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Identity and Origin: A Methodological Note
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Faust, A., 2015, The Emergence of Iron Age Israel: On Origins and Habitus, in T.E. Levy, T. Schneider and W.H.C. Propp (eds.), Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archeology, Culture and Geoscience, Springer, pp. 467-482

Profile image of Avraham FaustAvraham Faust
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3
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18 pages

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reexamine the question of Israel's origins within the broader framework of Israel's emergence in the late 2nd millennium BCE. The article first outlines some methodological difficulties involved in this endeavor, and proceeds to summarize the author's view of Israel's emergence as an ethnic group in the Iron Age. This is then followed by a more detailed discussion of the possible "origins" of the members of this group, and especially that of earliest Israel – the group that is mentioned in Merneptah's stele. It appears that while many individuals, families and groups were involved in the process of Israel's ethnogenesis throughout the Iron Age, and that many of those who eventually became Israelites were of Canaanite origins, the first group was composed mainly of Shasu pastoralists. Other groups, probably including a small "Exodus" group which left Egypt, joined the process, and all were gradually assimilated into the growing Israel, accepting its history, practices and traditions, and contributing some of their owns. Traditions and practices that were useful in the active process of Israel's boundary maintenance with other groups were gradually adopted by "all Israel". It appears that the story of the Exodus from Egypt was one such story. The Exodus–Conquest narrative(s), which describes the escape of the Israelites from Egypt, their 40 years’ wandering and their conquest and settlement in Canaan, has resulted in a plethora of studies that examine the story as whole, as well as many of its components, in great detail. The present study touches on this thorny issue by attempting to reconstruct the "origin" of the Iron Age Israelites in general and that ofMerneptah’s Israel in particular, and by reconstructing the development of Israel as an ethnic group. While such a study cannot yield definite answers about the Exodus event, it does allow us to evaluate the possible significance of an Exodus group, and perhaps also the possible mechanisms that enabled the Exodus story to be accepted by the Israelites and to achieve its "national" standing.

Key takeaways
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AI

  1. The study examines Israel's emergence as an ethnic group in the late 2nd millennium BCE.
  2. Merneptah's stele marks the earliest mention of Israel, likely reflecting highland settlers around the 13th century BCE.
  3. Highland settlers were primarily Shasu pastoralists, with some Canaanite and possible Exodus group contributions.
  4. Ethnic identity developed through boundary maintenance and selective tradition adoption among groups.
  5. Israel's origins involve complex interactions, including a gradual process of assimilation and identity formation.

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  112. ---. 1991. Can You Name the Panel with the Israelites? Yurco's Response. Biblical Archaeology Review 17(6): 61.
  113. ---. 1997. Merenptah's Canaanite Campaign and Israeli's Origins. In Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence, ed. E.S. Frerichs and L.H. Lesko, 27-55. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

FAQs

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What evidence supports the seminomadic origins of early Israelites?add

The study indicates that the earliest Israelites likely stemmed from pastoralists, specifically the Shasu, around the late 13th century BCE, as evidenced by settlement patterns and ceramic usage.

How did external relations influence Israelite identity formation?add

Highlander settlers experienced asymmetrical relations with Egyptian rulers and nearby Canaanites, fostering a distinct ethnic consciousness that influenced their communal identity during the Iron Age I.

What explains Israel's emergence in the archaeological record?add

Evidence from the Merneptah stele (circa 1208 BCE) suggests the presence of a group identifying as 'Israel' correlating with settlement in highland Canaan.

How did burial practices reflect Israelite identity differentiations?add

Early Israelites used simple inhumation practices, distinct from previous stratified Canaanite burial rites, signaling a deliberate cultural divergence.

What was the demographic profile of Merneptah's Israel?add

Merneptah's Israel likely consisted of a core group of pastoralists, with subsequent integration of diverse populations, including Canaanites, contributing to ethnic evolution.

About the author
Avraham Faust
Bar-Ilan University, Faculty Member

Professor of archaeology at the Department of General History, Bar-Ilan University and a research fellow at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa. I received my degrees from Bar-Ilan University (PhD, 2000), and studied also at the University of Oxford (visiting graduate student, 1997/8) and Harvard University (post-doc, 2002). In 2008 I was Kennedy Leigh fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, in 2012/2013 I taught at the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University as a Visiting Professor, and in 2020 I served as the Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies in the University of Chicago. My research interests include the archaeology of the Land of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages (biblical archaeology), especially from social and anthropological perspectives, as well as aspects of settlement archaeology, urban-rural interaction, socio-economic stratification, ethnicity, processes of social complexity, and excavations and survey methods and methodology. I participated in a number of excavations and surveys in Israel and abroad. In the years 1997-2003 I directed (with Adi Erlich) the excavations at the small rural site of Kh. er-Rasm in the Shephelah (Israel), and from 2006 I am directing the excavations at Tel 'Eton (Israel) and the survey in its surrounding, and from 2024 also a survey in the Negev Highlands. I authored many books and articles covering various aspects of Israel's archaeology from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, with a special focus on Iron Age society. Among the books I authored are the following: • Israelite Society in the Period of the Monarchy: An Archaeological Perspective (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2005 [in Hebrew]); • Israel's Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox, 2006; the book won three book prizes: the Irene Levi Sala Prize for books on the Archaeology of Israel, the ASOR's G.E. Wright Book Award and the Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award); • The Excavations at Kh. er-Rasm: The Changing Faces of the Countryside (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011) (with Adi Erlich); • The Archaeology of the Israelite Society in the Iron Age II (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012); • Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature; 2012); • The Settlement History of Ancient Israel: A Quantitative Analysis (Ramat Gan: Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, 2015 [in Hebrew]) (with Zeev Safrai); - The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021) - The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press) (with Zev Farber)

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Followers
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Related papers

Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology Preserves What Is Remembered and What Is Forgotten in Israel's History
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Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003

Earliest Israel remains terra incognita, literally and from the ground down. The Merneptah Stela Stanza VIII proclaiming Egyptian suzerainty in the southern Levant documents Israel as a noteworthy foreign enemy by the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. 1 Except for this mention, neither contemporary epigraphic nor archaeological evidence explicitly points to a latethirteenth-century B.C.E. "Israel." However, conservatively dated biblical and archaeological evidence has been invoked to attest to Israel in the twelfth to eleventh centuries B.C.E. Frank Cross and Tryggve Mettinger, among others, date the Bible s earliest testimonials, the Song of the Sea (Exod 15) and Song of Deborah (Judg 5) to the late twelfth or early eleventh century B.C.E. 2 Ironically, it was Israel Finkelstein, now leading a revisionist contingent, who claimed to validate the early dates with archaeological evidence. In his central highlands survey, Finkelstein identified as "Israelite" the hundreds of hamlets and farm-A portion of this essay was presented before the Colloquium for Biblical Research at Duke Divinity School in August 2001. I wish to thank the members of the colloquium for their helpful criticisms and suggestions. This paper also greatly benefited from discussions with my husband,

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The Emergence of Ancient Israel: The Social Boundaries of a “Mixed Multitude” in Canaan_by Ann E. Killebrew_2006
Ann E . Killebrew

I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 2006

The debates surrounding the identity and origins of ancient Israel represent one of the most contentious chapters in the history of archaeological and biblical research. Most views regarding the emergence of ancient Israel fall into the category of one of four general approaches-conquest, peaceful infiltration, social revolution, or pastoral Canaanite theories. The development of these schools of thought not only mirror increased archaeological fieldwork but also are indicators of research and political trends over the past 80 years. These theories, discussed in greater detail below, often reflect not only scholarly opinion and the fashion of the times but also deeply held personal beliefs. However, based on a careful reexamination of the relevant literature and an analysis of the complex social and cultural boundaries of 12th-century BCE Canaan, I propose that a consensus is emerging. Ancient Israel during the Iron I period should be defined as constituted by largely indigenous, tribal, and kinship-based groups, with the additional influx of smaller numbers of members of external groups, whose genealogical affiliations together comprised a "mixed multitude" of peoples. This "mixed multitude" is defined as the inhabitants of the rural Iron I hill country and Transjordanian highland villages and countryside, a population that has been identified by some as the premonarchic "Israelites" or "Proto-Israelites." This article summarizes the textual and archaeological evidence and the role ideology played in the ethnogenesis Early Israel.

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“Israelite Ethnicity in Iron Age I: Archaeology Preserves What is Remembered and What is Forgotten in Israel’s History”
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith

Journal of Biblical Literature 122: 401-25., 2003

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The Emergence of Ancient Israel and Theories of Ethnogenesis
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The article summarizes the research on the emergence of Israel as an ethnic group in the Iron Age, within the broader study of ethnogenesis.

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Early Israel's Origins, Settlement, and Ethnogenesis by Ann E. Killebrew 2020
Ann E . Killebrew

The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible, 2020

In the Hebrew Bible, God’s covenant and promise of the Land of Canaan as Abraham’s and his descendants’ eternal inheritance mark the emergence of the people of Israel. But before Abraham’s progeny can take possession of the promised land, they embark on a detour to Egypt as recounted in Genesis 37–50. Abraham’s grandson Jacob (whom God renames “Israel,” Gen. 32:28) witnesses his favorite son Joseph’s sale into slavery, orchestrated by jealous brothers. The saga, which continues with Joseph’s subsequent rise to a position of power and the migration of Joseph’s brothers to Egypt during a time of famine, serves as a literary bridge to one of the central themes of Israel’s emergence—their ensuing enslavement in Egypt and escape to freedom as described in the book of Exodus. The books of Joshua and Judges continue to tell the story of how the twelve tribes, or “sons” of Israel, after four decades of desert wanderings, conquer the Land of Canaan and settle there. For millennia, this story was taken for granted as a reliable account of the genesis of Israel as a people in its land. However, with the advent of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century post-Enlightenment methods of text criticism and the discovery of contemporary ancient Near Eastern texts and cultures, the historical reliability of the biblical text came into question. Aided by an ever-growing body of archaeological evidence, our understanding of early Israel has been transformed during the past century. This essay will review the theories of Israel’s emergence that have been advanced by critical scholarship, beginning with a critique of the two schools of thought developed during the first half of the twentieth century that use the Exodus story and the books of Joshua and Judges as their starting point. Subsequently, two additional models, utilizing sociological, anthropological, and archaeological approaches, attempted to write a secular history of early Israel largely independent of the biblical account. The essay concludes with recent efforts to reconcile the biblical, extra-biblical textual, and archaeological primary sources, considered together with contemporary sociological and anthropological models to reconstruct Israel’s ethnogenesis.

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Related topics

  • Archaeology
  • Near Eastern Archaeology
  • Archaeology of Ancient Israel
  • Hebrew Bible
  • Biblical Studies
  • Syro-Palestinian archaeology
  • Biblical Archaeology
  • Archaeology of ethnicity
  • Ancient Near East
  • Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East
  • Ancient Near East (Archaeology)
  • ancient Israelite religion
  • Ancient Israel
  • Archaeology of the Levant
  • Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

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    Radiocarbon analysis of modern olive wood raises doubts concerning a crucial piece of evidence in dating the Santorini eruption
    Lior Regev

    Scientific Reports

    Charred olive wood is abundant in the archaeological record, especially around the Mediterranean. As the outermost ring closest to the bark is assumed to represent the latest time that the tree was alive, the radiocarbon date obtained from the outermost rings of an olive branch buried during the Santorini volcanic eruption is regarded as crucial evidence for the date of this cataclysmic event. The date of this eruption has far reaching consequences in the archaeology of the Aegean, Egypt and the Levant, and the understanding of their interconnections. We analyzed the radiocarbon concentrations in crosssections from a modern olive tree trunk as well as from a living branch, and obtained near-annual resolution dates using the radiocarbon "bomb peak". In both cases we show that radiocarbon dates of the last formed wood along the circumference are not chronologically homogenous, and can differ by up to a few decades. Thus the outermost wood layer does not necessarily represent the date of the last year of growth. These findings challenge the interpretation of the results obtained from dating the olive branch from the Santorini volcanic eruption, as it could predate the eruption by a few decades. In addition, our results are also significant for any future studies based on archaeologically preserved olive wood. One important motivation for investigating whether annual growth rings in olive wood (Olea europaea) are present and can be successfully identified in olive wood arose recently 1,2 , as an olive branch was used in dating the colossal volcanic eruption of Santorini 3,4. This dating was based on the assumption that the outermost ring was formed just prior to the eruption. The eruption of Santorini (Thera) was one of the largest volcanic events in historical times 5 , and is a key event in anchoring various archaeological chronologies across the Mediterranean 6-13. The date of the eruption of Santorini, and therefore too, the dates of archaeological levels that contain the volcanic debris 14 in the Aegean, as well as in Egypt and the Levant, has been debated for decades. Based on archaeological correlations between the Aegean, Egypt and the Levant, the eruption of Santorini was believed to have occurred around 1500 BCE, after the beginning of the New Kingdom in Egypt 6,7,12,13. It should be noted that the beginning of the New Kingdom has been dated by radiocarbon and then modelled to between 1570-1544 BCE 15. Radiocarbon dating of short lived organic materials from numerous sites in the Aegean that were derived from the Santorini volcanic context 16-21 consistently produce dates which are a century earlier than the "archaeological" chronology. For example, a weighted average of 16 measurements by Bronk Ramsey et al. 20 resulted in an uncalibrated radiocarbon age of 3350 ± 10 BP, which when calibrated using the most recent calibration curve 22 translates to between 1683-1617 BCE (2σ range). This is inconsistent with a date during the 16 th century BCE. Due to the nature of the calibration curve during this time period, it has been argued that there is a small probability that the radiocarbon age of 3350 BP may be calibrated to the 16 th century 7. The calibrated date ranges of the majority of short lived organic material indeed indicate a small probability of having originated in the 16 th

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