The Great Eighth Century

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A century is a wholly arbitrary block of time. History surely does not proceed by 100-year chunks. And to mark the beginning and end of a historical period by the start and finish of a particular century can be justified by nothing more than our attraction for round numbers. Yet, if we don’t hold ourselves too precisely to these round numbers, a century is at least a convenient framework within which to look at the process of historical development.

Mulling over Israelite history in this kind of casual way, I was struck with the confluence of significance in what we may call, at least roughly, the eighth century B.C.E.^a This led me to pursue the matter more in depth. I ended up devoting the better part of a year to this study and finally concluded that this unlikely century was of extraordinary, if sometimes overlooked, importance. True, devotees of the eighth century cannot point to the glories of David and Solomon, a time long gone. By the eighth century, the kingdom had split—Judah in the south and Israel in the north. Both kingdoms were living in the shadow of their illustrious past and were soon to be eclipsed totally by empires to the east. All in all, it was a time unlikely to cast for itself a major shadow that would continue to engage historians 2,700 years later.

Yet history is full of surprises. Let us see.

By way of backdrop, we must recount the political history of the eighth century; even this is not without its events of significance.

Several events converged at the beginning of the eighth century to catapult Israel and Judah into prominence. In about 796 B.C.E., Adad-nirari III, king of Assyria, defeated Aram-Damascus. This had the effect of liberating Israel from Aramean oppression. Assyria too experienced a half century of decline, because the royal power had to contend with internal dissensions precipitated by lesser Assyrian officials, as well as with threats from Urartu to the north (in modem Turkey), Assyria’s greatest rival in the eighth century. All this left Israel and Judah free to expand their territories and to profit from their relationship with Phoenicia, which controlled trade in the Mediterranean world. The result was “a kind of Golden Age”¹ in Israel and Judah. In power and prosperity, it was a time reminiscent of the period of David and Solomon.

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Both Israel and Judah were led by especially able leaders—Jeroboam II in Israel (793–753 B.C.E.) and Uzziah in Judah (790–739 B.C.E.). In Israel, Jeroboam II reclaimed lost territories and extended his borders to the north and east, “from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah” (2 Kings 14:25)—that is, from central Syria to the Dead Sea. In Judah, Uzziah expanded his borders south to Elath and west to Ashdod on the Mediterranean (this at the expense of the Philistines). Their joint kingdoms now stretched as far as the geographical limits of Solomon’s realm. That Israel and Judah were at peace with each other was also to their mutual advantage. One of the fruits of peace was that together they controlled major international trade routes.

In addition to Israel’s capital Samaria, with its impressive fortifications and public buildings, other cities of the northern kingdom, such as Hazor, Megiddo and Dan, boasted of monumental architecture and thrived economically. Hazor was the largest city in Upper Galilee: “Judging by the standard of its buildings during the times of Jeroboam II,” its excavator Yigael Yadin wrote, “the city of Hazor enjoyed an era of great prosperity …. The buildings themselves are among the finest of the entire Israelite period.”² Megiddo of the Omride dynasty, with its offset inset wall,^b four-chamber gate, stable complexes and water system, reflects a confident, well-managed and powerful civil administration. Dan, in the far north, may well have reached its cultural highpoint during the reign of Jeroboam II. Although the northern kingdom of Israel outshined Judah, the southern kingdom reached the peak of its economic and military power in the reign of Uzziah. Judah’s most distinguished city was its capital, Jerusalem.

Because of their central location, Israel and Judah were exposed to political, cultural, economic and religious influences of neighboring countries, especially Phoenicia, Aram and Philistia. Both the biblical text and the archaeological remains attest to this influence.

The Phoenicians didn’t really have a state. Their city-states constituted Phoenicia, and they 024functioned independently. Like the cities of Philistia, Phoenician cities opted for local autonomy over state control. Corresponding roughly to modem Lebanon, ancient Phoenicia at its height extended along the Mediterranean coast from Arvad in the north to Acco in the south.

The Phoenicians are not among the well-known ancient peoples, and much remains to be learned about the Phoenician homeland. Maritime trade obviously played the most important role in the Phoenician economy. So skilled were the Phoenicians in maritime trade that, when the Assyrians under Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 B.C.E.) began to dominate Phoenicia, the Assyrians allowed the Phoenicians to continue to conduct their own trade. The Phoenicians also excelled in art and architecture, as their pottery, ivory and masonry attest.

The close alliance between Phoenicia and Israel in the tenth century, during the reigns of David and Solomon, is well documented in 1 Kings. The Phoenician influence on the architecture of the Jerusalem Temple is only one manifestation of this relationship. In the ninth century, Ahab solidified the relationship between Israel and Phoenicia by marrying Jezebel, the daughter of the king of Tyre. When Jehu later became the king of Israel and purged it of Jezebel’s descendants, the relationship between Phoenicia and Israel cooled but was certainly not extinguished. Material remains from Israel witness the strong influence that Phoenicia continued to exert in the eighth century and especially in the time of Jeroboam II, when commerce between the two states was vigorous.

In the first half of the eighth century, the city-states constituting Aram were perennial political rivals of Israel. In the ninth and eighth centuries, Damascus was the most important of the Aramean kingdoms. During the ninth century, Aram sometimes controlled Israel; at other times Israel was independent. After Jeroboam II subdued Aram, however, its importance declined.

The extent of Aram’s influence on Israel is, unfortunately, not well documented. Archaeologists have done practically no excavating in Damascus itself, despite its antiquity and strategic location on major trade routes.

The Philistine city-states were of course among the chief rivals of Israel and Judah. Intermittent warfare characterized their relationship from the 12th century on and especially in the eighth century, when both Uzziah and later Hezekiah of Judah conducted successful campaigns against the Philistines. The Philistine pentapolis, five independent principalities (Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath and Gaza), enjoyed strategic advantages; in addition to being situated close to the overland trade routes, they had ports for maritime trade. After the Assyrian domination of the entire area in the last third of the eighth century, the Philistines, like the Phoenicians, were permitted to remain semi-independent.

Archaeologists have taught us a great deal about the Philistines. Two of the cities of the Philistine 025pentapolis are currently under excavation—Harvard’s Lawrence Stager is digging at Ashkelon, and Seymour Gitin of Jerusalem’s Albright Institute and Trude Dothan of Hebrew University are co-directors of the excavation at Tel Miqne, commonly believed to be Philistine Ekron. Of the other major Philistine cities, Ashdod was partially excavated by Moshe Dothan. Many other sites, however, reflect Philistine culture and help us reconstruct the history of its people. The Philistines were not the uncultured people suggested by the modern usage of their name.

The second half of the eighth century saw the rise of what scholars call the Neo-Assyrian empire, to distinguish it from an earlier Assyrian empire in the third millennium B.C.E. The classic phase of the Neo-Assyrian empire began when Tiglathpileser III usurped the throne in 745 B.C.E. His empire ultimately incorporated almost the entire Near East. While commercial and trading interests were the motive for the formation of the Neo-Assyrian empire, a highly developed administrative system was in large measure responsible for the success of Assyrian imperialism.

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Conquered lands became either vassal states or provinces. Vassal states continued to enjoy their own autonomous rule. Provinces, however, were administered directly by Assyrian officials. Economically and politically the vassal states were far better off than the provinces. So long as a vassal state fulfilled its economic obligations in the form of tribute and did not plot against the imperial power, it would continue to enjoy autonomy. If It did not meet its obligations or proved politically recalcitrant, it would be converted from a vassal state to a province, and this often meant the destruction of its urban centers and the deportation of its population.³

The Assyrians did not apply the same standards to all conquered people, however. The Phoenician monopoly on maritime trade, for example, made them special in the eyes of the Assyrians. The Assyrians needed imports of natural resources they lacked—metals, stone and timber. Even when Tyre failed to meet its obligations toward the imperial power, it did not lose its status as a vassal state. Likewise, revolt did not cause the Philistines to lose their vassal status. Maritime activity and trade account for the fact that Phoenicia and Philistia were permitted to remain as vassal states, instead of being turned into provinces.

Israel, however, was different Israel’s territory (including Israel and Judah) had a special attraction for imperial powers because the principal trade routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and connecting with the Mediterranean seaports, passed through Israel and Judah. The 027northern kingdom of Israel revolted repeatedly against Tiglath-pileser III, against his successor Shalmaneser V and finally against Sargon II. Consequently, Sargon converted Israel into a province of Assyria in 721 B.C.E. Its cities were destroyed and its people deported. Judah, on the other hand, retained its status as a vassal state because it remained loyal to Assyria throughout these rebellions.

Israel lost its political and cultural identity when it became a province; Judah, by retaining its vassal status, kept its identity and was never annexed to the Assyrian empire. As Czechoslovakian scholar J. PecûirŒkovaŒ has pointed out, this “is one of the reasons why, even after the [Babylonian] Exile [in the sixth century], it was Judah that remained the centre of Judaism and the vehicle of the concept of Jewish statehood.”⁴

Assyrian imports are far less evident in vassal states than in provinces. This indicates that vassal states were permitted to retain their own cultural identity. Vassal states, in contrast to provinces, were allowed to keep their own religious identity. In a study of the political-religious relationship between the Neo-Assyrian empire and the Israelite states, Mordechai Cogan concludes that no cultic obligations were imposed upon vassal states;⁵ in contrast, the cult of Ashur and of the great Assyrian gods appears to have been incumbent upon formally annexed provinces because their residents were considered Assyrian citizens.⁶

During Judah’s continued autonomous existence, in the late eighth century, it was led by another great ruler, Hezekiah. like his predecessors in Judah and in Israel, Hezekiah developed trade routes as well as the economy. But Hezekiah is best remembered for his major cultic reform, which was religiously, not politically, motivated.⁷ In his effort to purify Israelite worship, Hezekiah suppressed local shrines and destroyed sacred pillars, pagan altars and other cult objects, which were essentially Canaanite in origin (2 Kings 18:4). He also centralized sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple, purifying its cult from foreign practice (2 Kings 18:22). By borrowing idolatrous forms of worship from neighboring peoples and then attempting to reconcile these diverse practices with their own religion, the Israelites had been guilty of syncretism, which was clearly contrary to the religion of Israel.

Hezekiah appears also to have been a great builder. Hebrew University’s Nahman Avigad recently uncovered a 125-foot section of a stone wall on the western hill, or Upper City, of Jerusalem. This city wall, over 23 feet wide, was probably constructed by Hezekiah; if so, it may be the new wall “outside” the city that 2 Chronicles 32:5 attributes to Hezekiah. It served to protect the western perimeter of Jerusalem against Assyrian attack. After the fall of the northern kingdom, large numbers of refugees from Israel, seeking a place to live in Judah, no doubt swelled Jerusalem’s population. The new wall enclosed the expanded city.

In addition, in order to protect Jerusalem’s water supply in case of Assyrian attack, Hezekiah dug a 1,750-foot tunnel that modern scholars call Hezekiah’s Tunnel. It goes under the lower city of Jerusalem so that the waters of the Gihon Spring are carried inside the walls of the city.

Politically astute, Hezekiah played a prominent role in forming, from 705 B.C.E. onward, an anti-Assyrian alliance that included Philistia, Egypt, Tyre and Judah.

In retaliation, the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib attacked Judah at the very end of the eighth century. In 701 B.C.E., Jerusalem was besieged. Although Jerusalem somehow withstood the siege, Judah would never be the same again. Thus the eighth century was brought to a close.

Materially the eighth century was a rich one. We have already referred to the large urban centers of this period. These cities were laid out with well-planned streets and buildings. Much of the architecture was monumental—large public 028buildings constructed of ashlars (hewn masonry). Fine ashlar masonry was combined with proto-Aeolic capitals in the construction of the royal cities. These capitals, decorated with volutes derived from the stylized palm-tree motif, have been uncovered in the royal cities of Jerusalem, Samaria, Hazor and Megiddo. The best surviving example of this fine ashlar masonry is the inner wall of Samaria.

The city walls were also impressive. Large cities in this period, which archaeologists call Iron II (c. 1000 to 586 B.C.E.) were fortified with offset-inset walls and casemate walls,^c as well as with multichambered gate systems.

In addition, this was the period of imaginative 029engineering feats like Hezekiah’s Tunnel. A number of other water systems involving tunnels and shafts were built at about this time.^d

Despite the importance of cities, however, Israel was an advanced agrarian society in the eighth century; agriculture was the primary means of subsistence.⁸ Agricultural surplus was used in payment for imported goods as well as for government support.

International commerce, however, was also an important source of income for Israel and Judah. Phoenicia provided Israel with luxury items such as ivory; Israel in turn traded grain, olive oil and wine with Phoenicia. Israel also supplied Egypt with olive oil and wine. At many sites in southwestern Palestine, archaeologists have uncovered olive-oil presses. At Tel Miqne/Ekron, more than a hundred such installations have been found. Ekron appears to have been a major center for the production of olive oil in Iron Age Israel. Obviously these presses produced far more olive oil than was needed by the local inhabitants. Olive oil was no doubt a major export, accounting for much of the prosperity of southwestern Palestine in the late Iron Age.

Life, especially in the royal urban centers, was luxurious. For example, look at the distinctive pottery known as Samaria ware. This fine egg-shell-thin pottery with polished red slip was produced in Phoenicia and imported into Israel, where it grated the table at palace banquets in Israel’s capital, Samaria. Samaria ware continued to be produced in Phoenicia even after Israel fell to the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E. and thereafter became an Assyrian province. Samaria ware has been found in late eighth- to seventh-century contexts as an import in Ashkelon, in Judah.

Another sign of the luxury of the age was the use of decorative ivory. Ivory fragments found at Samaria were used as inlays and insets on furniture, boxes and walls. Most ivories were imported from Phoenicia, but some were carved locally. Many of the Samaria ivories—over 500 030eighth-century fragments were found—contain Egyptian motifs, which is characteristic of Phoenician style. Pairs of crouching lions carved in the round were also common, and reflect the luxury that so disturbed the eighth-century prophets such as Amos.

This brings us to one of the extraordinary phenomena of the eighth century: the so-called writing prophets. Into the midst of this internationalism and prosperity that characterized the eighth century came the classical prophets. Against the luxury and religious syncretism—at which Hezekiah’s religious reforms were aimed—stood the orthodox Yahwism of the writing prophets, who spoke—and wrote—in a new language. Paradoxically, the word of the prophet flourished in the midst of leisure and prosperity.

Earlier prophets were primarily “court” prophets; beginning in the eighth century, the classical prophets were principally “popular” prophets. Originally the prophets addressed their messages exclusively to the ruling houses of Israel and Judah; beginning with the eighth century, the prophets spoke to the whole people of Israel.

John Holladay has pointed out striking parallels between the role of the eighth-century prophets and the Assyrian royal messengers, who addressed the subject people as well as the king. According to the policy of Assyria, the entire community 031bore responsibility for its actions. In the case of rebellion, not only the king but all his subjects were punished by slaughter, deportation or national exile.

But this hardly explains why, suddenly in the eighth century, this kind of prophetism appeared in Israel and Judah for the first time. As Holladay himself has observed, “The explosive emergence of the so-called ‘writing prophets’ in the history of Israel is one of the great historical mysteries of Old Testament scholarship.”⁹

This new kind of prophetism was unique in several ways. Not only did it speak to the people as well as to their leaders, it delivered a primarily social message in theological terms. In the words of Yehezkel Kaufman, it reached a “new level of thought.”¹⁰ And it did so in sublime language:

Amos’s uncompromising attack on the social immorality of his day is without parallel: “They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes—they that trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside 033the way of the afflicted” (Amos 2:6–7).

Hosea’s portrayal of God’s unmerited love and mercy is found nowhere else: “How could I give you up, O Ephraim, or deliver you up, O Israel? How could I treat you as Admah, or make you like Zeboiim? My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred” (Hosea 11:8).

Isaiah’s ideal of peace is unmatched: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not take up sword against nation; nor shall they train for war again” (Isaiah 2:4).

Micah’s epitome of the prophetic message is one of the noblest statements in Scripture: “You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

As passages like these reflect, we have not only a new kind of prophetism delivered to a different audience and grounded in a new theology characterized by social concerns, but we have also reached a new level of literature. These passages are but brief examples of some of the most extraordinary poetry ever written. Combining a new level of theology with a new level of literary expression, “the classical prophets,” again in the words of Yehezkel Kaufman, “were important for what they said more than for what they did.”¹¹

These classical eighth-century prophets also mid mark another crucial innovation: Their message was written; that’s why it was preserved. The prophets themselves, or their scribes, actually wrote their oracles. Here we are witness to the progression from oral to written compositions.

This is evidence of another eighth-century revolution: the spread of writing and literacy.

The alphabet had been invented nearly 1,000 years earlier by some Semites in the land of Canaan. Scholars are in disagreement, however, as to how rapidly literacy and writing spread. Clearly by the 12th century B.C.E., writing was in use in ancient Israel. Frank Cross has argued that literacy spread rapidly after the alphabet was standardized at about this time.¹² Alan Millard and a host of other scholars contend that literacy was widespread in Israel, especially during the late period of the monarchy.¹³ Menahem Haran, on the other hand, questions these conclusions.¹⁴

What cannot be questioned, however, is that writing beginning in the eighth century seems to have spread to a new level and, concomitantly with it, literacy. As Joseph Naveh has observed, “The quantity of the epigraphic material from the 8th century and onwards shows a gradual Increase of the distribution of the knowledge of writing among the people of Israel and Judah.”¹⁵ A great majority of the texts that archaeologists have recovered are from the late eighth to the sixth centuries B.C.E.

Perhaps the most significant evidence of the increase in writing are the seals and seal impressions. Seals were used primarily to place an identifying mark on documents. Many of the seal impressions are on lumps of clay called bullae that were actually attached to the documents on which they served as seals. Few Hebrew seals can be dated before the eighth century; hundreds of them, however, begin to appear in the late eighth century, and especially in the seventh and early sixth centuries. Seal impressions have also been found on thousands of jar handles bearing the inscription lmlk (le-melech, belonging to the king). They date from the reign of Hezekiah, in the late eighth century, and continued in use until the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.

Other evidence of writing also appears in the eighth century. One of the most tantalizing is the Baalam inscription found at Tell Deir ‘Alla^e in the Jordan Valley, on the east side of the river. Fragments of wall plaster inscribed in a Northwest Semitic dialect refer to “Balaam, son of Beor, seer of the gods”—undoubtedly the same Balaam who had the talking ass, as described in Numbers 22–24. This mural inscription dates from the mid eighth century.¹⁶ It was apparently an extensive inscription placed on the wall in frames, like pages. Perhaps the room where it was found was a classroom for prophets. Unfortunately, much of the poorly preserved text is very difficult to read.

At a remote wayside shrine called Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, in northeastern Sinai, Ze’ev Meshel recently uncovered the oldest known Hebrew dedicatory inscriptions, dating from about 800 B.C.E. They reflect the eighth-century practices of popular religion, which the prophets condemned.¹⁷ References to “asherah” in some of the inscriptions led to the suggestion that this signified the goddess Asherah, a consort of Yahweh; but, scholars today generally believe that “asherah” refers to a sacred tree or grove.^f

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The most famous monumental inscription from ancient Israel is the Siloam Inscription, carved in the late eighth century in the wall of Hezekiah’s Tunnel to mark the meeting between two sets of tunnelers who were digging from opposite directions.

Finally, there are the unimpressive looking, but highly important, Samaria ostraca.^g Most scholars date the Samaria ostraca to the time of Jeroboam II (793–753 B.C.E.). Precisely what they are is still a matter of scholarly debate. But whether they were invoices labels, receipts for wine or oil shipments or had another function, they dramatically illustrate the use of writing for mundane purposes. It is this above all that indicates how widespread literacy was.

Although scholars may differ as to which century was the greatest the eighth century B.C.E. surely looms as a contender. That century—which saw sweeping religious reform, great feats of engineering, thriving industries and arts, the rapid spread of literacy, and the rise of a new style of prophetic utterance—was a time of special significance both to biblical history and to the cultural development of the ancient Near East.

22 A century is a wholly arbitrary block of time. History surely does not proceed by 100-year chunks. And to mark the beginning and end of a historical period by the start and finish of a particular century can be justified by nothing more than our attraction for round numbers. Yet, if we don’t hold ourselves too precisely to these round numbers, a century is at least a convenient framework within which to look at the process of historical development. Mulling over Israelite history in this kind of casual way, I was struck with the confluence of significance in […]