Book of Deuteronomy and the history that was written under its influence, as well as the chastisements of the classical prophets.

At the conclusion of his remarks (chapter eight), Na'aman brings up the question of whether the ideological and religious messages of the Deuteronomist composition negate its status as historiography. His answer is based on the intentions of the writer and his attitude toward his sources. As this writer intended to depict a history based on early sources, and as he related to these sources with maximal seriousness, he should be seen as a historian. Chai Yerushalmi, in his book "Remember," wrote: "If, indeed, the father of history was Herodotus, the fathers of the significance that is in history were the Jews." While the Greek historical writings strove to preserve memory and arrive at the investigation of historical truth, the writers of history in Israel found it a broad field for drawing conclusions and engendering meanings with respect to the present and the future; yet both were historians.

Na'aman concludes with a hymn of praise for the Deuteronomist writer, whose work became a formative step in fashioning of historical consciousness in the people of Israel and had decisive influence on the religious and spiritual world of the nation of Israel in all succeeding generations.

No need to postpone

I find it difficult to agree with some of the ideas that are developed in the book. For example, in Na'aman's opinion, the major part of the Deuteronomist composition - that is, the books that describe the period from the conquest until Josiah's time - was written down in the wake of Josiah's reform. However, in my opinion, a composition like the Book of Judges, which is lacking a great part of the key ideas of the Book of Deuteronomy, such as the centralization of the cult or the perception of the distanced deity, was written down before the Book of Deuteronomy was accorded authoritative status. In the nature of things, its inclusion in the comprehensive composition led to changes and additions. If the spread of literacy had already begun in the eighth century B.C.E., it is reasonable to presume that already by that period, after the shock of the downfall of northern Israel, i.e., at the end of the eighth century, there were already processes of writing and no necessity of postponing everything until the seventh century.

The composition of the Book of Deuteronomy and the reform did not come out of nowhere; they are the result of ideological processes that preceded them and were also expressed in literary materials that were written in Judea during the 100 years between the downfall of Israel and Josiah's reform. Moreover, according to Na'aman, the author was a priest, and I believe that the author belonged to the class of intellectuals - perhaps a retired scribe - who were influenced by the literatures of prophesy and wisdom, that also experienced the beginnings of their formation in this period. Furthermore, an examination of the various styles and ways of writing in the whole composition can indicate a multiplicity that, in the course of editing, was adapted into a single bloc of ideas. But this is a matter for discussion elsewhere.

In any case, my intention in these remarks is to stress that Na'aman's treatise represents his research credo, and even those who do not agree with all the details cannot but welcome the entirety.

The importance of this book is two-fold: From one perspective, it is an important contribution to the debate that is going on in the research world about the dating of the Deuteronomist historiography, and as such it represents a balanced and substantiated position, and therefore it is important that it be translated into English. From another perspective, it is an important contribution to the Israeli reader, who has found a guide to the perplexed in the thicket of problems of biblical historiography.

Timely celebration

Na'aman's book is therefore timely - a celebration for the Israeli reader, who can now become familiar with the complexity of the problems with which every historian who comes to reconstruct the history of Israel during biblical times must deal. The reader learns that like a laboratory researcher, the historian must gather and classify the totality of the findings, biblical and extra-biblical, and decide which of them are unreliable, which of them can contribute to the reconstruction of the past, and which of them should be gone not more deeply and examined as if under a microscope.

The fundamentalists on either side have no difficulty: Either they accept everything that is written in the Bible or they deny it and seek ways to doubt any factor that could testify to the truths of what is related in it. Na'aman, however, takes the readers on a fascinating and illuminating journey, in which they will become acquainted with additional fields of study apart from Bible research and with the kinds of hypotheses and considerations that must be taken into account before every decision is made in this difficult and complicated field. The book is written with clarity and a desire to bring the subject closer to a broad, educated public. Therefore, it contains basic explanations and illuminating examples, and writing that is fluent and - most importantly - reasoned.

Readers of the book will benefit. Not only will they gain new information about subjects connected to the ancient period, such as the development of alphabetic writing or the fact of the existence of libraries in urban centers, which contained texts for study and reference and more. They will also learn about the place of historical consciousness in Jewish culture and the role of the Deuteronomist composition in the creation of this consciousness.

This book has been published in the Yeriot series published in memory of Yitzhak Hess by his wife, Orna Hess. This is a fine, aesthetic series, printed on good-quality paper with illustrations and drawings, and is devoted to the publication of essays in Jewish studies that represent the forefront of research. As the publishing house is a new venture, it would be worthwhile for its people and editors to reconsider the format that has been chosen. The book in its current dimensions is not convenient or comfortable for reading. In addition, I would prefer to find in a book of this sort illustrations that have a more direct connection with the materials that are discussed. And why should the binding of the book, and even its spine, carry no mention of the name of the writer and the title? In other words, even a reader who has read this review and looks for the book in a bookstore will have a hard time finding it, which is a pity.



Yairah Amit's book, "Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism of the Hebrew Bible," was published by Fortress Press in 2001.