Philip Davies' article, "The Origin of Biblical Israel," is an intriguing article and looks at an interesting, under-investigated problem, namely in what way Judah came to understand itself as Israel. Rejecting the historicity of a united kingdom and any pre-kingdom Israelite identity, Davies argues the concept of Israel only came to be attached to Judah in the post-exilic period.
I could respond to this paper by arguing against Davies' assumption of the legendary character of a united kingdom or a pre-kingdom Israelite identity. Indeed, I do not think the archaeological evidence supports Davies' conclusion as neatly as he presumes but rather it provides a complicated and at this point largely inconclusive portrait. In my opinion, it is hasty to claim that a decisive conclusion has been reached on these matters as the critical issue of chronology, among other issues, remains hotly debated by many accomplished archaeologists and biblicists.
Nevertheless, it is, I think, pointless to attempt to undermine this aspect of Davies' argument precisely because the evidence is inconclusive and so unlikely to convince. In my mind, the debate may yet swing decisively one way or the other but that time has not yet come. So, for those who have taken a position already (regardless of the side), the fragmentary and sparse evidence of the contrary position (regardless of the side) is unlikely to convince; indeed, the present extra-biblical evidence should not have convinced them, in the first place, to the position they presently hold, whether for or against a united kingdom.
So, instead of such an argument, I will point to an issue that may operate in a realm that Davies himself may, more readily, consider open for discussion. The fundamental flaw that I would identify in Davies' article is that his argument, somewhat counter-intuitively, presupposes the impermeability of the border between pre-exilic Judah and Israel to the exchange of cultic and intellectual ideas; and, even more counter-intuitively for a scholar such as Davies, requires that Jerusalem and its temple successfully maintained cultic and intellectual orthodoxy throughout Judah. That Davies' argument requires this is evidenced in his claim that it is only in the weakening of Judah in the Neo-Babylonian period that the concept of Israel could, in his view, migrate from the northern cultic centers to Jerusalem, where it was eventually appropriated by the temple elite:
With the Jerusalem royal house and aristocracy removed, Judeans had no institutional support for any 'traditions' of 'Zion' or of 'house of David'. In a period over a century, spanning at least four generations, the identity of 'Israel' could very easily permeate the population of 'Benjamin-Judah' in such a way that the later restoration of political and cultic supremacy to Jerusalem could not challenge it, let alone remove it (9).
If, on the other hand, the borders of pre-exilic Judah and Israel were permeable to the exchange of ideas and if the Jerusalem temple did not maintain a strict cultic and intellectual orthodoxy throughout Judah then one would have to conclude that the concept of Israel could have migrated southward at any time after its initial formulation at Bethel, as Davies would have it.
Such an exchange of ideas is all the more probable given the relative cultural affinities that Judah and Israel share; the majority of the inhabitants in these two kingdoms, by most accounts, reflect a relatively common horizon of material culture and ethnicity markers. The web of tribal kinship in all likelihood crossed the boundaries of Judah and Israel and the concept of national identity in the ancient Near East probably was not as rigid as Davies must posit. It seems hardly surprising then that cultural markers, such as the concept of Israel, would travel between the kingdoms regardless of the political situation, especially because of its religious significances. Consider, e.g., the abundant evidence of multiple, mistaken, or confused ethnic attributions one finds throughout the corpus of ancient Near Eastern and classical inscriptions and historiography. Indeed, in light of the fact that northern Israel is called Humri in Assyrian records, it seems unnecessary to presume that the name "Israel" had a definitive and unequivocal association with the northern kingdom that would have caused Judah to resist this name as a cultic, or even political, concept throughout the pre-exilic period.
Yet, one hardly needs even such close affinities to explain cultic and cultural diffusion of this sort; the Bible evinces the assimilation or appropriation of themes, concepts, literature, and language from many parts of the ancient Near Eastern world, even ones to which the biblical religion would, prima facie, appear naturally hostile. The material culture makes the case that much more eloquently, e.g. the Arad temple, likely within Jerusalem's sphere of influence, seems the obvious case in point. Without even positing a united kingdom then, it seems entirely plausible that the cultic concept of Israel could easily have had currency in Judah well before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and that its people, its scribes, and its elites were well-acquainted and significantly influenced by the ideas as they came out of Bethel. At the very least, Davies, at this stage, provides no compelling evidence to exclude this possibility. Consequently, it seems to me that Philip Davies has a considerable hill to climb to prove that the concept of Israel in Judah can only be a purely post-exilic phenomenon. He needs yet to prove his claim that "[w]hile Bethel may have attracted some Judeans into its orbit even before 586, it made a serious impact only after the demise of its rival Jerusalem" (9).
For more on this topic, see the following blog entries:
The Concept of Israel in Judah
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