Learning More About Israel? Or Israel?

038

It is impossible to summarize Israel Finkelstein’s latest book, The Forgotten Kingdom, in a brief review because its numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions make it too unwieldy. Specialists will know these flaws, since all of Finkelstein’s pivotal views have been published elsewhere. Here I can only alert unwary BAR readers that this book is not really about sound historical scholarship: It is all about theater. Finkelstein is a magician, conjuring a “lost kingdom” by sleight-of-hand, intending to convince readers that the illusion is real and expecting that they will go away marveling at how clever the magician is. Finkelstein was once an innovative scholar, pioneering new methods; now he has become a showman. A tragic waste of talent, energy and charm—and a detriment to our discipline.

This book is such a good read, so drama-filled, so clever that it took me—a specialist—a bit of time to see through it. For example, Finkelstein reconstructs an early Israelite “sanctuary” at Shiloh (where he excavated) to give it the necessary prominence in Israel’s formative period (pp. 23–27; 49, 50). He makes three arguments: (1) Although he now admits that he found no archaeological evidence (as he claimed in his original excavation report on Shiloh), the Bible’s “cultural memory” nevertheless requires that there must have been such a cult-place there. (2) In Iron I (1200–1000 B.C.E.—Israel’s formative period) there “was not a single house” at Shiloh, only public buildings. (3) Shiloh was later destroyed, just as implied in the Hebrew Bible.

What are the facts?

(1) All of Finkelstein’s evidence of a “cult-place” at Shiloh is circumstantial; he himself admits this.

(2) He interprets the well-known Iron I pillar-courtyard House A at Shiloh that was originally excavated by a Danish expedition and later reinvestigated by himself as a public building only because it contains “too many” storejars (as many as 20). Yet his own Iron I house excavated at Megiddo (o/K/10)—published explicitly as an “ordinary private house”—contained more than 40 large storejars. And he can presume the absence of other private houses at Shiloh only because few other areas have been excavated, and where they have been excavated other houses are known.

(3) As for reliance on the Hebrew Bible’s “cultural memory” (the latest fad in Biblical studies), Finkelstein has famously rejected this “cultural memory” as unreliable. And he has castigated other archaeologists for invoking it! Yet here (and elsewhere) he does not hesitate to appeal to Biblical tradition when it suits his purposes. As for evidence of Shiloh’s destruction c. 1050 B.C.E. at the hands of the Philistines, Finkelstein cites not archaeological evidence, but only Jeremiah 7:12–14; 26:6–9, which he admits refers rather to Shiloh’s destruction by the Assyrians in the late eighth century B.C.E. (impossible even then, since the site was deserted). He himself is driven to fall back on the Bible’s “cultural memory.”

In sum, Finkelstein’s “early cult center at Shiloh” is a fantasy, a product of his imagination.

Fundamental to Finkelstein’s entire reconstruction of the history of the northern kingdom of Israel is a “Saulide polity,” from its center at Gibeon all the way up to the Jezreel Valley (pp. 37–43, 52–61).

Again, what are the facts? (1) The stratigraphy and chronology of James Pritchard’s excavations at Gibeon (Tell el-Jib) are notoriously flawed, so much so that the scant evidence for the Iron I period cannot be dated within a margin of less than a century; it cannot be used for any historical reconstruction (there are not even any stratum numbers in the excavation reports). (2) Finkelstein’s only evidence for an administrative center at Gibeon is the supposed plan of a casemate wall (Fig. 11:2, drawn up by a student). Yet even a casual glance reveals nothing but a short stretch of a broken single wall abutted by two ephemeral wall fragments. (3) With regard to the claim that Saul ruled from a sort of capital at Gibeon, the only Biblical references are to his having visited there once, and being remembered in David’s day as having slaughtered its inhabitants, who were not even Israelites (cf. 2 Samuel 21:1ff.).¹

Finkelstein has simply invented out of whole cloth a “Saulide polity at Gibeon.”

The real point of this book is to argue that the Biblical “United Monarchy” of David and Solomon in the tenth century B.C.E. is a later fiction, concocted by the southern, Judahite-biased Biblical writers. The real “Israelite state,” according to Finkelstein, is the northern kingdom of Israel, and even this arose only in the ninth century B.C.E., that is, in the days of the Omrides (as Finkelstein has claimed for some 20 years).

Just look at what Finkelstein’s “Saulide polity” would actually imply, using his own assumptions and assertions: (1) Saul was a Judahite, a southerner of the tribe of Benjamin. (2) Gibeon was a southern site, only 6 miles from Jerusalem. (3) Saul is rightly regarded as a historical figure, a king, dated correctly to the early tenth century B.C.E. at latest. (4) Saul’s effective 039rule extended through Samaria (!) up to the Jezreel Valley in the north. Thus there was a tenth-century kingdom that embraced both Judah and Samaria, ruled from a Judahite capital. In other words, Finkelstein’s “Saulide polity” is in fact much the same as the Bible’s “United Monarchy”—established even before the time of David and Solomon. The irony is that this time Finkelstein has been so clever that he has outwitted himself. With his imagined “Saulide polity,” his oft-repeated claim that the northern kingdom of Israel is a late development, independent from Judah, unrecognized until he discovered it, falls apart. So does this book.

The other pillar on which Finkelstein’s rediscovered northern kingdom rests is his vaunted “low chronology,” in which he down-dates the previously accepted dates for the origins of Israel by as much as a hundred years. Yet this, too, is regarded by most mainstream archaeologists as without substantial foundations. First suggested some 20 years ago, Finkelstein has tirelessly championed his “low chronology” ever since. Here he presents it without so much as a single reference to its numerous critiques, some of them devastating (as Kletter 2004; Ben Tor and Ben Ami 1998; Dever 1997; Mazar 2007; Stager 2003; and others).² In numerous publications over 20 years, Finkelstein has relentlessly reworked the stratigraphy and chronology of site after site, not only in Israel and the West Bank, but even in Jordan, in order to defend his “low chronology.”

In fact, there has never been any unequivocal empirical evidence in support of the “low chronology.” Only some carbon-14 dates offer any evidence at all, and many other dates support the conventional chronology (as at Tel Rehov, which Finkelstein never cites here). At best, the low chronology is a possibility for a 40-year, not a 100-year, adjustment. Even this is not probable, and it is certainly not proven.

Yet on this flimsy foundation Finkelstein rests his entire elaborate reconstruction, with far-reaching implications for southern Levantine and Israelite history. Set that scheme aside, and Finkelstein’s claim to have discovered a “lost kingdom” disappears in smoke—a book without any rationale.

What’s going on here? It took me a while to figure it out. What Finkelstein is doing is gradually distancing himself from the extremes of his low chronology—without ever admitting he is doing so—and counting on the likelihood that readers will not check his “facts.” Even he now realizes that a Judahite state did exist in the tenth century B.C.E. and that it could have extended its rule to the north. He cannot bring himself to admit that David and Solomon were real tenth-century kings since he is on record as denying the existence of any Judahite state before the eighth century B.C.E. (or lately, the ninth century). So he does an end run around the impasse by distracting attention to their predecessor Saul as king!

Ever since the discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa a decade ago, where Judahite state-formation is clear by the early tenth century^a (and Finkelstein accepts this early date), his “low chronology” has been progressively undermined. It should be abandoned.³

In this book Finkelstein has not “discovered a lost kingdom”; he has invented it. The careful reader will nevertheless gain some insights into Israel—Israel Finkelstein, that is.

Forgotten Kingdom