On Israel’s Ethnogenesis and Historical Method

This book addresses a topic much debated during the last two decades or so in biblical and archaeological scholarship: Israel’s origins in ancient Palestine. However, its original feature is the use of an anthropologically-oriented archaeological perspective. Indeed, Faust, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University (Israel), has produced a well-written and bibliographically informed study on what he calls ‘Israel’s ethnogenesis’, that is, the process through which Israel evolved into an ‘ethnic group’ during the Late Bronze/Iron transition in the Near East (ca. 13^th to 11^th centuries BCE). Now, what Israel? The biblical or the historical? Does Faust see such a distinction as relevant at all? Despite the book being written by an archaeologist, a historical process is at the centre of this study. Therefore, some comments on historical method of the book’s analysis and especially its conclusions can be made with all legitimacy.

In Part I, general methodological and analytical principles are presented. In the Introduction Faust affirms that:

The main research questions should be delineated based on an exhaustive examination of patterns in the material record. The attempt to find answers to these questions should proceed using all evidence possible: archaeological finds should be scrutinized for similar patterns, and anthropological methods should be used to explain them. Only then can the data provided by the written sources come into consideration.

(pp.5–6)

I believe this statement to be a truly indisputable axiom, although it is not always followed by the author throughout the book. Faust addresses well the implicit challenges that studies like F. Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) posed to the Culture History School in archaeology and its equation, the assertion that material culture reflects ethnic groups; however, he then claims that ‘in most cases, clear relationships between material culture and ethnicity can be identified’ (p.14). This, together with a historicist view of biblical Israel, constitutes the epistemological basis of this book.

In Chapter 3, the reference to the ‘minimalist school’ (e.g. K.W. Whitelam; Th.L. Thompson), the description of it as a ‘political school’ [!], and the assertion that ‘these scholars have usually offered no new evidence or even new insights into the discussion’ (p.25), are as inaccurate as inappropriate, for Faust does not represent well nor refute the arguments attributed to these scholars; he only rejects them on the basis of other scholars’ opinions (cf. e.g. pp.24–26, 178 n. 9). One cannot but recognise here, in the author’s biased objection to ‘minimalist’ scholarship, another reaction common to late-20^th century biblical archaeology, built up more on the basis of ad hominem statements than on scholarly arguments (cf. Davies 2005: 80–81).

Part II deals with ‘Israelite ethnicity through an analysis of specific features, primarily archaeological’ (p. 8). Pig bones absence on the Iron I (ca. 1200–1000 BCE) highlands is seen as an Israelite ethnic marker: ‘it is reasonable to assume that pig avoidance was chosen in contrast to the Philistine custom of consuming large amounts of pork’ (p. 38). Then, the presence of undecorated pottery on the highlands is used to mark an ethnic difference regarding the presence of decorated pottery on the coastal plain. Now, that the undecorated pottery style from the Iron I highlands appears also in Iron II (ca. 1000–600 BCE) archaeological assemblages (i.e., in the territory of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah) does not speak necessarily for any Israelite ethnic identity continuum as we know it from the Bible. We may correctly stress the differences between highland and lowland pottery and food habits, but it cannot be automatically concluded that such differences render for us biblical Israelites and Philistines on the ground!

The author’s discussion of the ‘four-room house(s)’, regarding an Israelite egalitarian ethos (pp.71–84, 92–107; see also Bunimovitz and Faust 2003), and especially the question of ‘purity and space syntax...