Reading Response: April 6

Reading the introduction and first four chapters of Armstrong's Jerusalem, three themes stand out for me. But before I get to these themes, I have to do a bit of excavation and explanation, introducing another historical work I think is very germane to our discussions of ancient history in the holy land.

David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings is a compelling challenge to orthodox Egyptology & archaeology in the holy land. Rohl's central argument is that overlapping (and competing) pharaonic reigns in the Third Intermediate Period (TIP) have traditionally been seen as sequential, resulting in a timeline of Egyptian history that is artificially extended. Revising down the elongation of the TIP results in a different sequence of historical linkages between Egypt and Israel--in short, Ramses II ("Ramses the Great") is not the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and thus historians and archaeologists have been looking for biblical Israel during the wrong time period. Rohl argues that his revised dynastic timeline coincides with other historical accounts, and concludes that Solomon's rule didn't take place in the early Iron Age (ca 1000-900 BCE)--a period of impoverishment and decline--but up to 200 years earlier, during the late Bronze Age--a period of wealth and prosperity.

Rohl builds a very convincing case (though my understanding is that mainstream Egyptologists and archaeologists remain very skeptical of his radical adjustment to the pharaonic timeline), and with his new chronology, suddenly a great deal of biblical narrative finds congruence with other historical sources. The Amarna period of Egypt dovetails nicely with the unification of Israel by David.

I bring up Rohl's work--and the orthodox resistance to his conclusions--to illustrate how ingrained knowledges become, and how staunchly these knowledges are defended. The resistance to Rohl's revisionist chronology was staggering--I watched a Discovery channel series based on his research, and there were scenes of academics (their CVs with publication lists as long as my arm) dismissing Rohl's ideas out of hand, simply because he dared depart from "what everyone knew."

I'm not completely sold on Rohl, because he is one of a number of historians and archaeologists who seek to find "proof" of the Bible in archeological digs; I think he's too quick to accept elisions and logical leaps that support his theories, despite criticizing the orthodoxy for these same sorts of elisions and leaps.

But he makes a powerful argument--if only because through his revised chronology, there is a wealth of evidence that connects not only ancient Egypt, but biblical accounts with places that we can visit and apprehend with our own senses.

In Armstrong's terminology, Rohl gives us a connection to "sacred geography" that we are otherwise separated from by thousands of years. Rather than searching blind and relegating biblical stories to myth and symbolism (and not as Armstrong uses these terms, but more in the rougher vernacular), we suddenly have access to tangible proof of these stories. Rohl's work creates a powerful connection not only with the past, but with the biblical narrative that describes this past and gives it meaning.

So that's the first thing and the second thing all rolled together. First, that knowledge and power are (as Foucault argued) one in the same, and one cannot talk about one without the other. Thus, even Armstrong's very careful dissection of historical and biblical evidence about who lived where and who did what to whom (and why, and when, and where) is imbricated with power--her account can be used as justification for modern Israeli claims to territory (or as a refutation of those claims, depending on what passages one chooses to cite). There is no getting away from it--any exploration of the history of Israel/Palestine is fraught with the politics of contesting claims to modern Israel/Palestine.

The second thing is that even putting aside politics, when examining the history of the holy land and Jerusalem, we run into the concept of the sacred... and are confronted with the presence of the sacred. For believers, this can be a psychologically powerful experience. A devout Christian who visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is confronted with the very place s/he believes Jesus lay and was resurrected. Armstrong points out that this connection to deity results in a transcendent experience, and an attachment of meaning to place--in geographic terms, this is the fundamental notion of territory: land that has some (intrinsic or extrinsic) value, and can be contested. Thus, what is sacred is socially constructed through human experience; Jerusalem is valued, contested, and sacred because events transpired there that resonate with believers, creating a space where deity and humanity are closer to one another.

The third thing that occurred to me as I read the opening salvo of Jerusalem is the conditionality by which Armstrong writes, and the importance thus assigned to her account. That is, it borders on tautology to use biblical accounts as evidence for biblical history; ultimately, if one argues that the Bible--written centuries after many of the events described within--is not a historical account and at best is a collection of myths and allegories, then the historical account Armstrong is building is undermined significantly.

The ambiguity captured in Armstrong's opening chapters--who were the hapiru really? Who were the progeny of the Hurrians? Of the Jebusites?--is what I feel is the basis for why Jerusalem Project members believe Jerusalem is a balanced account. It's easy to identify "bias" when a writer makes definitive statements one way or another, when an author declares something (especially history) to be true beyond the shadow of doubt. But Armstrong is less challenging such declarations so much as declaring history to be muddy and murky.

Don't get me wrong--I think she's done a brilliant job synthesizing a lot of material thus far, and her repeated calls to social theory are very good at framing her historical narrative. But even with the level of detail (really, do we need all the monologues by Baal?) Armstrong provides, I think this history misses one of the most important points (if not the most important point) that get in the way of peaceful, productive dialogue about Jerusalem: histories are partial and contested, and everyone can roll out their experts who will provide definitive proof that their ancestors "were here first." No history, no matter how meticulous (and "balanced") can overcome willful ignorance of evidence that contradicts one's worldview. In other words, Armstong's doing a great job, but the only people who will appreciate all the peeling-back of history are those who haven't formed indelible opinions already.