Digging Up the Bible 2: On the Reliability (or Otherwise) of Tanakh

This is the second post on the biblical archaeology class given at the London School of Jewish Studies by Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz.

The next two classes formed the most interesting section, as we examined the archaeological evidence for several biblical narratives. Of the twenty foreign rulers and one general found in Melakhim/Kings, Divrei HaYamim/Chronicles and Yishaya/Isaiah, references to all bar two or three have been found in non-Israelite records, indicating that these narratives are grounded in historical truth. Likewise, nine out of fourteen kings of Israel and eight out of fifteen kings of Judah are known from external evidence and some who are not found in non-Israelite sources are known from local evidence such as bullae, the clay impressions of a seal left on a sealed object. Moreover, there are no instances where the chronological sequence of rulers in Tanakh is disputed by external evidence.

For example, the Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, refers to “Bit Khumri”, a Moabite rendering of Beit Omri, the House of Omri, king of Israel, and seems to corroborate the account of a rebellion by the Moabite client state against the northern kingdom as recorded in II Melakhim 3. We also have ration tablets belonging to King Yehoiachin during his captivity in Babylon, allotting him a certain amount of oil and other goods. The installation of Zedekiah as puppet king of Judah is also mentioned in Babylonian sources, although he is not named. We also have Assyrian accounts of the exile of the northern kingdom (and reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace showing this) and Sennacherib’s failed siege of Jerusalem, although the Assyrian account of the later fails to mention that the siege was a failure, simply not saying that Jerusalem was captured (and certainly not mentioning the miraculous destruction of the army as described in Tanakh!).

While the historicity of the accounts of the later books of Tanakh has been confirmed, the earlier books are more problematic. In particular, there is no direct evidence that the exodus from Egypt ever happened. However, this is not to say that it did not happen. We lack Egyptian administrative records, especially from the wet Nile Delta (it is estimated that 99% are lost – again, I do not know how this estimate was produced). No Egyptian royal inscriptions or monumental art record defeats and it is unlikely that a massive slave revolt and the drowning of a big army would be recorded. The fleeing slaves would also be unlikely to leave many traces, probably not taking much with them. Organic waste does not last long in the desert and nomads (such as the modern Bedouin) leave little trace of where they have been.

Furthermore, there is some circumstantial evidence that the Torah’s account was at least written by someone who knew what he was talking about. We know that Semites did go to Egypt in times of famine, because Egypt was not dependent on rain water, instead having the overflow of the Nile. This supports the account of the descent of the Israelites to Egypt in Bereshit/Genesis. We also know that some Semites ended up as slaves in Egypt. The biblical account has two tiers of slave masters over the Israelites: Israelite foremen and Egyptian taskmasters. Again, we know that this two-tier hierarchy really did exist. Even Moshe’s/Moses’s request that the Israelites be given time off work for a religious festival becomes less strange when we learn that Egyptian skilled workers were allowed such time off, although we have no evidence that this was extended to slaves. The Torah also refers to two cities built by the Israelites, Pitom and Ramesses, and these are known to have existed.

At this point, Lindsey criticised certain kiruv groups who point to the Ipuwer papyrus as proof of the exodus. This is a list of calamites: the Nile turns to blood, there is darkness, cattle stray, the sons of princes die and slaves wear gold and silver. There are just two problems with this. First, this is only a fraction of the document and the rest is not at all related to the biblical account of the exodus. Second, it seems to date from around 1850 BCE, which is much too early for the exodus, which took place between 1450 or 1440 BCE (the earliest, traditional date) and 1209 BCE, the date of the Merneptah Stele, which refers to Israel as a nation in its land (a later date is supported by several pieces of evidence: Pitom and Ramesses did not exist before the 13th century BCE, the Moabites and Edomites only settled their lands in the 13th century and there is a 13th century destruction layer in three Canaanite towns taken by Yehoshua/Joshua).

Digging Up the Bible 1: Archaeology and Tanakh

I have recently been attending a class on biblical archaeology at the London School of Jewish Studies given by Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz. Over the next few posts, I am going to mention a few highlights of the course.

The first week was an introduction to archaeology, saying what archaeology can (and can not) teach us, what constitutes archaeological evidence, how things are dated and explaining basic techniques such as carbon dating and stratigraphy. Lindsey gave a word of warning about the use of archaeology and Tanakh in tandem. It can lead to bad archaeology and a bad use of Tanakh. Archaeology can not always find evidence, but this does not necessarily mean that things recorded in Tanakh did not happen – some evidence does not keep well (it is estimated only 5% of artefacts from the past survive and not all of those are found (I was not quite sure how this estimate was produced!)) or is simply not found. Also, Tanakh is a theological text, not a historical one and it may introduce deliberate inaccuracy to further its religious message. Interpretation is always shaped by the prejudices of archaeologists, whether they are believers or sceptics. However, archaeology can tell us a lot about the society in which Tanakh was written, which can further our understanding of the text.

The second class was a history of archaeology in the Middle East. There were some interesting anecdotes, but it is all a bit long and specialised to repeat here. One thing that was interesting was how much archaeology was served by military demands concerning the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The British knew that the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and wanted to make sure that they ended up in control of the region to safeguard the Suez Canal and the route to India. Because they thought they would be fighting in the area, they helped with an extensive archaeological survey in what is now Israel, knowing that the result would be detailed maps, important for the army. One of the soldiers involved was T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who got his first experience of desert life.

The Prophets

I was initially slightly wary of reading The Prophets. I am used to reading Orthodox sources and Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Conservative rabbi. However, he was on the more Orthodox end of the Conservative spectrum and the only non-Orthodox opinion I found in the book was his acceptance of the biblical critics' division of Isaiah into Isaiah and Second Isaiah. Incidentally, as Heschel uses only the prophets' English names, for this review I will abandon my usual habit of including the Hebrew and English names, to avoid confusion.

The book itself is divided into two parts (originally published separately, I believe), both confusingly titled The Prophets. The first section serves as an excellent introduction to the topic. As well as explaining the prophets' views of history, chastisement and justice, Heschel looks at several of the prophets in more detail, examining their message and in some cases the historical background to their works, as well as focusing on specific features of their prophecies, such as Hoshea's marriage to an unfaithful woman. This part of the book was extremely helpful and I plan on returning to it whenever I study one of the prophets examined. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Heschel tends to focus on those prophets who have left a lot of writings, giving us a greater insight into their worldview, although against this trend he examines Habakkuk (three chapters long) while ignoring Ezekiel (48 chapters).

The second section is more complex. First, Heschel lays out his theory of what he calls the divine pathos. By this he means that while we are unable to understand God in the abstract, the prophets give us an idea of God's emotions, inasmuch as they concern mankind. Heschel argues that far from this being an anthropomorphism, our own emotions are theomorphic, meaning they emulate the divine emotions. It is useful to read the appendix, which elaborates on the meaning of 'pathos' in this context, before reading this section. Heschel also defends the idea of divine anger, often dismissed as showing the primitive nature of Jewish theology, arguing that it is a necessary corollary from divine compassion: a God who cares about human life necessarily becomes angry when humans persecute and oppress one another.

In this section, Heschel also engages in much comparative theology. He compares the prophets with ecstatics in many cultures. He examines whether prophecy can be considered as psychosis and looks at the way madness has been viewed in different religions. He contrasts prophetic inspiration with that of the poet. He asks whether any other cultures in the world have anything comparable to the prophets of Israel. These questions are answered at great length and in much detail. If there is a flaw, it is that they are arguably too detailed for a book intended for laymen (I believe the book started as Heschel's doctoral thesis). Yet there is still much to reward the perseverring reader who is interested in the phenomenon of prophecy.

Napoleon

Perhaps the most interesting thing I have found so far at the library is a copy of a decree issued by Napoleon. My French is not that great, but it seemed to be summoning Jews to answer the question of why so many Jews were involved in usury and what could be done to encourage more productive occupations.

I am not sure what relation this had to the summoning of Napoleon's Sanhedrin, which answered rather more questions, although it did deal with the usury question. Perhaps they were originally only to deal with that and then more questions were asked.

At any rate, I was excited to have a piece of history in my hands. I read history at university, so I am no stranger to reading original documents, but I usually saw them reprinted in later editions or collections.

Milk and Honey Without God: Some Thoughts on Datan and Aviram

[This first appeared on my Livejournal on 13/6/2007]

Shlach Lecha centres on the sin of the spies. Many commentators identify a lack of self-esteem as the root-cause of the sin that delayed entry to the Promised Land for a generation. In the desert, the Jews had spirituality on tap, as it were. They were fed miraculously by manna, they had water from a miraculous well, their clothes didn’t wear out and God’s presence was indicated by the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. In such a situation it is not hard to be religious. God is, after all, clearly visible all around.

However, on entering into the land of Israel, they would return to ordinary life. God’s presence would once again be hidden, and it would be their role to use the physical world to find Him. They would have to live an ethical life, because that is the only way to find God, the Source of morality. They would have to take responsibility for their actions. The generation of the exodus, who had grown up in slavery, had no confidence in their ability to do this. As a result, they had to live out their lives in the wilderness.

During Korach’s rebellion, Datan and Aviram, two of the ringleaders of the rebellion, referred to Egypt as “a land flowing with milk and honey” (16.13). Egypt, where they had been enslaved and nearly wiped out! There is a tradition that they had become wealthy leaders there, and that’s not completely impossible to imagine. After all, in slave societies occasionally a slave can gain the favour of his master and be rewarded, even freed. However, such traditions need not be accepted literally, and at any rate the pshat (literal) meaning of the text does not give us such information. From the text alone, I would suggest their nostalgia for Egypt is not despite, but because of the slavery. The passage of Korach’s rebellion comes shortly after the sin of the spies because at least some of the rebels had the same motives as before.

For a slave, there is no link between cause and effect. Everything is according to the whims of the master. Rules, punishments and rewards are arbitrary. The slave has no responsibility, he just does as he’s told. This is the type of religion that Datan and Aviram wanted. They complained of not being given the promised “land flowing with milk and honey… an inheritance of field and vineyard”. Their view of religion was as slavery to a different, more powerful master. They expected victory and material prosperity. Suddenly they were being told that religion is really about ethical responsibility and building a just society – and they didn’t want anything to do with it. They’d rather give up the responsibility even if it cost them the material blessings.

Perhaps Korach seemed like the solution to this because, according to the Midrash, he mocked the laws of tzitzit and mezuzah, laws which are about bringing spirituality into the mundane through vision and cognition, seeing the spiritual meaning within a simple physical object. This may have indicated he too wanted to avoid the ethical responsibility that is needed to live a moral life. I think Korach’s personal motives were complicated, and that may not have been what he actually thought, but Datan and Aviram may have thought he did based on what he said.

Shlach Lecha: Confidence and Humility

[This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on my Livejournal on 28/6/2006]

The obvious question to ask about this sedra is why ten of the spies Moshe sent to Israel did not seem to think that they would be able to conquer the land and why most of the nation agreed with them. These people had seen the miracles of the exodus from Egypt, so why didn't they think God would help them conquer the land? One explanation I have heard from several rabbis is that the spies misunderstood the point of Judaism. In the desert, the Israelites had an intimate relationship with God. God provided all their physical needs (manna for food, clothes that miraculously did not wear out), leaving them free to spend all of their time studying Torah and gaining an understanding of God, a process heightened by the miraculous nature of their lives. However, on entering Israel, they would have work the land, grow their own crops, make their own clothes, in short have an ordinary physical existence and yet at the same time bring God into that existence by following the mitzvot. They saw staying in the desert as preferable to this, misunderstanding that the desert existence was not an ideal, but only a temporary measure to allow them time to prepare to enter the land. It is bringing a spiritual dimension into physical life that is the Jewish ideal.

It occured to me that maybe there is something else going on here too. Maybe, regardless of whether they thought it was the ideal or not, the Israelites simply didn't think they would be able to live a physical life and bring spirituality into it. Some evidence that lack of confidence may have been a part of the problem can be found in Bamidbar/Numbers 13:33, where the ten spies, describing the Canaanites say "and we were in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes." I have seen it noted that they describe how they saw themselves first ("in our eyes") and assumed that the Canaanites saw them the same way, stemming from a lack of confidence. Perhaps this lack of confidence did not just concern the conquest of the land, but ordinary existence in it afterwards.

Incidentally, the commentary in the Artscroll chumash states, based on the Maharal, the Chiddushei HaRim and the Be'er Moshe, that the sin of the spies was based on a misinterpretation of what the conquest of the land involved. They assumed that they had to conquer the land without overt Divine aid and did not think that they were strong enough to do so. Their mistake, according to this interpretation, was that they did not believe that God could help them to succeed above such practical, physical considerations. I think this interpretation can be seen as complementary, rather than contradictory. Conquering the land, with overt Divine aid or otherwise, can be seen as another physical activity they had to make spiritual (by following the halachot for waging war).

This attitude contrasts with that of Moshe in the parsha immediately before Shlach Lecha, Beha'alotacha. We are told (Bamidbar 12:3) "And the man Moshe was very humble, more than any person on the face of the Earth." However, his attitude to a challenge is fundamentally different to that of the spies, showing that humility (a lack of pride in one's abilities and achievements) is not the same as a lack of self-confidence (believing that one has no abilities and can not achieve anything). In Bamidbar 11:14, he had told God 'I am not able to bear this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.' The difference between Moshe and the spies, I think, is two-fold. One, the spies assumed that they would not be able to conquer the land, but Moshe tried to lead the Israelites before saying he could not (actually, he did appear to resist being given the task of leading them in Shmot/Exodus 3-4; the commentators differ as to what exactly he meant, he did eventually go and there is at least one opinion that he was punished for protesting). Two, while the spies tried to avoid their task completely Moshe did not withdraw entirely from the task of leadership. Rather, he asked for help, which shows some self-belief co-existing with a humble awareness of one's limitations.

Oddities

I found some rather odd things in the rare books room of the library while cataloguing today. First was a selection of sixteenth century woodcuts. Some of them were clearly stories from Tanakh (although I do not remember the unicorn in the story of Adam and Chava…), but some were more obscure. One showed a body being hacked to pieces, which might have been the murder of the concubine at Giveah (Shoftim/Judges 19-21), but others left me completely bewildered.

The second interesting thing was a manuscript copy of a book on someone called something like Rabbi Naftali HaCohen Vatzvokel. I am not too sure how to transliterate the surname, partly because of the handwriting (it did not help that it was in Rashi script, which I can not read as easily), partly because, Hebrew script generally being written without vowels, it could be pronounced several ways. A scrap of newspaper inside the book indicated that the rabbi lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, although the paper looked much more modern and presumably was a copy of the original. Whoever the rabbi was, his biographer thought highly of him, describing him as famous, a genius and a prince of Yisrael; it also seemed to describe him as אלהי, which I presume was meant in the sense of a judge, rather than God (or it could be that I misread the handwriting). Inside the book were several loose pages, also in Hebrew, in a different handwriting that seemed to be parables.

A Rationalist Approach to Eden

Rabbi Natan Slifkin of the Rationalist Judaism blog (I reviewed his books here and here) has been posting brief translations of Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel's Orthodox rationalist writings, which some Charedi authorities have tried to suppress. I found the second one particularly interesting; while I have seen various people deal with the creation (not least Rabbi Slifkin himself), this was the first time I have seen the nature of Eden and the snake dealt with in a rationalist way.

The Nazir

[This first appeared on my Livejournal on 5/6/2008]

This week’s sedra includes the laws of the nazir or nazirite. In Temple times, a nazir was someone who vowed not to drink wine or intoxicants, eat grapes, cut his hair or come into contact with a dead body, usually for a month. This is described as making him holy to God, yet at the end of the period he brings a sin offering, as if becoming a nazir was sinful.

There is much debate about the nature of this sin offering and what it indicates about the nazir. To Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman) his sin lies in his return to the mundane world after his ascetic retreat. However, in the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar states that his status as a nazir is the sin. By becoming a nazir, he denies himself legitimate pleasures such as wine, and this, in Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, is a sin. I would suggest that the position of the laws of the nazir in the Torah cast some light on this problem.

We might expect the laws of the nazir to be in the book of Vayikra (Leviticus) with the other rules of ritual purity and impurity, especially for the priests, who, like the nazir, are forbidden to have contact with corpses. Instead the laws of the nazir are in Bamidbar (Numbers), which largely concentrates on the narrative of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness, and especially the sins and rebellions of the Israelites and their leaders. While Vayikra describes an ideal world of human spirituality, Bamidbar is more concerned with the flawed nature of human society and our gradual, stumbling attempts to build utopia. This theme can be found throughout the book. For example, in describing another commandment we might expect to find in Vayikra but instead find in Bamidbar, the ritual of the red heifer, the process of purification for someone who came into contact with a corpse, Chief Rabbi Sacks notes its proximity to the stories of the death of Miriam and the sin of Moshe and Aharon (Moses and Aaron) which caused them to die in the wilderness. “Law and narrative are here intricately interwoven in a set of variations on the inevitability of death and the continuity of life. For each of us, there is a Jordan we will not cross, however long we live, however far we travel… But this is not inherently tragic. What we begin, others will complete – if we have taught them how.” We make mistakes, but life goes on. We can be purified.

The laws of the nazir immediately follow the laws concerning a woman suspected of adultery. The Talmud explains this by saying that a person who saw an adulterer would become a nazir. Seeing someone who could not control her passions, he would vow to control his own desires. As in much of this book, law and narrative, the ideal and the actual, are linked. The nazir is not an ideal situation, but a temporary measure in response to human frailty. As Rabbi Avraham Kook said, “At times we see that people of deep spirituality, the tzaddikim of the generation, are inclined to asceticism and to solitude, and that they show disdain for material existence. But this is an indication that the world has become corrupt, and in order to heal themselves of this corruption they are using radical medication. The healthy person has no need of these at all.” The nazir is responding to his understanding of his own weaknesses; ideally he would not need a period of self-denial. If the law appeared in Vayikra, next to the laws of the kohanim (priests) this nuance might be lost.

As if to emphasise the point, immediately after the law of the nazir we find another passage that would seem to belong with the priestly laws in Vayikra: the blessings with which the priests would bless the Israelites. In the Chief Rabbi’s interpretation, the blessings are for material benefits: food, protection, feeling valued, the ability to be an agent for good in others and peace. It is as if after reading of the nazir’s return to the world we are reminded that we must focus on this world, not withdraw from it like the nazir.

Books, Books, Books

I have not been blogging much recently, either here on Livejournal. This is partly because I have not had much to say, but partly because I have been busy. This has partly been down to my doing voluntary work two afternoons a week at the library of a Reform rabbinical college (don't worry, I am not having crisis of faith in Orthodoxy; the job was too good to pass up, although my colleagues do not yet know that I am Orthodox - I do not know if they will guess when I come in having shaved off my pre-Lag B'Omer beard).

My current job is cataloging the library's rare books, a small room full of centuries-old books. Sometimes some interesting things come up. Among the things I came across today were:

pamphlets for and against the 1753 Jewish Naturalization Bill;

Vindiciae Judaeorum, a pamphlet by the famous seventeenth century rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, presumably part of his campaign for Jewish admission to Britain, arguing that Jews would be good citizens, starting by disproving the blood libel;

lots of Yiddish pamphlets which I could not understand (the Hebrew books frequently go beyond the limits of my language skills (font size helps me find the title and author); with the Yiddish ones I count myself lucky if I can work out which city they were published in);

a seventeenth century Latin translation of the Travels of Binyamin (Benjamin) of Tudela;

a Jacobean sermon celebrating deliverance of James I and VI from a conspiracy that I had never heard of despite my familiarity with the period (I have no idea what the sermon was doing in the library, as it has no obvious Jewish connection).