'Imagining' Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical Constructs in Honour of James W. Flanagan (JSOT Supplement)

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES

359

Editors David J.A. Clines Philip R. Davies Executive Editor Andrew Mein Editorial Board Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, J. Cheryl Exum, John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, John Jarick, Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller

Sheffield Academic Press A Continuum imprint

James W. Flanagan

'Imagining' Biblical Worlds Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical Constructs in Honor of James W. Flanagan

edited by David M. Gunn and Paula M. McNutt

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 359

Copyright © 2002 Sheffield Academic Press A Continuum imprint Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550 www.SheffieldAcademicPress.com www. continuumbooks. com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd, Midsomer Norton, Bath

ISBN 0-8264-6149-2

CONTENTS Abbreviations List of Contributors Introduction Select Bibliography of James W. Flanagan

vii ix 1 10

Parti

SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS JON L. BERQUIST Critical Spatiality and the Construction of the Ancient World

14

PAULA M. McNuTT 'Fathers of the Empty Spaces' and 'Strangers Forever': Social Marginality and the Construction of Space

30

DOUGLAS A. KNIGHT Joshua 22 and the Ideology of Space

51

CLAUDIA V. CAMP Storied Space, or, Ben Sira 'Tells' a Temple

64

PHILIP R. DAVIES Space and Sects in the Qumran Scrolls DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN AND SHAWNA DOLANSKY OVERTON Omitting the Omissions: The Case for Haplography in the Transmission of the Biblical Texts

81

99

BURKE O. LONG Embodied Typology: Modeling the Mosaic Tabernacle

117

DAVID M. GUNN Covering David: Michelangelo's David from the Piazza della Signoria to my Refrigerator Door

139

vi

'Imagining' Biblical Worlds

TIMOTHY K. BEAL Specters of Moses: Overtures to Biblical Hauntology

171

Part II SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTS NORMAN K. GOTTWALD Rethinking the Origins of Ancient Israel

190

JOHN M. HALLIGAN 'Where Angels Fear to Tread...': An Account of the Development of the Social-Scientific Approach to the Study of the Ancient World

202

FRANK S. FRICK Ritual and Social Regulation in Ancient Israel: The Importance of the Social Context for Ritual Studies and a Case Study—The Ritual of the Red Heifer

219

LOUISE A. HITCHCOCK Levantine Horned Altars: An Aegean Perspective on the Transformation of Socio-Religious Reproduction

233

DAVID W. MCCREERY Bronze Age Agriculture in the Dead Sea Basin: The Cases of Bab edh-Dhrac, Numeira and Tell Nimrin

250

NIELS PETER LEMCHE Chronology and Archives—When Does the History of Israel and Judah Begin?

264

KEITH W. WHITELAM The Poetics of the History of Israel: Shaping Palestinian History

277

Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

297 327 332

ABBREVIATIONS AAR AASOR AB ABD

AbrN ADAJ AJA ASOR BA BARev BASOR BHS Biblnt BK BZAW CBQ CIS CRBS DJD

El FAT GCT HSM IEJ JAAR JAOS JBL JHS JJS JSJ

JSJSup JSOT JSOTSup

American Academy of Religion Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Anchor Bible David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) Abr-Nahrain Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan American Journal of Archaeology American Schools of Oriental Research Biblical Archaeologist Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches Bibel und Kirche Beihefte zur ZA W Catholic Biblical Quarterly Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum Currents in Research: Biblical Studies Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Eretz-Israel Forschungen zum Alten Testament Gender, Culture, Theory Harvard Semitic Monographs Israel Exploration Journal Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Hellenic Studies Journal of Jewish Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period JSJ, Supplement Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series

viii JSP JSPSup JTS MUSE PEQ RB RLA SBLDS STDJ SWB AS VT ZA W ZDPV

'Imagining' Biblical Words Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement Series Journal of Theological Studies Annual of the Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia Palestine Exploration Quarterly Revue biblique Reallexikon der Assyriologie SBL Dissertation Series Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series Vetus Testamentum Zeitschriftfiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift des deutschen Paldstina-Vereins

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Timothy K. Beal, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA Jon L. Berquist, Chalice Press, St Louis, MO, USA Claudia V. Camp, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA Philip R. Davies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England David Noel Freedman, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA Frank S. Frick, Albion College, Albion, MI, USA Norman K. Gottwald, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA, USA David M. Gunn, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA John M. Halligan, St John Fisher College, Rochester, NY, USA Louise A. Hitchcock, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA Douglas A. Knight, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA Niels Peter Lemche, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark Burke O. Long, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA David W. McCreery, Willamette University, Salem, OR, USA Paula M. McNutt, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA Shawna Dolansky Overton, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA Keith W. Whitelam, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England

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INTRODUCTION:

'IMAGINING' BIBLICAL WORLDS: JAMES W. FLANAGAN

Imagining, or perhaps imaging, biblical worlds is what Jim Flanagan has being doing for the past several decades. He has, moreover, consistently reimagined the borders of our discipline and sought to bring biblical studies into new spaces of discourse. He has pioneered not only through his own adventurous reading, writing, and conversing, but equally through his energetic facilitating of the thinking of others. He has been indefatigable in bringing about conjunctions of diverse voices from widely ranging fields and apparently widely divergent theoretical foundations. Yet his perseverance as an advocate of boundary crossing has persuaded many of us that we have much more in common than we might once have imagined, and that in those commonalities there is the potential for fundamental rethinking of the 'worlds' we study. James William Flanagan grew up in Iowa on a farm that his greatgrandparents, grandparents and parents had farmed and which is still farmed by his family today. His family were, like many in the area, Irish Catholic. He studied at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa (BA in History and Philosophy, 1958), and then at the Gregorian University in Rome (STL, 1960). His PhD (1971), on the biblical traditions pertaining to the foundation of the monarchy in Israel, was from Notre Dame University under the direction of the inimitable John L. McKenzie. Academia claimed Jim from the outset. On returning from Rome he taught (and was tenured) at Loras College and served for three years as department chair. A brief visiting appointment in 1972 grew into a longer one in the Department of Near Eastern Studies/Program on Studies in Religion at the University of Michigan (1973-76) where David Noel Freedman and George Mendenhall proved stimulating and influential colleagues. A crucial turning point came with an invitation to take up a permanent position at the University of Montana, Missoula, and chair the Department of Religious Studies. This invitation was linked to the establishing of Scholars Press, based in Missoula under the directorship of Robert Funk. Jim was asked to be

2

'Imagining' Biblical Words

associate director. His interest in Funk's analysis of the key role of publishing in the production of knowledge and the shaping of academic disciplines was piqued also by contacts with some young scholars in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, who were in the process of forming what was to become JSOT Press, later Sheffield Academic Press. This was the beginning of a long-lasting collegial relationship with David Clines, Philip Davies and David Gunn. Sharing a vision, that scholars take control of their own publishing processes, Jim went to Missoula and threw himself into the building of both department (in his ten years as chair the department thrived) and press. It was in Missoula, in the university print shop with Al Madison, that he acquired his abiding respect for the interdependence of technology and knowledge. He has constantly and presciently, ever since those early Missoula days, urged us to take account of emerging technology and its power to shape not simply the communication of our research but also the very modes of our thinking and so thinking itself. While Jim's early paper on the relationship between 2 Samuel 9-20 and 1 Kings 1-2 remains a classic, still regularly cited, it was his shift towards social-scientific method, via work on the meaning of 'all Israel', that was the hallmark of his research during the Missoula years. 'The Relocation of the Davidic Capital' (1979) draws on work by Robert Redfield and Milton Singer on 'primary' and 'secondary' urbanization and finds support in the anthropology of, among others, Morton Fried, Clifford Geertz, Elman Service and Victor Turner. His reference to scholars in biblical studies included Frank Frick, Norman Gottwald and Niels Peter Lemche, crossers of boundaries, all of them. The field was changing, and they were changing the field. Probably 'Chiefs in Israel' (1981) is the true classic, reprinted several times, most recently in 1997. The essay posits chiefdom as the institution through which kingship emerges—both Saul and David are to be understood as chiefs rather than kings—and accounts for many of the complexities of the texts relating to the rise of the monarchy. A central feature of the argument is a sophisticated understanding of the protean and political nature of genealogies and their function within segmentary societies. Jim draws again on the cultural evolutionary theory of Service, and relates this to the social anthropology of Jack Goody, whose seminal work Jim helped introduce into biblical studies. Other studies invoked across the disciplinary borders include Marvin Harris on cultural materialism, Edmund Leach on the comparative method in anthropology, and Colin Renfrew on the evolution of social organization.

Introduction

3

Not content with reading what was in print, Jim wanted direct contact with these scholars. Between 1980 and 1985 he made several extended visits to England, especially to the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, where he found Jack Goody especially engaging. Colin Renfrew and Ernest Gellner were also obliging and interested interlocutors, and Jim eventually developed a particularly fruitful conversation with Sir Edmund Leach, who later conducted several colloquia in the USA and Canada for which Jim found the funding. A quite different visit also made a deep impression on him: in the summer of 1981 Jim spent five days as the guest of Sheikh Mohammed Almana in Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. The Sheikh was the author of a book on the rise of Ibn Saud, for whom he had served as an interpreter. The striking parallels with the account in the books of Samuel of the rise of David are discussed in a fascinating appendix to Jim's monograph, David's Social Drama (1988). During this period Jim was also pursuing his cognate interest in archaeology. On anNational Endowment forthe Humanities (NEH) fellowship at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, in 1981 he continued his field work as an area director with the Bab edhDhra c Excavation (where he had dug in 1979) and then took on the job of Associate Director for the Tell Qarqur excavation and North Orontes Valley Project in Syria (1982-84). As later with his Tell Nimrin project, Jim was not so much a 'dirt' archaeologist as, on the one hand, a gifted administrator, logistics wizard and fundraiser (not to mention site photographer), and, on the other hand, a totally relentless theorist. His practical archaeological experience led him constantly to place the processes and products of the excavation within the context of theoretical questions that usually came back to the issue of how observations of space and time disclosed (or became) 'history'. In 1985 the Department of Antiquities offered him the Tell Nimrin site in the Jordan Valley across the river from Jericho, initially as a rescue operation. He undertook some preliminary work the following year while seeking a co-director, and he found one in David McCreery of Willamette University, who was completing a term as director of the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR). They were joined in 1990 by Khair Yassine from the University of Jordan, and Paula McNutt became Assistant Director the same year. Tell Nimrin was the beginning for Jim of nearly two decades of grant writing, planning, team construction, and logistics that is only now nearing completion. It was also the beginning of a very specific challenge regarding how best to record data and communicate results in a

4

'Imagining' Biblical Words

computer age, a specific challenge that fed directly into Jim's broader interest in the relationship among technology, research, and ways of understanding or knowing. The project held field seasons in 1989, 1990, 1993 and 1995. In each season, a team of approximately 25 individuals (including cameo appearances by Tim Beal and David Gunn), mostly faculty and students, representing 12 or more US universities, museums and colleges, excavated from five to eight weeks during May, June and early July. In every season except 1989, between seven and fifteen Jordanians, Palestinians and Moroccans from the University of Jordan and Yarmouk University participated in the field seasons and in post-season research. A primary concern of the project has been to explore the site's environmental setting and economic subsistence base throughout its long occupational history—which dates back to EBIV (c. 2000 BCE)—and to this end extensive data have been assembled and are being made available on the web site authored and designed by Jim, named Virtual Nimrin (http://www.cwru.edu/affil/nimrin or link from www.guildzone.org). A postscript to this brief account of the Nimrin years would have to add that, 'dirt' archaeologist or not, Jim certainly knew how to dig up 34 Byzantine gold coins and four exquisite earrings, all in a single little jug. How to upstage the paleoemnobotanists! Jim's talents for organizing and for creatively facilitating the work of others found expression in a long history of involvement with the professional societies, national and regional, that are an integral part of our academic world and with vehicles for publication, some linked directly to the societies, others indirectly. Let us return to the beginning of the eighties. The year 1980 saw the launch of one of the shaping influences in the present state of biblical studies, namely the Sociology of the Monarchy seminar, a joint project of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature. Five years earlier, Frank Frick and Norman Gottwald had proposed for the SBL a pioneering program unit, a consultation on the 'Social World of Ancient Israel' with the objective of exploring social-scientific approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Their consultation became a regular program group and, in turn, evolved into a new seminar, which Frank and Jim co-chaired. Among the members were Norman Gottwald, John Halligan, Douglas Knight, Burke Long, Paula McNutt and Keith Whitelam. While the group ended up talking little of monarchy as such, it sustained over six years a major discussion of socialscientific theory and method in relation to ancient Israelite history, in the wake of the radical reformulations by Mendenhall and Gottwald of

Introduction

5

normative views of the Israelite 'conquest' of Canaan. The work of the seminar affected profoundly the confidence with which social-scientific inquiry emerged in biblical studies in the eighties. In tandem with the seminar, Jim began editing a monograph series, The Social World of Biblical Antiquity, published through David Gunn's Almond Press in Sheffield (later Almond/Sheffield Academic Press). By the end of the decade he had seen into print nine volumes of fundamental 'social world' research, including Frank Prick's The Formation of the State in Ancient Israel: A Survey of Models and Theories (1985), David Hopkins's The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age (1985), David Jamieson-Drake's Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Socio-Archeological Approach (1991), and Paula McNutt's The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism, and Tradition in Ancient Society (1990), a project sparked years earlier by a suggestion from Jim while Paula was studying with him at the University of Montana. It was one thing to bring into play new modes of research, but was another thing to find an outlet for innovative work. Jim worked hard at making both these things happen. Jim's editorial and publications expertise has a long history. He early gained experience as Associate Editor of Horizons, the journal of the College Theology Society (1974-77). He then served as editor of the ASOR Archaeological Newsletter (1980-83); he was an Associate Editor of Biblical Archaeologist (1982-85); he edited the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research andBASOR Supplements (1990-93) and became ASOR's first Vice President for Publications (1990-93), dramatically turning around the struggling program and its finances. To watch him negotiate his way in the labyrinthine world of ASOR, injecting both vision and hard practical sense into important discussions of policy and practice, was a treat. Jim's penchant for drawing theory across conventional disciplinary boundaries led him increasingly to explore scientific as well as socialscientific models for reconceptualizing biblical studies. His own volume in the Social World of Biblical Antiquity series was David's Social Drama: A Hologram of Israel's Early Iron Age (1988). Here he imaginatively utilizes holography as a model for relating diverse data and types of explanation. In a hologram, any viewer within the image's parallax can see an entire image in three dimensions from his or her own perspective. Holography breaks the monopoly of single-point perspective, so that, as Jim has put it recently, 'Modernist spatial boundaries dissolve, stable images become fluid, and

6

'Imagining' Biblical Words

dimensionality increases. Postmodern multiperspective imagining enters, and alternative spatialities must be sought' (Flanagan 1999b:26).Thebook is extraordinary in its range. It draws on archaeology, biblical texts and comparative sociology and anthropology to show how the biblical David encodes an interaction among religious values, economic needs and ecological settings in the interests of promoting important social transitions. Jim here shows us a sophisticated way of integrating the domains of actions (encoded in material remains) and of notions (as encoded in literature, for example), and he points to ways of understanding the time-space relations between these domains. In 1986 Jim moved to Cleveland, to Case Western Reserve University, where he took up an appointment as Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan Professor of Catholic Studies in the Department of Religion. He later became chair and presided over a significant remaking of the department. Among the reasons for moving was the university's strength in science, its provision of electronic resources and its encouragement of faculty, as Jim has said elsewhere, 'to think spatially and use the Internet and technologies of cyberspace'. Naturally enough, he capitalized on these resources and over the years has forged conversations across virtually all known disciplinary boundaries at CWRU. The university also afforded him significant financial backing for his later work at Tell Nimrin, including digital storage of data and web creation, and likewise valuable support and advice, particularly from information technology guru James Barker, in facilitating electronic communication in connection with other scholarly research projects. Among the tasks and opportunities of this environment, for example, was involvement, representing CWRU, in an IBM-Vatican Library Pilot project exploring the digitalizing of library holdings (1994-96) and most recently in the ETANA project (Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives), which seeks to develop models of how Internet-based scholarship might transform a discipline, and how digital libraries might be structured. When the Sociology of the Monarchy Seminar's term expired in 1986, Jim began looking for new ways forward. The result was probably the most imaginatively interdisciplinary program unit in the history of the sponsoring societies. Starting as an ASOR/SBL consultation in 1988, 'Constructs of Ancient History and Religion' was intended to foster interdisciplinary thinking in biblical, archaeological and religious research projects. It encouraged the exploration of how meaning and interpretation are constructed in the sciences, social sciences and humanities and looked

Introduction

1

for innovative combinations of diverse theories and methods. With added AAR sponsorship, the program unit became a group in 1990 and continued until 1999 with a change of name (and emphasis) along the way to 'Constructs of the Social and Cultural Worlds of Antiquity'. Jim set the ball rolling, chaired first with Jo Ann Hackett and then Paula McNutt, who later co-chaired the group with David Gunn. Throughout the adventurous life of this discussion group he was the vital source of its energy and vision. From its outset the project embodied one of Jim's abiding commitments, namely the mentoring and encouragement of graduate students and scholars in the early stages of their careers. The group provided a 'safe space' for expression and critique of ideas that did not always mesh neatly with the conventions of graduate programs or the 'grooves' of academe. Jim creatively drew together new and established scholars from diverse fields and set them talking imaginatively. For example, one session, in which Louise Hitchcock offered a spatial analysis of Minoan palaces and Charles Carter an ethno-archaeological approach to temples and taxation in ancient Israel, used a panel including scholars directing graduate studies to view the specific projects from the perspective of integrating disciplines in graduate school programs. Jim regularly pulled into the group's purview paper contributors and respondents from an amazing range of disciplines. Archaeologists and critics of biblical literature found themselves thinking, for example, about technology and the social construction of meaning in the case of the Eiffel Tower, the foundations of copyright law in the romantic movement, and the rhetoric of textual status in Japanese texts (this last a contribution by Jim's CWRU colleague, Bill Deal). Jim urged us to look for both the illuminating differences and the, often surprising, shared constructs. He looked for themes that exposed thinking about boundaries across a spectrum of perspectives, so that one session examined identity issues ranging from Eric Meyers's zooarchaeological account of ethnic complexity at Sepphoris to Claudia Camp's deconstructive reading of the literature of postexilic priestly boundaries ('On Lineages and Levites, Sisters and Strangers'). Embedded in the group's agenda, moreover, was an acknowledgment of the interrelation of technologies of communication and the production of knowledge. The group considered, for example, the impact of digital technology on research in biblical and cognate studies in theory and in practice. From the mid-nineties, papers were posted ahead of the meeting to a

8

'Imagining' Biblical Words

web site of Jim's devising (link from www.guildzone.org) and participants began to experiment with pre-meeting web- or email-based discussion, enabling valuable preliminary analysis of shared issues and participation from scholars situated around the globe. The group's final years saw Jim encouraging a move into the discussion of space. Starting in 1996 he presented papers on the construction of ancient space in the Constructs group and in a variety of other venues, moving from an overview of developments 'outside' biblical studies to an analysis of the ideological dimensions of biblical mapping. Characteristically, he pressed for greater theoretical awareness and in 1998 presented to the Constructs group an agenda, 'Constructs of Space, Place, and Territoriality in Ancient Southwest Asia', for the critical study of space or 'critical spatiality', pointing to the work of postmodern theorists, including David Harvey and especially geographer Edward Soja, whose work draws on that of Henri Lefebvre. Jon Berquist followed up the next year, the last for the group, with a further survey of theories of space as they might relate to our construction of the ancient world, and the scene was set for a new enterprise. In 2000 Jim and Jon founded a new program unit, the 'Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar', sponsored by both SBL and AAR, making it one of few remaining jointly sponsored units. Again the composition of the seminar, with members of both societies, echoes Jim's strong belief in the value of bringing into dialogue scholars from diverse fields. Again, too, his focus is upon an area of rapidly growing research that is truly on the cutting edge. Again, typically, he has been doing the groundwork to enable serious integrative and collaborative research to take place creatively in the age of electronic space. Jim's own writing on space, and the work he has done to open up critical spatiality as a major dimension of our thinking about the ancient world, might well be described in words that he himself has set in the foreground. Edward Soja says in the Introduction to his own Thirdspace (1996: 1) that its objective can be simply put: It is to encourage you to think differently about the meanings and significance of space and those related concepts that compose and comprise the inherent spatiality of human life: place, locations, locality, landscape, environment, home, city, region, territory, and geography. In encouraging you to think differently, I am not suggesting that you discard your old and familiar ways of thinking about space and spatiality, but rather that you question them in new ways that are aimed at opening up and expanding the scope and critical sensibility of your already established spatial or geographical imaginations.

Introduction

9

Jim grew up on a farm in Iowa, in an Irish Catholic family. His family is very close to him, and he feels a close tie to the land. Should he walk down the road and on up the hill he would come to an invisible line, marking the watershed between two valleys, one Catholic and the other Protestant. A cemetery straddles the crest of the hill, the town cemetery in which only Protestants are buried. The land around it is Catholic owned, for his grandfather not only held the land on the Catholic side but bought property on the other side as well. But he knew this second farm was in Protestant territory and so did not keep it for Catholics but leased it instead to Protestants. Owned by Catholics, it was nonetheless still 'Protestant land'. And the cemetery, by a happenstance of history (which is recounted one way by Catholics and another by Protestants) was Protestant despite its location. The Catholics are buried some distance away, on unambiguously 'Catholic land'. While his grandfather taught in the little public school, some hundred yards further into Protestant land, he would not permit his children to be educated there. Protestant children belonged there. Jim grew up in a rich and complex construction of space, religion, ethnicity and history. One might hazard a guess that he has been unpacking some of that complexity ever since and will continue to do so, to our great profit. To an energetic and visionary scholar, mentor, colleague, friend, who has given great service to our several fields, it is an honor to present these essays on the occasion of his retirement. David M.Gunn Paula M. McNutt Editors, and on behalf of the Contributors Spring 2002

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JAMES W. FLANAGAN Books 1975 1988

Web sites 1997 1997

Articles etc. 1972

1975 1976 1977 1979 1981

1982a

1982b

No Famine in the Land: Studies in Honor of John L. McKenzie, co-edited with Anita W. Robinson (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press). David's Social Drama: A Hologram of Israel's Early Iron Age (Social World of Biblical Antiquities Series, 7; JSOTSup, 73; Atlanta: Almond Press; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).

Tell Nimrin. A virtual archaeological site, http://www.cwru.edu/affil/nimrin or http://www.guildzone.org. GuildZone. A site fostering innovative multidisciplinary research and the sharing of its results (including Constructs of the Social and Cultural Worlds of Antiquity Group, 1997-99, and Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar, 2000-). http://www.guildzone.org.

'Court History or Succession Document? A Study of 2 Samuel 9-20 and 1 Kings \-2\JBL9\\ 172-81. 'Judah in All Israel', in James W. Flanagan and Anita W. Robinson (eds.), No Famine in the Land (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press): 101-16. 'History, Religion, and Ideology: The Caleb Tradition', Horizons 3: 17585. 'The Deuteronomic Meaning of kol yisra'eV, Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 6: 159-68. 'The Relocation of the Davidic Capital', JAAR 47: 223-44. 'Chiefs in Israel', JSOT 20: 47-73. Reprinted in Carol Meyers and Charles Carter (eds.), Community, Identity, and Ideology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996); reprinted in David Chalcraft (ed.), Social Scientific Old Testament Criticism (A SheffieldReader)(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997): 150-74; reprinted in J. Cheryl Exum (ed.), The Historical Books (A Sheffield Reader) (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997): 142-66. 'Genealogy and Dynasty in the Early Monarchy of Israel and Judah', in Moshe Goshen-Gottstein (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Congress of Jewish Studies): 23-28. 'Models for the Origins of Israelite State: A Modern Case Study', in Kent H. Richards (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature 1982 Seminar Papers (Chico, CA: Scholars Press): 135-56.

Select Bibliography of James W. Flanagan 1983a

1983b

1985

1987 1989a

1989b 1990 1991 1992a 1992b 1992c

1992d

1994a

1994b

1994c 1995 1996a

1996b

1996c

11

'Social Transformation and Ritual in 2 Samuel 6', in Carol L. Meyers and Michael P. O'Connor (eds.), The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman (Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 361-72. 'Succession and Genealogy in the Davidic Dynasty', in Herbert B. Huffmon, Frank A. Spina and A.R.W. Green (eds.), The Quest for the Kingdom of God: Studies in Honor of George E. Mendenhall (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 35-55. 'History as Hologram: Integrating Literary, Archaeological, and Comparative Sociological Evidence', in Kent H. Richards (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature 1985 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press): 291314. 'Beyond Space-Time Systemics', JSOT39: 22-29. '2 Samuel', in Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer and Roland E. Murphy (eds.), New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall): 154-59. 'Archaeology and the Bible', The Bible Today 27: 263-69. Tell Nimrin Excavation: 1989 Season', co-authored with David W. McCreery, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 34: 131-52. Chalcolithic Cyprus, co-edited with Kenneth Hamma (Santa Monica, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust). 'Samuel: Text and History', ABD, V: 957-65. 'Tell Nimrin Excavation: 1990 Season', co-authored with David W. McCreery, Annual of the Department of Antiquities in Jordan 36: 89-111. 'New Constructs in Social World Studies', in David Jobling, Peggy L. Day and Gerald T. Sheppard (eds.), The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press): 209-23. 'Technology and the Constructs of Social World Studies', in Eugene Lovering (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press): 461-81. 'Tell Nimrin. Preliminary Report on the 1993 Season', co-authored with David W. McCreery and Khair N. Yassine, Annual of the Department of Antiquities in Jordan 38: 205-44. 'Tell Nimrin Excavation: The Byzantine Coins from the 1993 Season', co-authored with David W. McCreery and Khair N. Yassine, Annual of the Department of Antiquities in Jordan 38: 245-65. 'Tell Nimrin', co-authored with David W. McCreery and Khair N. Yassine, in Glen Peterman, 'Archaeology of Jordan', AJA 98: 535-536. 'Finding the Arrow of Time: Constructs of Ancient History and Religion', Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 3: 37-80. Tell Nimrin. Preliminary Report on the 1995 Season', co-authored with David W. McCreery and Khair N. Yassine, Annual of the Department of Antiquities in Jordan 40: 271-92. 'David', 'Monarchy' and 'Solomon', in Carroll Stuhlmueller (ed.), The Collegeville Pastoral Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press): 197-99, 638-41, 931-32. 'The Construction of Ancient Space', paper presented to the Constructs of the Social and Cultural Worlds of Antiquity Group at the Annual Meeting

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'Imagining'Biblical Words

1998

1999

2000 2001

of the AAR and SBL, New Orleans, 24 November, www. guildzone.org (link to 'Constructs Group'). 'Constructs of Space, Place, and Territoriality in Ancient Southwest Asia', paper presented to the Constructs of the Social and Cultural Worlds of Antiquity Group at the Annual Meeting of the AAR and SBL, Orlando, 21 November, http://www.guildzone.org (link to 'Constructs Group'). 'Ancient Perceptions of Space / Perceptions of Ancient Space', in Ronald A. Simkins, Stephen L. Cook and Athalya Brenner (eds.), The Social World of the Hebrew Bible: Twenty-Five Years of the Social Sciences in the Academy (Semeia, 87; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature [actual publication date 2001]): 15-43. 'Space', in A.K.M. Adam (ed.), Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (St. Louis: Chalice): 232-37. 'Mapping the Biblical World: Perceptions of Space in Ancient Southwestern Asia', in Jacqueline Murray (ed.), Mappa Mundi: Mapping Culture/Mapping the World (Working Papers in the Humanities, 9; Windsor, Ontario: Humanities Research Group, University of Windsor): 1-18.

Series Editor The Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series (Atlanta: Almond Press; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Bernhard Lang 1983 Monotheism and the Prophetic Minority: An Essay in Biblical History and Sociology (SWBAS, 1). David Noel Freedman and David F. Graf (eds.) 1983 Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel (SWBAS, 2). David C. Hopkins 1985 The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age (SWBAS, 3). Frank S. Frick 1985 The Formation of the State in Ancient Israel: A Survey of Models and Theories (SWBAS, 4). Robert B. Coote and Keith W. Whitelam 1987 The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective (SWBAS, 5). Robert G. Boling 1988 The Early Biblical Community in Transjordan (SWBAS, 6). James W. Flanagan 1988 David's Social Drama: A Hologram of Israel's Early Iron Age (SWBAS, 7; JSOTSup, 73). Paula M. McNutt 1990 The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism, and Tradition in Ancient Society (SWBAS, 8; JSOTSup, 108). David W. Jamieson-Drake 1991 Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Socio-Archaeological Approach (SWBAS, 9; JSOTSup, 109).

Parti SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS

CRITICAL SPATIALITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

Jon L. Berquist1

The academic study of religion began to emerge as a distinctive enterprise with the shifting from theologically based to territorially based understandings of religion. Concerns with documenting the high god and the original monotheism blended into more neutral, less theological concerns with a study of religion centered on beginnings or origins. In the nineteenth century, religion, seen on a worldwide stage, began to be thought of in terms of classifications in space and time (Gill 1998: 301).

Although the shift to a consideration of space within religious studies can trace its origins to the nineteenth century, the ramifications of such notions have proceeded slowly at best, especially in biblical studies. The wideranging changes in the perceptions of space, of which Einstein's work stands as a primary example in the early twentieth century, did not reach the worlds of philosophy and religious studies for several more decades. Current literature on space routinely nods to Michel Foucault's 1967 lecture, 'Of Other Spaces', as the first time that space began to have a history, or at least a possibility for a history, as it connected with the genealogical projects of Foucault's critical historical work (Foucault 1972, 1986). Yet the notions of space and its history remained sparsely developed within the Foucauldian corpus. Nevertheless, for the last three and a half decades, more or less, philosophers and other academics have gained in the sense that space is a vital and necessary category of discourse, even a historical discourse (Clark 1992; Casey 1997). Space has a genealogy and a history; it exists as a constructed category within the framework of human experience. Space is 1. An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper to the Constructs of the Social and Cultural Worlds of Antiquity Group, at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature, November 20, 1999, in Boston, MA.

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something we make, create, produce, shape, reshape, form, inform, disform and transform. All these human activities are operations upon space, leaving traces that mark its history and its shape. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the field of critical spatiality asserted itself as a distinctive scholarly voice. Within the growing body of literature on critical spatiality, the terms space and spatiality refer to aspects of reality that involve concepts of distance, height, width, breadth, orientation and direction, and also human perceptions, constructions and uses of these aspects. Critical spatiality encompasses those theories that self-consciously attempt to move beyond modernist, mechanistic, essentialist understandings of space; thus, critical spatiality understands all aspects of space to be human constructions that are socially contested. This study of space finds natural allegiances and shared language with a diverse range of fields, such as critical human geography, geology and geography of specific areas under study, psychological analyses of sensory perception, physics, sociology and postmodern philosophy (Benko and Strohmayer 1997; Crang and Thrift 2000). Perceiving Space To understand the development of critical spatiality, one must first consider the twentieth century's major shifts in physics and in social organization, which have framed the discussion of space and its meaning. The work of Albert Einstein has contributed a focus on the interrelatedness of space, time, matter and energy. All of them have become variables; none of them are seen any longer as fixed entities. Space itself curves around gravitational wells. A multitude of seeming anomalies stems from the relativity of space. With Einstein, physics moved further in its assertion that there is no absolute framework for perception. Space is not an absolute. Space is relative to the speed and motion of the observer. In a strange sense, Einstein's work restored the observer and the human to the arena of cosmological physics. Werner Heisenberg' s work both increased and problematized the role of the observer. Observers face serious limits in what they can observe, because no one can perceive simultaneously both location and direction of some objects. Likewise, many situations require an observer that affects the observed. The binary opposition of observer and observed, typical of earlier scientific understandings of space and motion, resolved into an interrelationship of participants. Heisenberg left us with little opportunity

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to talk of space, but only of spatial relationships that might have been very different had we not perceived them as we have. Such is quantum reality; the indeterminacy of reality itself shifts into particular observed states by the act of observation, even though that observation never proceeds beyond the partial. This pertains especially to the aspects of reality that make up space. In mathematics, fractal geometry has pushed notions of space and dimension. Traditional geometries have been constructs of straight lines or fixed simple curves. These geometries have provided the basis for almost all of our thinking about particular spaces and especially about maps. Thus, almost all of our maps—and most of the understandings that we base on those mental maps—have reflected either rectilinear or spherical geometries. But fractals operate differently, dealing with complex curves that replicate themselves at many scales or even at an infinite number of scales. One of the best examples is to ask how one measures a coastline. One can draw a straight line from one point of coast to another (perhaps from one state border to the next) and measure the straight line. Such a measurement greatly underestimates the distance that it takes to drive along a coastal road with its many curves. A still longer path would be that of the beach walker, and if it is a rocky coast with many rocks, one has to decide whether to step over the rock or to trace its contours. For humans, we can step over the rocks, but smaller creatures, such as ants, must circumnavigate the rock, thus taking a longer path to traverse the 'same' distance. That decision replicates itself with every grain of sand. The sand appears small on one scale, but if one wants a finer measurement, then the difference between the sand particle's diameter and its circumference becomes highly significant. Such is a principle akin to fractals; within each measurement, there reside other things to measure. There is not a homogeneity within space; inside each unit (which itself is a problematic term) there is great variety, perhaps as great a variety as exists within the larger picture. Fractals problematize the notion of scale in space. Most of our previously held notions of space have rested upon the assumption that there is scale, which is an absolute sense that large objects contain smaller objects of less complexity, and within space there are units that are exactly measurable and uniform in quality. Fractal space is considerably more textured and much messier. Scale becomes meaningless. At any size under consideration, there are an infinite number of complex pieces into which the object can be divided, and an infinite number of larger patterns into

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which the object can be meaningfully integrated. There is no ' smallest' or 'largest' scale. Related to fractals are complex systems and chaos theory. Society has even popularized one of the early examples of this: the so-called butterfly effect. A butterfly that flaps its wings in one part of the world may cause a thunderstorm elsewhere. In other words, there is no scale of small causes related to small effects versus large causes related to large effects. Space exists as constructed and interrelated, but without scale, without absolute framework, without discrete causality, and without determinacy. On a social scale, the realities of globalization have produced and are producing new understandings of space. In part, this is cultural, because persons from different cultures understand space differently. These differences and their interactions keep making new notions of space. This has been true at least as long as Disney's animatrons have been singing 'It's a Small World', but globalized communications technologies have furthered the public awareness of social interconnectedness. Note that the singers do not claim that time is relative, or that speed is greater, but that space has shifted! Here the strong contributions of postcolonialism have begun their effect on and in the academy. The resistance to Western hegemony within academic thought and discourse has created new ways of thinking about almost every academic topic, including space. Cultural variations have made the world (the very world that has been described as a suddenly 'small world') seem much larger and more diverse than ever before (cf. Tuan 1996). New cultural resources will enrich notions of space and will shift attention away from the classical and traditional Western concepts. But postcolonialism is much more than the result of communication across diverse cultures— even though travel, exile and displacement are major themes (Tuan 1996; Suleiman 1998; McDowell 1999; Mohanram 1999). Postcolonialist studies demonstrate the relativity of different concepts, the constructed nature of all the notions that the dominant culture has taken as givens, and the social and ideological power that holds together the constructedness of these assumptions about reality, along with the resistances against those powers, including the resistance against their notions of geography. The neutrality of models of social construction thus gives way to the evaluative ideas of an ideological criticism. As a result, new ways of knowing develop from other spaces and within old spaces. Space itself is much more convoluted. The ways that power has attempted to create a monolithic Western space begin to shatter, with the result that spaces multiply with great potential.

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Development of Critical Spatiality In recent years, critical spatiality has developed through several important scholarly contributions. At this stage, the conversation between these works is not great, but these scholars are building a body of literature that serves as the basis for a wider conversation about critical spatiality. Some common themes are emerging, while other notions are increasingly contested. Yi-Fu Tuan presented one of the key works in critical spatiality with Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977). As the subtitle indicates, Tuan's interests are in the ways that people experience space. In this sense, his work mirrors the move in physics to restore the observer. Tuan begins with an exploration of what experience means (1977: 8-33); this psychological and phenomenological orientation pervades his work. This assumption means that he is able to engage in helpful comparative work, because he is not assuming a standard or normative construction of space, but rather exploring the actual ways that specific peoples experience space and construct a sense of place, including attachment. This happens at many different scales (1977: 149; 1996; Taylor 1999). Michel Foucault set a different agenda for space throughout his work. Although his article 'Of Other Spaces' (Foucault 1986) has drawn the most attention, his work in the archaeology of knowledge exercises a vast influence as well (Foucault 1972). Foucauldian thought resists summary, and his diffuse thoughts on space all the more so. He moved social constructionism to stronger prominence and made connections between knowledge and power, which is the social and ideological force needed to maintain the knowledge as knowledge. By holding all knowledge as constructions of force, Foucault set the stage for an analysis of space as a construction. Foucault's introduction of the concept of other spaces, heterotopia, began in rather simple fashion. His examples included the cemetery—a place outside the normal movements of life, perhaps a place that people pass without ever seeing. In a sense, heterotopia violate the unity of space, much in the same way that fractal geometries provide a texture. Society may define space as for the living, but in between the lived spaces exist their opposite, such as the cemetery. For Foucault, heterotopia are not imagined places but real places that almost delete themselves from public consciousness. They are null sites in awareness, yet inevitable and vital to the construction of space. One might also think of the spaces inhabited by the homeless in major American cities. The perceptions of space are always non-perceptions of adjacent spaces, but these nearby heterotopia

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are necessary for the construction of space and for the understanding of space. The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre appeared in French in 1974 and in English in 1991. This may well be the most important single book in the current development of critical spatiality. Lefebvre approaches the search for a science of space as a Marxist philosopher and sociologist (Boer 2000; Shields 1999). Thus, his work concentrates on the ways that particular ideas of space are creations of political practice, social system, division of labor and mode of production. Furthermore, Lefebvre demonstrates the ideology of space, that is, how the constructions of space perpetrated by capitalist uses of knowledge simultaneously function to hide their own constructedness. In other words, any notion of space serves to support certain political interests while masquerading in a neutrality and an objectivity. But Lefebvre argues that space is not objective or passive, but an active force that is knowledge and action. The study of space that Lefebvre both desires and implements has three fields—the physical, the mental and the social (Lefebvre 1991: 11). Thus, any discussion of space must include what physicists call space, what people think about space, and the social relations that produce such ideologies and thoughts about space. Space itself, as Lefebvre uses the term, integrates all three of these fields, and he discusses them all simultaneously without privileging one over another or considering them at all separable. Each field is interrelated to the others and participates with the others in the construction and use of space. Lefebvre's book traces a movement among these fields. Based in production, he begins with social space (Lefebvre 1991: 68-168) and its effects as it produces and reproduces itself throughout the constructed world (pp. 169-228), from which he can move to the mental superstructures of space (pp. 229-351) as a basis for forming ideologies of resistance to the capital-produced space (pp. 352-400). Overall, he sees space not only as a construction but as a project, and thus he proposes a different project, in which other social relations produce space. These counterprojects would displace capitalist space in a world no longer split along the lines of the class struggle (pp. 416-23). Lefebvre integrates the classic Marxist sociology with concerns of space, and deals directly with the issues of the observer's effects on the observed. In that sense, his work is not only a treatise on space but a call to radical action through the creation of a different space.2 2. The Utopian nature of Lefebvre's project echoes throughout the work of David Harvey, especially his most recent book, Spaces of Hope (Harvey 2000).

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Edward W. Soja has taken Lefebvre's work into an explicitly American context (Soja 1996). This is true in some of Soja's particular studies, such as his focus on Los Angeles. But Soja has also modified and re-expressed Lefebvre's theoretical base in relevant and helpful ways. Although Lefebvre had discussed the difference between represented, conceived and lived space (Lefebvre 1991: 362), Soja transforms this theoretical move from a logical effect of the mode of productions (as it is for Lefebvre) into the center of a critical spatiality. In so doing, Soja shifts the grounding from Lefebvre's explicit Marxist concentration on modes of production (including material, social and ideological effects) into a more postmodern intellectual context. The reader thus should not feel surprise that Soja references Foucault, Lefebvre and bell hooks with equal ease. As a result, Soja's presentation is much more suitable to analysis of odd spaces, such as theme parks and the virtuality of cyberspace, than Lefebvre would be. As modes of information join and compete with modes of production, the resultant new virtual spaces are closer to Soja's understanding than to Lefebvre's (Flanagan 1999a; Poster 1990). Soja writes of three spaces: Firstspace (geophysical realities as perceived), Secondspace (mapped realities as represented) and Thirdspace (lived realities as practiced). Soja intends critical spatiality to study these as one thing; space is ineluctably all three at once. The study of space sees the connections. Within the book Thirdspace and in subsequent development, Soja concentrates on the praxis of space with a special interest in the use of space to resist. The praxis of the margins to destabilize the constructed space is an act of Thirdspace. Soja refers to this as Thirdspace-asOthering, which he also understands as space without scale (Soja 1996: 86; cf. 6 Tuathail 1996). Although Soja's work has not displaced other perspectives on spatiality, his notions of three spaces and Thirdspace have gained a widespread currency among both geographers and philosophers. This is most notable in the work of the human geographer Robert David Sack, whose most recent writings (Sack 1997) move beyond his earlier concentration on place and home (Sack 1986,1992) to a new interest in moral action with a clear debt to Soja (1989), especially in the use of triads. Yet there are also those such as Derek Gregory (1994), who critique Lefebvre and Soja in the context of social theory and the postmodern shift. Also, Soja's Thirdspace-as-Othering is similar to the philosopher Nancy's sense of the world (Nancy 1997), and participates in the postmodern obsession with margins (Latour 1993: 122); continuing these conversations between Soja

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and other theorists will be a necessary preoccupation. Soj a's theories have begun to impact biblical studies and social world studies of ancient Southwest Asian religion, especially through the work of James W. Flanagan (1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2000), Paula M. McNutt (1999a and this volume) and other members of the Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar in the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature.3 The Prospects of Critical Spatiality Although scholarship in biblical studies and in ancient Southwest Asian religious studies have only begun to interact with critical Spatiality, there are many possibilities for how these theories can shape the fields. It remains to be seen which of these directions will be most beneficial, and the continuing development of the theoretical material in critical Spatiality is likely to open up new avenues for scholarly investigation. Rethinking Maps Traditional maps of ancient Israel and other locations in biblical studies have functioned as political boundary maps. However, scholars have in the last several decades increasingly recognized the problematic natures of such maps. These need to be rejected, while recognizing the true importance of politics more than ever. Methods for mapping politics are present in historical geography and are even used upon occasion in the study of contemporary religion; biblical scholarship can gain from the work already done there. It is instructive that some of the earliest work on the social world of ancient Israel concentrated on chiefdoms, tribes and segmented societies (Flanagan 1999b). Scholars usually note this as a departure from previous academic treatments, due to the insertion of concepts from anthropology and sociology; in other words, the developments are treated as the historical arrival of different generations of academic thought. But note that we could also explain this as a change in spatialities, away from the monarchic/mythological spatialities that had informed traditional political-boundary maps and moving toward models that were 'unmappable' by those standards because they relied on social interaction at different scales. Scholarship's traditional use of maps has confused representations and reality. Two-dimensional maps are not real, since reality is (at least) three3. This seminar began in 2000 with James W. Flanagan and Jon L. Berquist as cochairs.

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dimensional. Representations that exist in only one or two dimensions are imaginary. Maps participate in a Firstspace project of perceiving and measuring space, but maps are always Secondspace products that structure conceptions of space and reinforce certain ideas and the hierarchies that undergird those ideas. We have a strong example in Norman K. Gottwald's The Tribes ofYahweh (1979). In a sense, Gottwald's study results from a question of space, in that he asked about elevation. This third dimension became crucial—did people live differently based on their altitude of highlands versus valleys? The introduction of a dimension led to new insights. New kinds of maps (i.e. topological maps instead of political boundary maps) reflected other Firstspace measurements but resulted in alternative Secondspace interpretations of Israelite existence. The relationships between people appeared to be quite different when viewed in this way. We need to rethink what we mean by 'where'. The question of where is not answered on a map. We cannot say that something comes 'from Israel', because fractal space means that 'in Israel' refers to an infinity of spaces. The spatial tropes of our academic discourse are not only quite often spatially inaccurate, but they also participate in disingenuous defacings of the human. To identify the location of a practice or the origin of an object as 'Israel' (or a given city or region) is to use space to obscure and to displace the people who are actors (subjects of the practice and creators of the objects) (Werlen 1993). With inattention to class, gender, age, agency, individuality, economics and a range of other factors, the gesture to geography hypnotizes scholarship into forgetting the people involved as well as the social relations and modes of production. If something is 'in Israel', where is its location in terms of society? The question of 'where' always requires the question 'according to whom'. Space is not neutral or objective; there is no magical space to stand from which one can observe space without perspective. There is no terminology that one can use to speak of space neutrally. Thus, any talk of space is talk of meaning—-the meaning that interpreters attach to space. Social labeling theory offers a fruitful alliance here. Do we call the area Israelite, Canaanite or Palestinian? A second set of examples would deal with the way terms affect what we include as the range of meaningful comparisons, such as occurs when we use the terms circum-Mediterranean or Southwest Asian. But really all of the examples mix the political and the cognitive, or (in Lefebvre's terms) the social and the mental. To some extent, this was already recognized by one of the precursors to current critical spatiality, Gaston Bachelard (1994).

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Heterotopia Scholarship's long-standing difficulties with generalizations are challenged by Foucault's notions of heterotopia. Gottwald's study focused productively on one kind of heterotopia: the highlands that exist between cities, which had previously been understudied. Other such 'invisible' places exist within the areas that scholars study. Some of these places would have been ignored by ancient persons, because their society obscured the existence of such locations through social practices of avoidance and ideologies of denial. But other heterotopia are the result of contemporary practices of scholarship that also obscure the ancient social world. We must continue to ask questions and to interrogate the spatial assertions of biblical scholarship. We must ask if the claim points to physical, social or mental reality—and we must suggest ways that space is different between these. We should inquire into the heterotopia between one region and another, at large and small scales. These heterotopia resist the universalizations that are scholarly commonplaces. Every choice of which region to study and what boundaries to draw around that region creates heterotopia, which are themselves worthy of study. Postcolonialism Critical spatiality requires attention to the positions from which we perform our scholarship. In this work, postcolonial studies will be essential. The work of Edward Said (1978) has already been instrumental in biblical studies' move toward postcolonialism, and other works are of clear importance even if their ramifications for the academic study of religion have not yet been fully articulated (Bhabha 1994; 6 Tuathail 1996). Increasing numbers of biblical scholars are building an impressive and diverse body of literature in this important area (Donaldson 1996; Sugirtharajah 1998,1999; Dube 2000). Although works connecting postcolonialism and spatiality are beginning to appear (Dube 1998), the interaction between these fields promises to expand greatly as newer theoretical works in postcolonialism are brought into dialogue with religious and biblical studies and as a fuller range of vernacular hermeneutics comes into Western awareness (Sugirtharajah 1999). The power relations that create heterotopia in the ancient world, as well as those power relations in the contemporary world, require analysis, as does their interaction (Davies 1992a; Whitelam 1996). The Sense of Place Critical spatiality must also concern itself with what is at stake in a sense of place (Tuan 1977: 149-78). Why would ancient people consider

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themselves as having a certain spatial orientation; that is, why would they call themselves Israelite, or Persian, or any of the other geographic/spatial determinations that are extant in the records? What senses of identity are expressed in spatial terms, and how does this vary throughout the canon? Does a certain spatial term of identity mean the same thing from one book to another? Does it mean different things to persons of different classes? This is perhaps the central question of critical human geography: how do people interpret space in ways that produce a sense of home (Gregory 1994; Tuan 1996; Sack 1997)? Concepts of exile depend upon this sense of place as well, and are clearly important both in critical spatialiry and in biblical studies (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1995; Hammer 1994; Barnes 1996; Bhabha 1994; Duncan and Ley 1993; McDowell 1999; Suleiman 1998; Tuan 1998). But also, how do we imagine this sense of space? Do we identify a person as Israelite, or as Jerusalemite, or as something else, when that person might have self-identified in any of those ways? The problem is made more difficult by language, when we use English words with their own signification. Which of these spatial terms come closest to the ancient perceptions? Further, what are the political ramifications of using any of these titles in the present world? When identity is at play, it is not possible to speak only of ancient identity, because the political battles over identity will not stay in only one time period (Whitelam 1996). Part of this will likely be a return to an old topic in biblical studies: the cosmological worldview of the ancients. However, this look at mythical space and place may appear quite different in the context of a critical spatiality (Tuan 1977: 85-100). Identity Every question of 'where' requires the question of 'according to whom'. In other words, space implicates perspective, and thus it also involves identity. Consider: who is a Yehudite? An ally of Jerusalem leaders? A devotee of temple worship? A loyal Persian vassal? A consumer of Greek goods? A cousin of someone a few villages over? Identity is always problematic and always contested and conflictual (Dunn 1998). It is an extension of self over against the world and the other, and often space is part of this extension (Doyle 1999). 'Thirdspace and similar theories suggest that competing spatialities co-exist. Logically, the more complex the historical and social conditions, the more Thirdspaces there are in play at any one time' (Flanagan 1999a: 9). All of these

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interrelationships are spatial and social; thus, they are all involved in the production of identity. Each identity element is a spatial practice; each could be mapped, if anything could be mapped. The unique positional overlapping forms identity. What it means to be Israelite or Yehudite—and all of the scholarly assertions that depend upon those constructs—is at stake. Related to this is our understanding of the religious uses of space. For instance, the practices called qadosh have been translated into religious language as holiness when they more directly refer to separation—a set of spatial practices. Scholarship must attend to how this is a physical separation, as well as a set of meanings about what locations mean and also a codification of the practices related to space. The Hebrew Bible is obsessed with space. The matter of the land is paramount—its conquest, its occupation and its loss. Although scholarly reconstructions of conquest, exile and restoration have been found faulty, the matter remains that the Hebrew Bible concerns itself with land and thus with space. At the same time, we must avoid the easy identification of sacred spaces and social centers. Jonathan Z. Smith's critiques of Mircea Eliade's work should not be taken lightly (Smith 1978, 1987; Gill 1998: 304-305). However, future scholarship in critical spatiality will not replicate or extend the agendas of either Eliade or Smith, but instead draw upon the resources of newer work to rethink the enterprise. Urbanization Under the rubric of urbanization, scholarship should study large-scale physical effects of ancient spatial practices. Much work has been done on urban centers, urbanization processes and the practices of city life. Urban life is a different set of spatial practices, and thus our understanding of cities in the ancient world can be enhanced by examining how cities and city dwellers interact spatially with the rest of the world. This must include the local areas (the daughter cities), the neighboring rural areas and the distant cities with which there is trade. Along with this should be considered new initiatives in demography. Work in this crucial aspect of Israelite settlement is quite limited at present. Few scholars have possessed the critical and analytical tools to assess population density in specific times and places (Tuan 1977:51-66). Demographic study will concentrate on both urban and rural areas, but urbanization will be the primary focus for critical spatiality because of the complex ways in which cities use space. Monuments and architecture warp space to

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create the effect of a city, and so these issues become integral to the understanding of the processes and instances of urbanization (Lefebvre 1991: 169-228). The extensive work on the critical spatiality of postmodern cities will be an important point of departure for realizing both the commonalities of urban experience and the specificities of ancient city life. The shift to a discourse of practices instead of locations and meanings (i.e. to Thirdspace instead of Firstspace or Secondspace) will be crucial. Interrelatedness The practices of spatial interrelatedness are more general than urbanization, but include economics and trade (Boer 2000; Dodgshon 1998). They also must involve cultural boundaries, as well as their observances and transgressions. This study explores both symbolic and social uses of space, and is sensitive to the ways that these overlap. Resources here include economics and sociology, and topics include an array of matters from language to cooking customs to luxury goods. This involves a change from understanding a space of places/locations to a space of flows (Castells 1996). Space is inherently relational, not static. One of the tendencies increasingly perpetrated by scholars in this era of GPS-space is the digital construal of space. With a digital perception, one can give a number to a place (equivalent to its number on a map) and thus identify it. But this makes one think of points, not of space. Space is location and context simultaneously; in fact, one might say that space is the interrelatedness between a point and its context. One can think of this interrelatedness in terms of symbols. For instance, Jerusalem is not just a symbol; it is an interrelated set of an infinite number of symbols that is held by the minds of those who perceive it, each from a different perspective in space/time. The shifting symbols and metaphors of culture at different levels are part of critical spatiality (Barnes 1996; Brown 2000; Duncan and Ley 1993). However, the interest of critical spatiality concentrates not so much on the symbology but on the sociology of space. These sociological variables of spatial relationality include differentials in and movements of populace, labor, common goods and luxury goods (a special case, since a luxury good is always constituted by its distance, its spatial interrelationship constituted as lack), not to mention language, custom, architecture and many other aspects. In its analysis of multileveled cultural interactions across space, we could benefit greatly from the insights of world-systems theory (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997).

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The relationality of space points us to the practices of mapping. One must see the interactions, but one must know that they are not twodimensional nor chronically static. The interaction may be reduced to a single factor at a single time (such as distribution of languages in a given year, or spread of a given pottery design) and then mapped—but this says almost nothing real. At this point, it is worth noting that the combination of interactions may well correspond to identity—but these interactions are virtually unmappable because they are so embedded in space. To a certain extent, identity is perspective, and thus the base for perception and recognition, whereas maps are the result of the processes of perceiving space (Bammer 1994). Soja phrases this in terms of three spaces; the philosopher Nancy points to much the same need in terms of the abandonment of representation (represence) and the birth to presence (Nancy 1993), and Baudrillard also obsesses over simulations and their effect on identity (Baudrillard 1983). Beyond this, a critical spatiality must reorient us from seeing space as static units to dynamically interrelated flows, but also to understanding that different spaces affect each other. Spatial interrelationships are mutual and complex; that is, they affect all regions and entities (although in different ways) and they involve multiple subjects. Cause-and-effect language is not sufficient to understanding these spatial connections. For example, the study of the Persian period has at times asked questions about the direction on causation—did Persia dominate Yehud or did certain characteristics of Yehud (such as its monotheism) set the agenda for Persia's local policies (Berquist 1995)? In causal language, this question is quite important and certainly valid, but critical spatiality will point us to see the interrelationship as mutual (shaping and forming both parties), non-linear (perhaps even chaotic) and as complex (affecting more parties than only these two). As part of this emphasis on interrelatedness of spaces, communication in the ancient world will provide an important field for spatial study. One might begin with the following typology. Thought, which is communication with the self, is non-spatial and non-temporal (at least not in observable, measurable ways in the ancient world). Speech is locally spatial and temporal; its temporality is linear (Fish 1980). Although writing and reading are time-consuming, the written page is not temporal but entirely spatial, until the practices of reading turn space into time through accepted customs. Through writing, persons of different cities and cultures communicate across space; thus writing is a practice that creates

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social-spatial connections. This is essential to remember given that those who write often combine Firstspace and Secondspace in an attempt to repress (alternate) Thirdspaces (Flanagan 1999b). In contrast, in postcolonial settings, writing becomes a means of Thirdspace-as-Othering, using the masters' tools to dismantle the house. Maurice Blanchot also suggests a space of literature, a place where others meet (Blanchot 1982). This space is, of course, a non-space, or at least a non-Cartesian space—a void, a set of distances. Distance and space allow literature to function as communication (pp. 198-207). Literature, as any communication, is a practice of space. Of course, more traditional studies of communication emphasizing modes of message exchange over distance are also part of critical spatiality, both in the ways the space is transformed throughout practices of bringing information across it and in the ways that interacting cultures transformed each other's mental notions of the nature of space (Morley 2000). Body So far, scholarly discussions of space have dealt with large-scale effects, with few exceptions. But a thorough investigation of space should also consider the microspaces, especially that of the body (Tuan 1977: 19-50; Lefebvre 1991: 194-207; Gregory 1994:157-65,416). This allows spatial studies to connect with a very dynamic field of biblical and ancient world studies. Already, postmodern body studies have adopted a geographic terminology—the body is a site with positions, situation and orientations; activities are written upon the body, for the body is a surface that is virtually cartographic; and the practices of the body are performances that map bodily concerns into social spheres. Certainly bodies participate in the use of space in a crucial way (Mohanram 1999). Just as it is hardly possible to imagine a social practice that does not take place in space, one cannot conceive of social activities that take place without bodies. Again, the fractal abandonment of scale should shape future investigation by focusing on such smaller units as the body (Berquist 2002). In the Hebrew Bible, gender is an important aspect of how the body and space interact. Some spaces are permissible for males and others for females. This creates a cartography of gender as well as a set of Thirdspace practices that can create and resist the construction of space at the same time that they create and resist the social construction of gender (McDowell 1999).

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Constructions As we study space and spatial practices, we will deal with the question of how this study relates to the projects of modernity and postmodernity (Doel 1999; Taylor 1999). In some ways, the drive toward increasingly accurate spatial representations and eventually into more quantifiable digital modes of representation reflects the interests of modernity, whereas the emphasis on practices and the understanding of space as not natural but constructed and performed plays upon a number of postmodernist themes. Critical spatiality operates as a postmodern practice allied with a number of moves within postmodern philosophy (Flanagan 2000; Millar 2001). In another way, the momentum behind this study of space is an attempt to retrieve ancient practices of space. Although this is a matter of debate, and is certainly unprovable, I would argue that a performative notion of space is closer to the ancient world's understandings, and that our exploration leads us closer to the texts we study than modernism and the historical-critical method has done, narrowing the emic/etic distinctions in intriguing ways. As a constructionist discourse, critical spatiality will study how spaces are arranged, constructed, perceived, valued, practiced and resisted. Thus, it will be necessary to ask at every point about how any particular feature of spatiality at hand is constructed. What are the social mechanisms (ancient and modern) that produce and reproduce that space? These particular processes are vital. In places, this will call for investigation into social relations and modes of production; in other places, we will need to explore the mental landscape and logic of space. Critical spatiality offers areas in which to integrate sociological and philosophical concerns in such a way as to rethink contemporary biblical and religious scholarship and to create new constructions of the ancient world. The results of such investigation may well be alternate practices that are the customs appropriate to the new spaces we will inhabit. Through interaction with the burgeoning field of critical spatiality, biblical studies and religious studies are opening themselves to new ways to construct the social world of ancient Israel and other societies. The end of this process is not yet clear and has yet to be constructed, but the opportunities are immense. Understanding space as a constructed reality is vital to understanding the societies that inhabited those spaces, as we continue to realize the constructedness of our own images of the past and of our own scholarly practice as well.

'FATHERS OF THE EMPTY SPACES' AND 'STRANGERS FOREVER': SOCIAL MARGINALITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SPACE

Paula M. McNutt

Introduction One of the primary difficulties in trying to reconstruct the intended meanings of the writers of biblical texts, and how these were understood by their ancient audiences, is our inability to observe directly their socially shared experiences, and how these were expressed in their beliefs. My aim here is to suggest some possible scenarios for understanding the social location of marginal social groups in ancient Israel, with a particular emphasis on how 'otherness' and 'difference' are represented spatially. I will be drawing in particular on the ideas of geographer Edward Soja (1996) and French 'metaphilosopher' Henri Lefebvre, whose ideas have heavily influenced Soja. I am particularly interested in what Soja has to say about marginality, boundaries and 'otherness' or 'difference'.1 This is reflected in the title of the essay, which, I hope, will be clarified as I proceed. Soja's work is particularly interesting because he encourages us to look at space and constructs of spatiality in radically new ways. In doing this, he is not pressing us to give up our old and familiar ways of thinking about space and spatiality, but rather suggesting that we question them in new ways that are aimed at opening up and expanding the scope and critical sensibility of our already established spatial or geographical imaginations (Soja 1996:1). As intrinsically spatial beings, and active participants in the construction of our own spatialities, Soja argues, we need to begin thinking about the 1. This essay is a revised version of papers that were delivered at the 2001 CBA and SBL meetings. I am pleased to be able to include it in this volume dedicated to Jim Flanagan. As mentor, friend and colleague over the years, Jim introduced me first to the social world of ancient Israel and more recently to the world of the 'geographical imagination' that inspired this essay.

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spatiality of human life in much the same way that we approach life's historicality and sociality, and to become more aware of the social consequences of our constructions. In his work Soja emphasizes the interdependence and interwoven complexity of the social, the historical and the spatial as all-embracing dimensions of human life (Soja 1996: 1-3,10). In the past, he argues, spatiality has tended to be relegated to the background by historians and social scientists who have treated it as a 'reflection', a 'container', a 'stage', an 'environment' (p. 71). But sociality, he emphasizes, routinely produces spatiality, and vice versa, and historicality and spatiality intertwine in a similarly routine type of interrelatedness (p. 72). There is, in fact, no unspatialized social reality. All social relations become real and concrete, a part of our lived social existence, only when they are spatially 'inscribed'—that is, concretely represented in the social production of social space (p. 46). Soja's ideas are also appealing to me because of the openness and flexibility encouraged by the interpretive strategies he recommends. He urges us, for example, to remain open-minded in such debates as those between modernists and postmodernists, and to set aside demands that we always make either/or choices, leaving open the possibility of what he calls a 'both/and also' type of logic, one that encourages a creative and flexible combination of postmodernist and modernist perspectives. He invites us to enter a space of extraordinary openness, a place of critical exchange where the geographical imagination can be expanded to encompass a multiplicity of perspectives that have heretofore been considered by the epistemological referees to be incompatible, uncombinable. It is a space where issues of race, class, and gender can be addressed simultaneously without privileging one over the other; where one can be a Marxist and post-Marxist, materialist and idealist, structuralist and humanist, disciplined and transdisciplinary at the same time (1996: 5).

Soja's arguments are complex, and sometimes difficult to wade through. And because his examples and illustrations are almost exclusively from modern urban, capitalistic societies, there are difficulties in applying his ideas in interpreting the ancient social world. I hope I do not misrepresent him to too great an extent in my application of his ideas to traditional and ancient societies in what follows. Soja has described his and others' explorations of space and spatiality as 'journeys' to what he calls 'the real-and-imagined' (1996: 11). I would like to begin, therefore, by saying something about the journey that has

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brought me to Edward Soja and his explorations. The goal of my particular 'journey' to the 'real-and-imagined' has been to elucidate the roles and statuses of marginal social groups in ancient Israel, particularly the Kenites, the Midianites and the Rechabites. Representations of space have come up over and over along the way, and after reading some of Jim Flanagan's recent work on spatiality (e.g. 1999b), I began to think more about the significance of these representations. So now I am taking a side trip in my journey to look specifically at social marginality and its relationship to spatiality, the spatial representations of these particular groups in the biblical texts, and how these groups might have related to and constructed space in their lived worlds. My interest in social marginality was originally aroused when I was working on a project on the symbolism associated with iron technology in the Hebrew Bible (McNutt 1990). Along the way, I took a detour into the ethnographic literature on African and Middle Eastern societies, and became intrigued by the descriptions of the roles and statuses of smiths and artisans in these societies. This led me onto the path of trying to make sense of the social roles and statuses of the Kenites, the Midianites and the Rechabites (see McNutt 1990, 1991, 1994, 1999b), who, I believe, were associated in some way with artisans and/or metalsmiths (see also, for example, Albright 1957: 257; 1963; Frick 1971, 1992; Halpern 1992). Artisans and metalsmiths in traditional African and Middle Eastern societies tend to form marginal groups that are regarded with ambivalence by the dominant social groups with which they are associated, as seems to be the case, I argue, in the biblical portrayals of the Kenites, the Midianites and the Rechabites. I will return to this journey later on, but first I want to summarize some of Soja's views on space. Edward Soja and Henri Lefebvre With a strategy he calls 'thirding-as-Othering', Soja encourages us to open up our spatial 'imaginaries' to ways of thinking that are not confined to only two alternatives (for example, modernism versus postmodernism, historicality versus sociality), by interjecting 'an-Other' set of choices (for example, spatiality in the historicality versus sociality opposition). In this 'critical thirding', the binary choice is not dismissed, but the door is open to a creative process of restructuring that draws selectively from the two opposing categories to open new alternatives (Soja 1996: 5). This 'thirding', he claims, disrupts, disorders and begins to reconstitute the conven-

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tional binary opposition into 'an-Other' that encompasses, but is more than just the sum of, the two parts (1996:9,31; see also 60-70). Citing Lefebvre, Soja argues that each so-called 'thirding' is an 'approximation' that builds cumulatively on earlier approximations that are very intentionally incomplete, endlessly explorable, resistant to closure or easy categorical definition (p. 36). Thus, for Soja, there are no 'conclusions' that are not also 'openings' to new ways of 'imagining' the world (p. 9). The aim of this strategy is to build further, to move on, to continuously expand our production of knowledge beyond what is presently known (p. 61). Because spatiality infuses every discipline and discourse, this is a strategy that is also meant to prevent spatial knowledge and praxis from being fragmented and compartmentalized as a disciplinary specialty, or merely added on to other disciplines as a gap-filler or factual background (p. 47). Soja calls this a 'complex totality of potential knowledges'. This strategy opens up endless worlds to explore and, at the same time, presents daunting challenges. Because it is disorderly, unruly, constantly evolving, unfixed, never presentable in permanent constructions (p. 70), it challenges all conventional modes of thought and 'taken-for-granted' epistemologies. But without spatial knowledge, Soja argues, we are bound to attribute to 'mental' space the attributes and 'properties' of what is actually social space (p. 57). Soja outlines this distinction between mental and social space in a very complex argument that I oversimplify here. He identifies three spatial categories that he calls Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace. 'Thirdspace' is the category Soja emphasizes, and he relates this to his strategy of 'thirding-as-Othering'. He describes Thirdspace as 'a creative recombination and extension, one that builds on a Firstspace perspective that is focused on the "real" material world and a Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality through "imagined" representations of spatiality' (1996: 6). Soja is also concerned with the ways in which these categories of space are interpreted. He argues that they are conventionally interpreted at two different levels, what he refers to as indigenous and exogenous modes of spatial analysis. Thus, just as anthropologists distinguish between emic and etic perspectives, Soja makes a distinction between the ways in which indigenous peoples view their own space and the ways in which scholars view space in their analyses (1996: 75,79). It is important to keep in mind, then, the distinction between our own exogenous spatial imaginations and the indigenous imaginations of the biblical writer as we try to excavate spatial meanings in biblical texts. Soja points out that, for at least the past

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century, the mainstream 'spatial imagination' of exogenous interpreters has revolved primarily around what he describes as Firstspace and Secondspace perspectives. Soja's categories are similar in their essential characteristics to the three kinds of space denned by Lefebvre. These are perceived (or 'real') space, conceived (or 'imagined') space, and lived space (1996: 10). Perceived space, Soja's Firstspace, consists mainly of concrete spatial forms, things that can be empirically mapped, but are also socially produced, as mediums and outcomes of human activity, behavior and experience. This materialized, 'physical', socially produced, empirically measurable space is space that can be directly sensed and is open to relatively accurate measurement and description. Perceived space is thus apparent in the concrete and mappable geographies of our lifeworlds, ranging from the emotional and behavioral space 'bubbles' that invisibly surround our bodies to the complex spatial organization of the social practices that shape our 'action spaces' in such contexts as households, neighborhoods, villages, cities, regions and nations (1996: 10, 66, 74-75). Conceived space (Soja's Secondspace) is that space which is constructed in mental or cognitive forms (or, as Lefebvre puts it, it is 'imagined'). Conceived space is expressed in systems of 'intellectually worked out' signs and symbols, that is, in the written and spoken word. For Lefebvre, this is the dominant space in any society. Located in these 'dominating' mental spaces are the representations of power and ideology (1996: 10, 66-67). Soja notes that the boundaries between First- and Secondspace knowledge are blurred, but that Second- or conceived space epistemologies can be distinguished by their implicit assumption that spatial knowledge is constructed primarily through the spatial workings of the mind. This does not mean that there is no material reality, no Firstspace, but rather that knowledge of this material reality is comprehended essentially through thought and expressed in symbolic language and action. However its essence is defined, in conceived space the 'imagined' geography tends to become the 'real' geography, with the symbolic representation denning and ordering that 'reality'. Lived space (Soja's Thirdspace) consists of actual social and spatial practices, the immediate material world of experience and realization. Lived space overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects, and tends to be expressed in systems of nonverbal symbols and signs. For Lefebvre lived space was both distinct from physical and mental space and an all-encompassing mode of spatial thinking, as Soja puts it, a

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'transcending composite of all spaces' (1996: 62). Lived space embodies the real and imagined lifeworld of experiences, emotions, events and political choices. As Soja describes it, this space is 'directly lived', the space of'inhabitants' and 'users', containing all other real and imagined spaces simultaneously. Thus, Thirdspace is a mode of thinking about space that draws upon both the material and the mental spaces of perceived space and conceived space, but extends well beyond them in scope, substance and meaning. It is simultaneously real and imagined and more (p. 31): Everything comes together in Thirdspace: subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and concrete, the real and imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness and the unconscious, the disciplined and the transdisciplinary, everyday life and unending history. Anything which fragments Thirdspace into separate specialized knowledges or exclusive domains— even on the pretext to handling its infinite complexity—destroys its meaning and openness (Soja 1996: 56-57).

In his analysis of Thirdspace, Soja places a great deal of emphasis on the relationship among space, knowledge and power, arguing that power is embedded in the spatial relationship between center and periphery, and that lived space is shaped by the interplay between them (1996: 31). Like all social relations, power is contextualized and made concrete in the social production of social space. Soja is particularly interested in how power is used to construct and maintain 'difference', and how this relates to spatiality. Those in authority use power, he argues, actively to produce difference as a strategy for creating and maintaining social and spatial divisions that are advantageous to their continued empowerment and authority. 'We' and 'they' are thus spatialized and become enclosed in imposed territories, such as ghettos and reservations, which emanate from the center-periphery relation (p. 87). This is the dominated space that is created by the imagination of Second-or conceived space. But these lived, 'dominated' spaces are also the domain for generating what Soja calls 'counterspaces', spaces of resistance to the dominant order that arise from within subordinate, peripheral or marginalized contexts (1996: 31-32, 62-63, 67-68). Using the writings of bell hooks, Cornel West, Gloria Anzaldua, Edward Said, and others as illustrations, Soja argues that in these 'counterspaces', 'difference' can be used as a basis for community, identity and struggle against the existing power relations (p. 89). For those who use their 'differentness' in this way, who choose their marginality, the hierarchy of center and periphery is

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thwarted—the margin refuses its placement as 'Other'. Soja thus makes a definite distinction between the marginality that is imposed by oppressive structure and that marginality which is chosen as a site of resistance. This chosen marginality becomes a site one wishes to stay in, cling to, because it nourishes the capacity to resist (p. 98). bell hooks says of her experience of what Soja describes as 'Thirdspace on the margin': Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the center as well as on the margin. We understood both. This mode of seeing reminded us of the existence of a whole universe, a main body made up of both margin and center. Our survival depended on an ongoing public awareness of the separation between margin and center and an ongoing private acknowledgement that we were a necessary, vital part of that whole. This sense of wholeness, impressed upon our consciousness by the structure of our daily lives, provided us an oppositional worldview—a mode of seeing unknown to most of our oppressors, that sustained us, aided us in our struggle to transcend poverty and despair, strengthened our sense of self and our solidarity (quoted in Soja 1996: 100).

Another feature of such 'counterspaces' is the flexibility of the 'outsider's existence' in being able to shift between the 'dominant' construction of life and other constructions of life where one is more or less 'at home'. As an outsider, one can 'travel' between 'worlds' and one can inhabit more than one of these 'worlds' at the same time (Soja 1996:130). Gloria Anzaldua writes of her existence in the 'borderlands' of the US/Mexican border: ...the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy... It's not a comfortable territory to live in, this place of contradictions. Hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape. However, there have been compensations for this mestiza, and certain joys. Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an 'alien' element.. .[that] has become familiar—never comfortable... No, not comfortable but home. I have no country, my homeland casts me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman's sister or potential lover... I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the

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definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings (quoted in Soja 1996: 127-29).

Lefebvre conceptualized such 'counterspaces' as those of bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldua as spaces of radical openness, where the possibilities for new discoveries and political strategies are endless, never confined by past journeys and accomplishments, always searching for differences (Soja 1996:34). Although both Soja and Lefebvre think in terms of the 'counterspaces' in modern capitalistic societies, I will return later to considering the possibility of their existence in traditional segmented societies such as ancient Israel. To summarize, for both Lefebvre and Soja, each way of thinking about space, each field of human spatialiry—the physical, the mental, the social —are seen as simultaneously real and imagined, concrete and abstract, material and metaphorical. No one mode of spatial thinking is inherently privileged or intrinsically 'better' than the others as long as each remains open to the re-combinations and simultaneous character of the 'real-andimagined' (Soja 1996: 64-65). My Journey Here I will leave Soja and Lefebvre for a time to reflect back on the journey that has brought me to them. Reading Soja's work and reflecting on his ideas has opened many new 'imaginaries' and perspectives for me in my search to reconstruct the 'real-and-imagined' worlds and spaces of marginal artisan groups. Of these, I am going to focus on two in the remainder of the paper. One has to do with my realization that spatiality has been more central to my work than I had realized, and that what I have been primarily concerned with up to this point is Soja's Secondspace— that is, the conceived space of what Lefebvre called the 'imagination'. The second is the question of how the 'counterspaces' of Third- or lived space relate to the power relationships between 'dominant' and 'marginalized' groups, and how marginalized groups respond to these. Artisan Groups in Traditional African and Middle Eastern Societies In my previous analyses, I have interpreted the marginality of artisan groups using the work of anthropologists, especially those who are concerned with symbolic analysis. Victor Turner (e.g. 1969, 1974), Edmund Leach (e.g. 1969,1983a, 1983b) and Mary Douglas (e.g. 1966,1976) have particularly influenced my thinking. As I have reflected on their work

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since reading Soja, I realize that they are all concerned in some way with understanding Second- or conceived space, especially in their interpretations of marginality, boundaries and what Victor Turner calls 'liminality', and how these are expressed symbolically in concepts and behaviors relating to power, holiness and pollution. Keeping Soja's and Lefebvre's three modes of spatiality in mind, and how they interrelate and overlap, I would like to summarize some of my previous work, looking first at the ethnographic information on traditional African and Middle Eastern societies and then the Kenites, the Midianites and the Rechabites. Along the way, I will offer some reflections on spatiality. But before I do this, I will take one brief detour to make some comments about segmented social systems,2 and tap into Jim Flanagan's journey into spatiality (1999b). Soja makes much in his work of the interrelationship between center and periphery in modern capitalistic societies and how this is related to power. Although it is not possible for me to explain the complex character of segmented societies here, I do want to say something in general about the relations of power in them. In segmented societies, there is no permanent 'governmental' authority, no centralized power that is comparable to the modern societies with which Soja is concerned. Thus the exact ways in which he understands the relationship between center and periphery cannot be directly applied to them. But power is nevertheless an important element in segmented societies, with some segments typically having more power than others, and 'political' power being dependent on the ways in which segments relate to one another (McNutt 1999a: 78-85). As Flanagan emphasizes, both social and political identity relate essentially to group membership, and this affects the ways in which the peoples of segmented societies perceive, conceive and 'live' spatiality (1999b: 35-36). Focusing on the mode of Third- or lived space, Flanagan looks particularly at understandings of territoriality among tribal peoples, such as those of ancient Israel with segmented sociopolitical systems. Although it is significant, territory (in the Firstspace sense of the word), he argues, is not the primary measure of spatiality and spatial identity in tribal societies; that is, tribal peoples do not determine who is a member of their group and who is not by referring to physical, mappable territory. Rather, their identity, as well as how they understand and relate to 'territory', rests more in membership in a group. Pointing to Bruce Malina's comment that in such 2. On segmented systems, see, e.g., McNutt (1999a: 75-81). Segmented systems often continue to exist even within centralized systems, such as those of Israel and Judah.

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societies, people move through people, not through space, Flanagan emphasizes that their lived space thus derives more from relationships that also affect their status within society. Territories in segmented tribal societies are thus socially constructed forms of spatial relations, and the effects of these relationships depend on who is controlling whom and for what purposes (Flanagan 1999b: 35-36). Even when territorial terminology is used, as in the tribal allotments in the Hebrew Bible, this derives more from the organic link between people and space than from an abstract mapping of land or imposition of boundaries (in the Firstspace sense of the word). Members of tribes, of course, can identify their own territory and the territory of others. They know when they are among their people and when they are not. Their lived space is produced through living there. But it is constructed through 'lived' practices, such as hunting, gathering, pasturing, farming and the like. And it is shared by being part of a social group who share rights of access to it, which are typically gained through kinship alliances, which in turn are expressed in genealogies. The primary function of genealogies in segmented societies is to define social, political and economic relations, and they operate as a kind of code in which relationships of power are defined (McNutt 1999a: 76-77). But they also convey substantial spatial information, and can be used to gain perspectives on how space was constructed in ancient societies, especially given the tendency in segmented societies to mix kinship and place names—that is, self-identification can be expressed either in kinship or territorial terms. Essentially, in this type of spatiality, they are one and the same. The terms used stand for sets of relationships among peoples that are expressed sometimes by naming the peoples themselves, and at other times they stand for the spaces in which they are known to reside or control (Flanagan 1999b: 36). Returning now to the summary of my previous work—smiths and other types of artisans, such as leatherworkers, potters, sculptors and bards in traditional African societies, with segmented systems similar to those of ancient Israel, tend to form segments in the system that are marginal, and are regarded with ambivalence by the dominant social groups with which they are associated.3 In the preface to his book on Mande blacksmiths, Patrick McNaughton describes the social location of blacksmiths in spatial 3. In presenting both the African and Middle Eastern information here, I use the ' ethnographic present'. In both regions contact with Western culture has effected significant changes in the roles and statuses of artisan groups.

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terms: 'Blacksmiths in sub-Saharan Africa occupy confusing social spaces, as if they lived in two conflicting social dimensions' (1988: xiii). Because of their knowledge and their power to facilitate transformation, smiths and other types of artisans are both feared and respected. Their social and spatial separation from the dominant groups in the system may be radical, especially in societies in which they are held in low esteem (see, e.g., Hollis 1905; Huntingford 1931; Shack 1964), or it may take the form of endogamous families or guilds (see, e.g., Lloyd 1953), as seems to be typical in societies in which they are honored. In either case, contact with them is avoided. Intermarriage with them is considered by the dominant groups to be dangerous and polluting and, at least ideally, is forbidden. In these conceptions and behaviors the body, as a kind of microcosm of spatialities, functions as a metaphor for social space (Soja 1996:112,114). The lived space of avoidance behavior is a reflection and product of the ways in which the physical body (Firstspace) is conceived as dangerous and polluting (Secondspace) and an expression of social relationships. The roles and statuses attributed to smiths and other types of artisans, and the attitudes directed toward them, tend to vary according to social complexity. The general pattern is that in societies in which subsistence is based primarily on agriculture, and social organization is somewhat hierarchical, smiths and artisans are both respected and feared (see, e.g., McNaughton 1988; Conrad and Frank 1995). They are believed to possess profound knowledge and power, are highly honored, and tend to have important social roles (Thirdspace) as ritual specialists (especially in circumcision and excision rites), healers and advisers, and primary roles in creation myths. In some societies they are believed to be able to control and manipulate the power that animates the universe, and their knowledge is surrounded by secrecy (McNaughton 1988:7-21; cf. Paulme 1973: 91). However, typically they do not participate in the farming activities of the dominant groups, and they often live in separate enclaves within villages or in separate communities. Here again, we see the conceived space (Secondspace) that reflects and produces social marginality affecting the way in which physical space (Firstspace) is lived in (Thirdspace). Sometimes peoples in these groups perceive themselves as 'a separate nation' (McNaughton 1988: 3). Among pastoral peoples with less hierarchically oriented social structures, on the other hand, smiths and artisans are viewed with more ambivalence and fear (see, e.g., Hollis 1905; Huntingford 1931; Shack 1964). Intermarriage with them is considered dangerous and polluting, they are perceived as dangerous sorcerers or bearers of the 'evil eye', and they are

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often spurned, but are nevertheless held in awe. The stigma of these groups is sometimes identified with the potency of their blood, which causes them to be ritually impure and induces fear in those who do not belong to these groups. Although the Secondspace conceptions are somewhat different in these pastoral societies (for example, the association with the 'evil eye'), the lived space of avoidance behavior in relation to the physical body (Firstspace) is similar to that of the groups discussed above. The social status of these groups in pastoral societies tends to be lower, and they do not occupy prominent social positions in the lived spaces of the dominant group. However, in some cases they do have ritual functions, especially in initiation rites involving circumcision or excision. Sometimes, as among the Masai of East Africa, such groups have languages of their own, and are believed to be of a different race (Huntingford 1931). Even when they live among the dominant population, they live in separate areas, and typically they do not participate in the primary economic activities of warfare and herding. They are also often considered to be neutral in warfare. Here again we see the 'otherness' and 'difference' of lived space that is produced by Secondspace conceptions of the physical geography of Firstspace. Some studies of artisan groups in traditional African societies have pointed out that members of these groups actively reinforce the attitudes held about them by the larger population. In this way, I believe, they contribute to the creation of their own kinds of 'counterspaces', not in the sense of the 'counterspaces' of resistance that Soja emphasizes, but nevertheless spaces in which 'difference' is a basis for community and identity, spaces in which they are empowered by their 'chosen marginality'. Michael Coy says, for example, about the Kalenjin of East Africa: The smiths engage in purposeful efforts to surround their craft with secrecy, mystery, and supernaturalism in order to maintain effective monopolies over the production of iron goods in their exclusive market area. Restrictions placed on the recruitment of new smiths limit the proliferation of craftsmen, further reinforcing economic monopoly and related social control... This results in specific social status attributions on the part of the non-craftsmen as seen in...economic/ecological complexes... (1982: iv). What is described by many studies as the 'despised' status of the smith/ artisan, then, is an ideology manipulated by craftspersons to their own ends (Coy 1982: 14).

Another example of an artisan group that has been documented as intentionally reinforcing their separate identity, their 'differentness', is the

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Beta Israel or Falasha of the highland regions of northern Ethiopia. The Falasha are physically, linguistically and culturally indistinguishable from the Amhara and Tigre among whom they live. However, they differ in significant ways from the dominant groups. They are primarily known as artisans, especially ironsmiths, potters and weavers, and they possess many of the characteristics that are cited in the literature on other marginal artisan groups: traditionally they do not own land; they live either in separate villages interspersed among those of the Amhara and Tigre or in separate quarters of Amhara and Tigre towns; they do not intermarry with the Amhara and Tigre; and in general they are socially shunned (Quirin 1977:9-31). But the Falasha are distinctive in one way that is unique. In contrast to the dominant Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, they practice a syncretistic form of religion that is comprised predominantly of an ancient form of Judaism, combined with some elements of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.4 They refer to themselves as 'Beta Israel' and trace their origins back to ancient Israel. Historically, the religious leaders of the Beta Israel attempted to maintain the purity of their people by self-imposed religious isolation. Today the marginality of these people is reinforced by both the Beta Israel themselves and by the dominant groups, who call them Falasha. There are very clear rules regulating social interaction between the two groups, and these are reinforced by sanctions imposed by each side (Quirin 1977: 218). In their concern for maintaining their own purity, their 'chosen marginality' and 'counterspace', the Beta Israel consider contact with others to be polluting. Some Ethiopians call them 'don't touch me' (another instance of spatiality associated with the body) (Leslau 1979: xl). The dominant groups, on the other hand, fear the Beta Israel and avoid them except for the necessary exchange of goods in the market place. Much of the fear exhibited by non-Beta Israel groups is reinforced by the belief that the Beta Israel are possessed by the buda or 'evil eye', which can cause illness or death (see Quirin 1977; Reminick 1974). Thus, like the Kalenjin smiths, the Beta Israel have created their own 'counterspaces' of power. Although information is much more sparse, I saw similar patterns of marginality among smiths and artisan groups in traditional Middle Eastern societies. Among the pastoral bedouin,5 artisans and smiths are marginalized, 4. On Falasha religion, see, e.g., Quirin (1977: 219-32) and Leslau (1979). 5. See, e.g., Coon 1931, 1951; Dickson 1951; Doughty n.d.; Musil 1927, 1928; van Nieuwenhuijze 1965, 1977;Patai 1958, 1967.

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feared (they are believed to possess the 'evil eye'), and shunned, but function in some contexts as ritual specialists, circumcisers, entertainers, diviners, healers or guides; and they are believed to have supernatural powers. They form groups apart that are typically fragmented and scattered, as is the case with the surma and the Solubba, who are counted among those groups that are considered by the dominant groups to be inferior or 'non-Sharif. The Solubba are nicknamed by the bedouin 'Abu al Khala'—'Fathers of the empty spaces' (Glubb 1943: 14), a nickname I have used in the title of this essay. Again, I can see in this designation the interrelatedness of First-, Second- and Thirdspace. The 'empty spaces' themselves are the perceived physical space of the desert between encampments, a physical space that is conceived as being marginal space where marginal peoples 'exist'. And they do 'exist' there in their lived space. The Solubba are nonpastoralists who are scattered in small groups over much of the Arabian Peninsula,6 and have formed a symbiotic relationship with bedouin tribes, to whom they pay khuwa (a form of protection tax). The Solubba are smiths and woodworkers who also derive part of their livelihood from hunting and tracking and from practicing their skills as veterinarians. They are particularly famed for their tracking skills, and for their ability to find water in the deep desert (the 'empty spaces'). Solubba men are said to be poets and magicians, and the women fortune-tellers, enchantresses, brewers of love potions and bearers of the 'evil eye'. They are also renowned for their music and dancing. The Solubba are also physically different from the bedouin. They often have fair hair and eyes, their dress is distinctive,7 and they have a pronounced accent (Musil 1927: 215) and some words exclusive to their own dialect. Their descent is unknown, and they are not considered to be either Arab or bedouin. The bedouin say that 'they are not of lineage', that is, not descended from Kahtan (a noble-blooded tribe; Doughty n.d.: 326).8 Thus,

6. For a good summary of the information on the Solubba, see Belts 1989; Dickson 1951; Dostal 1956; Doughty n.d.; Glubb 1943; Musil 1927,1928; Patai 1958, 1967; Philby 1922. 7. They dress in garments made from gazelle skins (Betts 1989: 63). 8. There is a particularly pervasive legend that they are descended from some ancient Christian group (e.g. Philby 1922: 268; Dickson 1951: 516), possibly the Crusaders, having been captured in various conflicts and carried off into slavery by the bedouin. According to Dickson, the roots of this story lie in (a) the traditional emblem of the Solubba—a dress wrapped around a wooden cross and displayed on ceremonial ocassions as a form of 'standard'; and (b) the etymological relationship between the

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their spatial association with the 'empty spaces' is also expressed in relational kinship terms, as is typical in segmented societies. For a bedouin to marry a Solubba is considered to be a disgrace,9 and the bedouin consider them unclean (p. 324). The Rwala bedouin believe that they have the power to do both good and evil (Musil 1928: 406). Failure is often blamed on the Solubba, and their tents are avoided by warriors on raids. But in spite of their despised status, their hospitality is accepted when a warrior is ill or wounded, as they are known to tend the sick carefully. The tents of the Solubba are another example of the interrelatedness of First-, Second- and Thirdspace. The perceived physical space is transformed by the way it is conceived (in relation to its occupants) into a lived 'counterspace'—a space where one seeks refuge from someone who is typically avoided. The Solubba are also considered to be neutral, and because of this they are valued as scouts.10 In a sense, they have a certain kind of power over the 'empty spaces', and in this 'counterspace' they have the 'outsider's' flexibility of being able to 'travel' between 'worlds'. The sunnac (singular sanic) are tinkers and blacksmiths,'' but some are also minstrels, some practice the art of healing, and some perform circumcisions (Dickson 1951: 437,517). Some sunnac live in villages, and some live as nomads among the bedouin (Doughty n.d.: 327). In village settings, they live on the outskirts of communities (p. 581). As is the case for the Solubba, the sunna' are marginal and treated as neutral in conflict situations. They form kin groups of their own that are related to other sunna' throughout Arabia, and are considered by others to be 'strangers forever' (the other reference in the title of this essay), because they have no recognized genealogy and nothing is known about their true descent (Musil 1928: 282). This status as 'strangers forever' is similar to the Solubba's status as lacking in lineage, and thus also has a spatial dimension. Unlike the bedouin, the sunna' never take part in wars or raids. Among the Rwala bedouin, as is the case for the Solubba, marword salib, the Christian cross, and sulaib—the plural of Solubba and the diminutive form of salib. 9. However, there are references to $olubba concubines and prostitutes. Dickson (1951: 516) notes that a bedouin who married a Solubba girl would be killed. 10. Van Nieuwenhuijze notes that this kind of people is basically 'sacred' in the true, ambivalent sense of the word. Their 'sacredness', he suggests, is not in conflict with, but is in fact expressed in, a socially despised position (1965: 36). 11. On the sunna' see, e.g., Doughty n.d.; Musil 1928; Patai 1958, 1967.

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riage with a sanic is forbidden. In spite of these attitudes, the Rwala claim that, along with the first bedouin, the first smith assisted Allah with creation (p. 281). The Kenites, Midianites and Rechabites Some of the marginal characteristics of traditional African and Middle Eastern smiths and artisans, I argue, can also be seen in the biblical portrayals of the Kenites, Midianites and Rechabites (McNutt 1990,1994, 1999b). The Kenites are portrayed in the biblical texts as staunch supporters of both Israel and Yahwism,12 but never fully incorporated into Israelite society.n Their status in relation to the Israelite tribes and other groups in ancient Palestine is unclear, but they do appear to have been socially marginal and militarily neutral. This is implied in Judges 4 and 5, where the 'clan' of Heber the Kenite is described as having peaceful relations with Jabin, the king of Hazor (Judg. 4.17), but as nevertheless allied with the Israelites, with whom Jabin was at war. Alliance with Israel is implied in Judg. 5.24-27 (cf. 4.17-22) where Heber's wife Jael is praised for her bravery in disposing of Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army. This is reminiscent of the neutral status of marginal artisan groups in traditional African and Middle Eastern societies. The tent that Sisera comes to for refuge in the story is also reminiscent of those of the Solubba, which can be neutral 'counterspaces' of refuge (lived spaces as a product of perceived and conceived space) for those who are ill or dying. It is possible that the Kenite's marginal position in relation to the Israelites was associated in part with their geographical location, although whether they were ever associated with a particular geographical region is not clear.14 On the basis of biblical references, their geographical origin is normally identified as southeast of Judah on the border with Edom. Whether or not they were actually associated with a specific region, biblical scholars have tended to argue that they were associated with activities that required moving between different geographical locations 12. The one instance in which they seem as a group to be viewed unfavorably is in the context of Balaam's prophecy (Num. 24.21-22), where it is foretold that they will perish. 13. Some interpreters have hypothesized that they were responsible for having introduced Yahwism to the Israelites. See, e.g., Rowley 1946, 1950; Halpern 1992. 14. They are listed in Gen. 15.19 as one of the peoples whose land is promised to Abraham's descendants.

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(in the 'empty spaces') either as caravaneers or as nomadic or seminomadic itinerant metalsmiths (see, e.g., Albright 1957: 257; 1963; de Vaux 1961: 478-79; Halpern 1992), like the Middle Eastern Solubba and sunna'. And, as Flanagan has argued, the relationships expressed in territoriality are really more important than the physical space of territoriality. The Kenites are related in some of the biblical traditions to the Midianites (Judg. 1.16; 4.11; 1 Sam. 15.6). Midian, the eponymous ancestor of the Midianites, is identified in the Genesis 25 genealogy (v. 2) as the son of Abraham and Keturah, and as having been sent 'eastward to the east country' (v. 6; the biblical 'empty spaces' or 'wilderness'). Among the list of his brothers is Letushim (v. 3; compare Tubal-Cain, who is called a lotesh, 'forger').15 The sociopolitical relationship between the Midianites and the tribes of Israel is no clearer in the biblical traditions than it is for the Kenites; nor is the character of the Midianites as a sociopolitical entity less opaque. They are believed to have been associated with regions in southern Transjordan and the northern Hejaz, so as a group it is likely that they were geographically marginal to Palestine. Archaeologists have also identified the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age material culture from these areas as 'Midianite'. This includes sites where there is evidence of both ritual and metallurgical activity (see, e.g., Rothenberg 1972; Franken 1969: 20-21; 1992: 127). The Midianites also play an important mediatory role in the literary traditions about the exodus, facilitating the major transitions between stages in the narrative structure. There are very clear images of spatiality in the portrayal of this role. In the Joseph stories, Midianite traders are responsible for the eventual movement of Jacob's family (Israel) into Egypt (Gen. 37.28, 36), functioning structurally as a bridge between the spaces of the ancestral and exodus traditions. The Midianites give Moses refuge when he flees from Egypt, in a kind of geographically marginal and neutral region between Egypt and the Promised Land—Midian. Again, this can be compared to the 'empty spaces' of the Solubba and the lived 'counterspaces' that function as places of refuge. Moses' Midianite fatherin-law facilitates the transition from Egypt to the Promised Land and a new identity (associated with this land) by serving as a guide through the wilderness, that is, as their eyes (Num. 10.29-32), because he knows how 15. Apart from these traditions, however, the Midianites are not looked upon favorably and are typically portrayed as Israel's enemies (e.g., Numbers 31; Judges 79; Ps. 83.9; Isa. 10.26).

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to survive in this marginal realm. Again, we can draw a comparison with the Solubba guides, who can negotiate the marginal 'empty spaces'. The belief that intermarriage with individuals from marginal artisan or smithing groups is dangerous and polluting may be represented in Numbers 25, where a plague occurs because of the indiscretion of a man who 'brought a Midianite woman to his family' at the tent of meeting (v. 6).16 It has been postulated that the Rechabites also shared the Kenites' vocation as metalworkers (Frick 1971,1992), an interpretation that is based on a genealogical link between the two groups in 1 Chron. 2.55. As is the case with the Kenites and the Midianites, their origins are unclear. Whatever their origins, their portrayal in the monarchic traditions as fierce supporters of Yahwism (2 Kgs 10.15-23) is similar to that of the Kenites and Midianites, as is their apparent socially marginal lifestyle. This is represented in restrictions against drinking wine, building houses and participating in farming activities (which were essential to the economy in ancient Israel). They are also identified as living in tents (Jer. 35.8-10). In my journey to the 'real-and-imagined', I can imagine the tents of the Rechabites as lived 'counterspaces' of neutrality and refuge like those of the Solubba, and their marginal lifestyle as a 'counterspace' of chosen marginality, where they can 'travel' between 'worlds' and inhabit more than one of these worlds at the same time. Cain Social and spatial information relating to the status and roles of artisans and other culture providers in ancient Israel, as well as the kinds of beliefs and attitudes.associated with and directed toward them, are also symbolized and encoded in the myth of Cain.17 Genesis 4 is a traditional story in which Cain, the 'culture hero' and eponymous ancestor of tent dwellers, musicians and metalworkers, is responsible for introducing to humankind some of the primary elements of civilization through the activities of his descendants. 16. This contrasts with the apparent acceptance of Moses' marriage to a Midianite woman. Compare Ezra 2.61-63 and Neh. 7.63-65, where the descendants of Barzillai (from barzel, 'iron') are excluded by name from the centralized priesthood as unclean, in spite of their good relations with David (2 Sam. 17.27-29; 19.31-39). 17. Possibly including the Kenites, the Midianites and the Rechabites. Their marginal character as represented in the biblical texts supports the hypothesis that they may have been associated in some way with metalworking and/or some other kind of craftsmanship.

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Cain is one of the most ambivalent and clearly marginal figures in the Hebrew Bible. This ambivalence is apparent in a number of respects: he is a murderer who is nevertheless protected by God (Gen. 4.15), an agriculturalist for whom the earth will bear no fruit (w. 12-13), and a wanderer who 'dwells' in the land of Nod ('wandering', v. 16), a biblical 'empty space' where he becomes a 'stranger forever'. Cain's 'mark' is the most apparent symbol of his ambivalent and marginal character. Regardless of whether the author intended some 'physical', Firstspace identifier, the mark is a 'stigma' (see Aycock 1983; McNutt 1999b) that identifies Cain as both necessary and dangerous, and locates him in the margins of oppositions—purity/pollution, life/death, limitation/creativity, this world/the other world (cf. Leach 1969: 60). He is, in a sense, removed from (or transcends) the moral community, 'existing' in a 'counterspace' that releases him from stereotypical social roles and norms, and from which he both disrupts and renews society. Like the artisans and smiths in the traditional stories of Africa and elsewhere (see, e.g., McNaughton 1995: 50; Dieterlen 1973; Margarido and Wasserman 1972; Griaule and Dieterlen 1954; Griaule 1965), Cain 'exists' in the 'betwixt and between', the conceived 'empty spaces', in what Edmund Leach has called a 'middle position' that is 'abnormal, nonnatural, holy', while at the same time he is 'polluting' (see Leach 1983a: 14-15; 1983b: 4-5; McNutt 1999b: 54). Social and spatial marginality are also represented in Cain's relationship as ancestor to both city dwellers (Enoch) and tent dwellers (Jabal) (vv. 17, 20), as well as a metalworker (Tubal Cain) and a musician (Jubal) (vv. 1722). The latter represent those categories of persons in segmented societies who can 'travel' between the 'worlds' of city dwellers and tent dwellers (cf. Leach 1969: 60). John Sawyer has suggested (1986: 160) that Cain's descendants in this narrative genealogy represent the varied roles carried out within a single group, such as those of other artisans and smiths described above, rather than the three separate groups we normally identify them with; that is, the attributes of the group as a whole are represented in both Cain and his descendants, who symbolize a social group skilled not only in metallurgy, but in music, city-building and possibly trading.18 The most obvious references to space in the story are those pointing to Cain's destiny as a wanderer and his settlement in the land of Nod 18. Sawyer suggests (1986: 160) that 'tent dwelling traders' is perhaps a better translation than, for example, the NRSV'S 'those who live in tents and have livestock' (Gen. 4.20).

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('wandering'). Although there appears to be a contradiction here (how does one settle if he or she is destined to wander?), as Leach argued (e.g. 1983a: 16), it is precisely in such ambiguities that the meanings underlying myths are conveyed. Cain represents a category of being that is neither fully nomadic nor fully sedentary—a mediating category that is on the threshold between two modes of spatial existence, 'betwixt and between', in 'the empty spaces', a 'stranger forever'.19 Like the 'wilderness' in other biblical traditions, and like the 'empty spaces' occupied by the Solubba, the 'land of Nod' symbolizes a betwixt and between locality that is neither fully in This World nor fully in The Other (cf. Leach 1983a: 16)—a 'counterspace' that is occupied by Cain and his descendants. There are a number of other ways in which spatiality is represented in this story. But I will end by briefly identifying just one. John Sawyer has suggested that the story in Genesis 4 was originally an Edomite myth about the origins of a metalworking group from the copper-mining region east of the Arabah (a region that is associated in the biblical texts with the Kenites and Midianites). Several of the names in the story, he points out— those of Cain himself, Lamech's wives (Gen. 4.19-23) and Tubal Cain's sister—are associated elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible with sites in Edom that may, like Timna (Gen. 36.12, 22, 40; cf. 1 Chron. 1.51), have once been copper-mining sites in the Arabah (Sawyer 1986: 158-59). Adah is also the name given to Esau's first wife, according to the Edomite genealogy in Gen. 36.2. The name Zilla is not attested elsewhere, but Sawyer suggests a possible connection with Hazzelelponi in 1 Chron. 4.3, a genealogy that has Edomite as well as metallurgical connections (Irnahash and Geharashim, vv. 12, 14). Naamah (the sister of Tubal Cain) is also identified as the home of Zophar, one of Job's comforters (Job 2.11), which Sawyer suggests was also most likely located in Midian or Edom. And the name Cain appears in an Edomite context in Num. 24.22. Thus, as in other segmented societies, the kinship terms in the traditions are very likely mixed with territoriality. If this is the case, the story-teller is emphasizing in the names the lived space of the group or groups with which Cain and his descendants are associated. Spatiality is thus an important element of the story that embodies notions about the social identity, roles, statuses, marginality and 'separateness' of such groups, and the kinds of beliefs and attitudes directed toward them.

19. This is very similar to how ritual space is conceptualized. See, e.g., Turner 1969, 1974.

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I have offered here some 'approximations' that have built on earlier 'approximations'. After having interacted with Soja and Lefebvre, I feel comfortable about leaving them incomplete and open to further exploration. Thus I end this particular excursion in my journey to the 'real-andimagined' spaces of marginal artisan groups, not with definitive conclusions but, I hope, with 'openings' to new ways of'imagining' the biblical worlds.

JOSHUA 22 AND THE IDEOLOGY OF SPACE Douglas A. Knight

The unified conquest of the land of Israel reported in the book of Joshua results ironically in a divided land, according to the story recounted in Joshua 22. A division of sorts was already implicit in the Pentateuch, prior to the conquest described in the book of Joshua. The Jordan River serves as a boundary separating east and west. Moses must at divine command stop just short of this demarcation line, although the cause for his punishment is anything but clear. The variety of explanations for enjoining this great leader from entering the land west of the Jordan—because of his lack of trust (Num. 20.12), his rebellion (Num. 20.24; 27.14), his failure to maintain God's holiness (Deut. 32.51), his bitter spirit and rash words (Ps. 106.33), and the Israelites' provocation of God's anger (Deut. 1.37; 3.26; 4.21)—attests to the efforts of many to make sense of this ultimate restriction placed on the legendary Moses: that of the vast range of his travels the one area denied to him is the one toward which his work has been directed. He is afforded a tantalizing, panoramic view from Mount Nebo, the description of which (Deut. 34.1-3) concentrates primarily on the tribal territories west of the Jordan, with only a slight reference to the land of Gilead to the east. There are other ways in which the biblical descriptions about the time prior to the conquest under Joshua differentiate between east and west of the Jordan. The allotment of land to the tribes is separated into two episodes under different leaders. While the distribution of the land west of the Jordan must await Joshua's pronouncements following his conquest of the territory, the area east of the Jordan is won in battle under Moses' command according to Deut. 2.26-3.7, and Moses himself divides it among the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh1 (Num. 32; Deut. 3.8-22; Josh. 1.12-18; 13.8-13). Spies are dispatched twice from the east, once by Moses 1. Joshua assigns to the other half of Manasseh land immediately west of the Jordan River (Josh. 17.1-13).

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(Num. 13) and once by Joshua (Josh. 2), to gather intelligence on the western territory. In Num. 34.1-15 Moses describes in detail the boundary lines around 'the land of Canaan', the area which the Israelites will 'enter' and receive as an 'inheritance', and the Jordan defines the eastern limit from Chinnereth to the Dead Sea. Moses' historical retrospective and his recitation of the laws, delivered in the plains of Moab, anticipate the settlement of the western territory and worship at 'the place which YHWH your God will choose' (e.g. Deut. 12.5). Eventually, with impressive pomp and symbolism, the whole people (except for the wives, children and livestock of the east Jordanian tribes, according to Josh. 1.14) ford the Jordan River and enter the land of Canaan, a passage reminiscent of the crucial crossing of the Red Sea, and from this point forward biblical narratives focus with rare exception on happenings west of the Jordan. Moreover, all cultic sanctuaries for worship by 'all Israel' appear only in the west (Shechem, Gilgal, Bethel, Shiloh, and eventually Jerusalem), not in the east. At another level, the division between the two sides of the Jordan is reflected somewhat in the literary depiction of the tribes. To be sure, all of the Israelite tribes are subjected to censure by prophets, Deuteronomists and others in the Hebrew Bible, but the two and a half tribes that settled east of the Jordan (Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh) are occasionally singled out for reprobation. Reuben is condemned in Jacob's final blessing of his sons because he had intercourse with Bilhah, Jacob's concubine (Gen. 35.22; 49.3-4; 1 Chron. 5.1). Certain Reubenites are also part of the insurrection against Moses and Aaron and are executed for it (Num. 16). Jephthah, from the eastern region of Gilead, makes a tragic vow that costs his daughter her life (Judg. 11.34-40), and he subsequently leads the eastern forces in the civil conflict against the Ephraimites (Judg. 12.1-6)—not a fault in itself, but an association with internal dissension. The two and a half tribes meet their fate against the Assyrians because of apostasy, according to 1 Chron. 5.25-26. None of this, however, is quite as explicit or poignant as the story found in Joshua 22. The Plot of Joshua 22 While acknowledging a deep connection between the two sets of tribes, one on either side of the Jordan River, the narrative of Joshua 22 presupposes an antagonism and suspicion between them that seem to make collaboration unlikely. No explanation for the divergence is offered here, even though the Pentateuchal traditions have, as noted, already called attention to the dichot-

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omy through multiple references to differences in their respective histories.2 Although much of the discourse in the chapter is of tribes, the issue of space looms large, as we will see, and is perhaps of even more importance than are tribal identities. The plot betrays the antipathy through reference to suspicions and fears on both sides. As stipulated by Moses in Numbers 32, the two and a half tribes do not settle immediately on their land east of the Jordan, but accompany their kindred tribes in the conquest of the land to the west. Joshua 21 ends with the reassuring report that all tribes have now received and peacefully occupied their allotted portions. Chapter 22 then opens with Joshua's addressing only the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh,3 extending to them words of trust and praise that will soon seem to be unwarranted: the Easterners have done as Moses commanded by faithfully aiding their kinsfolk in their sweeping victory over the inhabitants of the land, and they can now return to their own regions allotted them by Moses on the other side of the Jordan. Joshua's blessing (v. 5) is delivered with classic Deuteronomistic rhetoric. Presumably it is only the warriors who are here present as they are sent off with much plunder to share with their families waiting in the east. What happens next at the Jordan River reveals the symbolic significance of this boundary line. Before crossing over the river, the Easterners erect a large altar while still 'in the land of Canaan', that is, on the west bank.4 The story provides no motivation yet for this act, merely the statement that they build an altar there. The Westerners, however, take it to be an aggressive move warranting a hostile response, and they gather at Shiloh to wage war against the Easterners. Did the massive altar appear to be a fortress or guard post left behind in case the Easterners should ever need it against the western tribes, or was the problem that the Easterners had built it on the Westerners' land rather than on their own east bank of the Jordan? We hear nothing of either such reason, and eventually only a religious issue emerges.

2. Or is it the reverse—that the Pentateuchal traditions soften an earlier harsher, more hostile split between east and west? 3. For ease we will generally refer to them here as the Easterners, as opposed to the Westerners, who settle in the land west of the Jordan River. Our commonly used terms, 'Transjordan' and 'Cisjordan', are best avoided because of their perspectival flavor, which in fact approximates the same preferential orientation reflected in Joshua 22, where the Westerners regard themselves as the only 'Israelites'. 4. For the MT reading in vv. 10-11 m'rbj (= 'circles', an unknown area or place name), the LXX has Gilgal, which is located some 8 km west of the Jordan.

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Instead of launching a campaign immediately, the Westerners dispatch emissaries: the priest Phinehas and a chief of each of their ten tribes, presumably including one from the western Manassites, with no clarification of this chief s jurisdiction over the other half-tribe of Manasseh in the east. The delegation charges the Easterners with infidelity, as becomes evident in their reference to the 'sin at Peor' (v. 17). The accusation of rebellion against YHWH includes the word btffi 'treachery' (w. 16, 22, 31), the same word used in Josh. 7.1 to condemn Achan's sin, which becomes explicitly referenced in 22.20. Intriguingly, the Westerners even raise the possibility that the land east of the Jordan may be unclean, and they invite the Easterners to return to the western side and settle there (cf. Num. 32.30), although no hint is provided regarding where they may be fitted among the nine and a half western tribes already assigned land. In their response, the Easterners appear to be horrified at such an accusation, invoking twice a series of three divine names with great rhetorical effect: mrr DT6N h» mrr DTT?K b», 'God, God, YHWH! God, God, YHWH! ' (or perhaps 'YHWH is God of Gods'). They declare that they built the altar not to worship other gods but for quite the opposite reason of upholding their faith in YHWH. At the same time, they turn the tables on the Westerners, charging that the later descendants of those living west of the Jordan may attempt to discredit the Yahwistic claims of those to the east ('You have no portion [pbn] in YHWH!', v. 27) and thus drive them toward another religion. The altar, they say, was never intended for actual sacrificial use but only as a testimony for later generations. Their response concludes, in fact, with a reinforcement of the Deuteronomistic claim for only one legitimate altar in the west. The delegation is persuaded. Not only do these Westerners accept the explanation as given, but they even credit the Easterners with having saved them (i.e. the Westerners) from YHWH'S punishment. The logic of this assessment is not fully evident: how did the Easterners' non-sacrilege save the Westerners? Perhaps the emissaries mean that the Westerners would have suffered at YHWH'S hand if they had acted on their first impulse and sent soldiers against the eastern tribes. At any rate, their affirmation in v. 31 is consistent with other exhortations to faithfulness found in Deuteronomistic texts. They bring the report back to the tribes west of the Jordan, where it is accepted. With this congenial, inspiring ending to a threatening situation, the book of Joshua is now ready to move to its conclusion with Joshua's farewell address.

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A Gulf between West and East The story in Joshua 22 describes a confrontation between two parts of the whole people of Israel, and it is resolved smoothly and with no apparent long-lasting effects. On closer examination, however, there are details that betray a tension at subtle levels, implying deeply set differences persisting across the Jordan River. More importantly, in fact, the tension depicted in the story reflects the ambiguous situation of imperial rule, when the inhabitants of the land were attempting to cope with new internal alignments, external powers and a diaspora of kinsfolk and co-religionists dwelling outside the traditional homeland. The use of the word 'Israel' or 'Israelites' serves as one of the most obvious markers of this tension. Joshua 22 contrasts sharply with the rest of the book of Joshua with respect to the referents of 'Israel'. Of the 160 occurrences of'Israel' in Joshua, virtually all, apart from those in ch. 22, are used inclusively to embrace explicitly or implicitly all twelve tribes, and only seven can be regarded as excluding the Easterners: 4.12

11.21, 22

11.23

12.7

13.6

18.10

The Reubenites, the Gadites, and the eastern half of the Manassites precede the Israelites (NB: not 'the rest of the Israelites') in crossing the Jordan River. The Anakim are expelled from the hill country, including specifically the hill country of Israel. It may be argued that 'Israel' here encompasses the larger area of both sides of the Jordan, but the juxtaposition of the southern 'highlands of Judah' to the 'highlands of Israel' suggests a more restrictive use of 'Israel'. Joshua distributes the land he conquers to the Israelites (which excludes the Easterners who had received their allotments from Moses). In the first mention of the Israelites both Westerners and Easterners can be included, whereas the second occurrence refers only to the western tribes to whom Joshua distributes land. Again there are two uses of 'Israel', the first potentially referring to all twelve tribes but the second only to the western tribes to whom Joshua allots land. Once again the 'Israelites' are equated with the western tribes that receive land from Joshua.

The other occurrences of the word 'Israel' (except for those in ch. 22) appear to include all twelve tribes. While the 'wives, little ones, and livestock' of the eastern tribes remain in their designated lands to the east of the Jordan (1.14), their soldiers accompany the nine and a half tribes as

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they cross the river. The army that then proceeds to conquer 'the land of Canaan' includes all of the warriors. At several points in the book there is an even more explicit notation that 'Israel' designates all twelve tribes. For example, one person from each of the twelve tribes is to remove a stone from the riverbed and add it to the pile that will commemorate Israel's crossing of the Jordan (ch. 4; also 3.12). Allusions to incidents under Moses in the wilderness pertain to all of the people (e.g. 8.30-35; 12.1-6; 14.10; 22.17-18). In fact, in 13.13 'Israel' encompasses the eastern region, inasmuch as Geshur and Maacath, which could not be conquered, are regarded as part of Israel 'to this day'. Since half of the cities of refuge (three out of six) and a proportionate number of Levitical towns (10 out of 48) are located east of the Jordan, 'Israelites' in chs. 20-21 (e.g. 21.41) includes all the tribes. Moreover, the book of Joshua frequently employs the phrase 'all Israel', a typical Deuteronomistic designation to express the cohesion of the people of all the tribes. Chapter 22 presents us, however, with a very different picture. Of the 19 occurrences of the word 'Israel', 16 very explicitly exclude the two and a half tribes settled east of the Jordan. The only three possible exceptions occur in w. 16, 18 and 20, where the Westerners charge the Easterners with rebelling against 'the God of Israel', which could bring punishment upon 'the entire congregation of Israel'; by citing the sin at Peor, the Westerners allude to an earlier instance involving all twelve tribes together. Even in the case of v. 16, the Westerners may be thinking of only themselves as 'the entire congregation of Israel', since they are making the charge against the Easterners. All 16 other appearances of'Israel' in ch. 22, however, are remarkably clear in identifying the western tribes alone as the ones constituting the entity 'Israel'. When they depart for their tribal land on the other side of the Jordan, the Easterners take leave of the 'Israelites' at Shiloh (v. 9). The 'land of Canaan' is the territory inhabited by the tribes west of the Jordan, and the altar constructed by the Easterners is in the land of Canaan that now belongs to the Westerners, that is the 'Israelites' (vv. 911). The 'Israelites' gather at Shiloh to wage war against the eastern tribes (v. 12). The 'Israelites' send the delegation of Phinehas and ten tribal representatives to confront the Easterners (w. 13-14). The eastern tribes respond to the 'Israelites' (vv. 21-22), indicating their fear that future generations in the west will dispute the Easterners' attachment to 'YHWH, the God of Israel' (v. 24). The 'Israelite' delegation responds favorably to the words of the Easterners (v. 30), stating in fact that the 'Israelites' have been spared the wrath of YHWH because of the actions of the Easterners (v. 31). The

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delegation returns to the land of Canaan and reports to the 'Israelites' on their discussions (vv. 32-33). Not only does Joshua 22 in effect equate the Westerners with the people of Israel, but it also portrays them as the guardians of the faith. They take it upon themselves to charge the Easterners with perfidy, using the same word (VlJQ, vv. 16, 20, 22, 31) that describes Achan's act of disobedience in the holy war against Ai (Josh. 7.1). This lofty position assumed by the Westerners is confirmed by the Easterners when they indicate that they consider it likely that the descendants of the Westerners will seek to exclude the later generations in the east by charging: 'What connection do you have with YHWH, the God of Israel?' (v. 24). As a direct result, the Easterners fear, their children will be driven from the Yahwistic faith. With this suspicion the Easterners are essentially charging the Westerners with controlling access to the cult and membership in the religious community. The specific cultic object around which this story revolves provides a clue as to the period, provenance and ideological orientation of this story. Why should anyone object to building an altar for worship, especially in the period, the time of the settlement, in which the Joshua narrative is set? Joshua 8.30-35 records an occasion in which Joshua himself erects an altar on Mount Ebal and is not rebuked for it. The first report in 22.10 does not indicate the Easterners' motive, nor is it explicitly stated that the altar is built to YHWH according to Moses' prescribed method, as is articulated in 8.30-31. When confronted, they respond with an oath, calling YHWH'S punishment on themselves if they had built the altar for the purpose of worshiping other gods. They take their denial even further: they had not even intended to use the altar for actual sacrifices. Instead, it is only a pattern or copy or model (H'^n, v. 28) designed to remind both Easterners and Westerners that their ancestors had worshiped YHWH and that the descendants on both sides of the Jordan should remain co-religionists. While the Westerners in the end are willing to accept the existence of a non-functioning altar that serves only as a Yahwistic witness, they emphasize the point (v. 19)—and the Easterners accept it (v. 29)—that there is only one proper altar for offering sacrifices to YHWH, the altar in front of the tabernacle. This theme of exclusively one proper center for cultic worship is thoroughly consistent with the Deuteronomistic program, and in all likelihood the story in Joshua 22 stems from the Deuteronomistic group, or at least was heavily modified by them. Securing the allegiance of Israelites living outside the 'land of Canaan', especially during periods of colonial rule, is for them a matter of concern.

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Land thus gains in significance as the fulcrum of this story, and more generally of political and religious definition. The important eastern border is the Jordan River,5 not the eastern frontier of the two and a half tribes settled in Gilead. The river is not an incidental natural feature; the Easterners sense better than others that it can become a barrier attributed to YHWH'S own making (v. 25). The Westerners pointedly refer to the area west of the Jordan as iTIiT HTriN, ' YHWH'S possession' (v. 19). Furthermore, their notion that the land east of the Jordan may be unclean (v. 19) is remarkable in light of the tradition that Moses himself is the one who designated it as the home for the Reubenites, the Gadites and half of the Manassites. The Westerners' offer of land among the other nine and a half tribes seems an empty gesture, coming as it does after the meticulous division of land among the other tribes. There is no previous intimation that the territory in the east may be problematic and that a contingency plan is necessary. The only slight suggestion that the Easterners may need to take up residence in the west is Num. 32.30, although here the reason has nothing to do with the eastern territory as such but rather with a threatened punishment if the Easterners refuse to help the Westerners conquer the land west of the Jordan. Furthermore, the problem cannot simply be attributed to the specific tribes settled in the east. While they are not presented as receiving the best of Jacob's blessings (Gen. 48.17-20; 49), they have standing, even if only in light of the birth order of their eponyms: Reuben is Jacob's firstborn, the son of Leah; Gad is the firstborn of Zilpah, Leah's maid; and Manasseh is the firstborn of the favorite son Joseph, who is the firstborn of Rachel. This prominence among their brothers should suggest that the tribes bearing their names and the land on which they have settled are important for the Yahwistic community.6 The book of Judges contains a well-known counterpart to the story in Joshua 22. According to Judg. 12.1-6, the Ephraimites cross over the Jordan from their home in the west and engage the Easterner Jephthah in battle because of a perceived slight. Jephthah's victory includes the incident at the fords of the Jordan where Jephthah's forces slaughter the fleeing Ephraimites who cannot pronounce 'shibboleth' according to the eas5. Weinfeld (1983) argues that the equation of the land west of the Jordan with the promised land is pre-Deuteronomic. 6. Greenspahn (1994) demonstrates, however, that primogeniture is not a rigid norm in ancient Israel, and he cites a range of examples in the Hebrew Bible to demonstrate that younger siblings often gain preeminence over older ones.

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tern dialect. While little is made of this story in the surrounding literature, it provides further indication of suspicions or antipathy persisting between east and west, fundamental to the narrative of Joshua 22 about the significance of tribal territory. Ideologies On the surface, Joshua 22 constitutes the final episode in the conquering and settling of the tribes in the land of Israel. Each tribe has been apportioned land, and here we see the eastern warriors returning to their territory on the other side of the Jordan. Following this episode ('a long time afterward', 23.1) it remains only for Joshua to deliver his farewell address to the people shortly before his death, exhorting them to faithful allegiance to YHWH. On closer examination, however, other issues and meanings emerge into view. The book of Joshua is preoccupied with the subject of space—its significance, its occupation and its delineation. As has been noted elsewhere, space can be understood in a variety of ways and needs to be examined critically.7 In Joshua we see various examples of the social construction of space. Literary traditions define the land and articulate certain meanings attached to it. Positioned as it is between the Pentateuch and the history of premonarchic and monarchic times, the book of Joshua describes the transition from non-ownership of the land to sovereign control over it. While the land of Israel had, according to tradition, been promised and occupied in the time of the ancestors, the hiatus of the Egyptian sojourn seems to have allowed the land to revert to an earlier state, from which it now needs to be reclaimed. The book of Joshua represents, in effect, the myth of the defiled and purified land—a space tainted by its various non-Yahwistic inhabitants, who need to be expunged in a holy war for it to become cleansed for Israelite occupation.8 The ancestral promise of land for the people thus 7. One of the few critical discussions of spatiality in biblical studies is by Flanagan (1999b), who provides a review of recent work in other disciplines and explores its application to the study of Israelite antiquity. 8. Comparable mythologization occurs in conjunction with the exile and return; see Barstad (1996) and Carroll (1992). Albright appears to have believed the myth, as evidenced in his disparaging comment about the indigenous Canaanite occupants: 'Thus the Canaanites, with their orgiastic nature-worship, their cult of fertility in the form of serpent symbols and sensuous nudity, and their gross mythology, were replaced by Israel, with its pastoral simplicity and purity of life, its lofty monotheism, and its severe code of ethics'(1957: 281).

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reaches fulfillment, and at the same time the monarchy's prerequisite of sovereign territory becomes satisfied. The process is not presented as mere power politics, however. Inasmuch as God has granted the land to the Israelites, it is their right to take possession of it with divine assistance.9 The myth thus provides a fundamental interpretation, invoking divine sanction and concomitant duty by the Israelites, all made concrete in terms of land. As such it represents an essential legitimization in what must certainly have been a precarious situation. No one—neither individual nor group—could be certain that they would be able to remain where they were when empires, rival kingdoms or raiding bands could encroach on their land and threaten their survival, in some cases even removing them to alien areas. Believing that they were destined to occupy this space presented powerful grounds for the Israelites to pursue survival there and defend themselves when needed. Yet more subtle layers of meaning—political, economic and social in nature—reside in this narrative, both in the larger context of the book of Joshua as well as in Joshua 22 itself, and they point to divergent, even contested ideologies. Whatever traditions about the settlement of the land may have circulated in earlier times, the book of Joshua in its present form is the work of the Deuteronomists writing under the influence of imperial realities. Their activity was probably not at its peak at the end of the Assyrian period or during the neo-Babylonian period, as has commonly been held,10 but during the Persian period when the restoration of the land was a dominant concern. In that setting, they produced the book of Joshua with a dual purpose in mind: to show the divinely based legitimacy of the Judeans on the land and the divinely ordained centraliry of worship in Jerusalem. Regarding the former, they idealized a territory much larger than their province of Yehud, more in keeping with their image of the land held by the early monarchy. Nonetheless, the most fought-over area, as they presented it, lay in the heart of the country, north and south of Jerusalem, the traditional capital and location of the temple. The Deuteronomists could employ the book of Joshua to argue that the Judeans should be able, just as their ancestors were, to occupy the land with divine aid, but holding it would again depend on their faithfulness to YHWH. In this larger setting, Joshua 22 assumed a special significance for the 9. The commonly drawn parallel to the notion that the white settlers in North America had a 'manifest destiny' to take the land from the Native Americans is not far afield. 10. See the review of scholarship in Knight (1995).

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Deuteronomists. In one respect, the story displays the power of the center over the periphery (Knight 1994), or at least the effort to control the periphery. We observe the military amass to wage war against the Easterners, but then a delegation is benevolently employed to avert war. The upper hand, at any rate, is preserved by the national leadership, which seeks to compel the others to conform to its standards for religious practice. Terminology becomes a not-so-subtle device in their hands: the Easterners are not even called 'Israelites' in the vast majority of occurrences of the word in this chapter. By marginalizing them in this manner, the Deuteronomists reassert the primacy of the political powers, who can call up the army as well as the priests who determine the ingredients of acceptable worship. Of course, at the same time they can also ensure the flow of financial resources to the capital and the temple. In another respect, the attribution of the east Jordanian land as a fringe area or border area (Flanagan 1999b: 32) suited their argument well. The actual political boundaries for the area east of the Jordan shifted considerably during the various monarchic and colonial governments, but generally the Jordan River as a natural feature in the landscape caused it to function as a rather constant border line on the one side. The manner in which boundaries are described in the book of Joshua makes the point tacitly. The descriptions of the land allotted to most of the western tribes (Judah, Ephraim, Manasseh west, Benjamin, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali) contain rather clearly drawn boundary lines. Only two (Simeon and Dan) lack boundaries in their descriptions, while one (Issachar) has a partial indication of its borders. The land east of the Jordan, however, is treated similarly to that of the latter three tribes, both in the descriptions in Joshua (12.1-6; 13.8-32) and in the earlier accounts of the conquest under Moses (Num. 21.21-35; Deut. 2.26-3.17). These descriptions define the east Jordanian territories in terms of towns and kingdoms, specifying the Jordan River as their western boundary (Josh. 13.23, 27), but detailing nothing explicitly about their eastern border. Consistent with this portrayal, Joshua 22 treats all of the land of the Easterners as an indistinct area, with the only border mentioned being that between east and west—as projected in the Easterners' fear of the later Westerners' attitude, who might later assert: 'For YHWH has set the Jordan as a boundary between you and us' (22.25). Without ch. 22, there would scarcely be a sense that the eastern territory was different from the western, except that they were won under different leaders. But with ch. 22 the book of Joshua alerts to the different status of the eastern land, which historically was in fact not always controlled by the Westerners.

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Another perspective, however, is also evident in this narrative—a rather divergent point of view from the Deuteronomistic line, if we correctly interpret it. While the story concludes in a manner congenial to Deuteronomistic ideology, its point of conflict involves an act tantamount to resistance to western hegemony. There is no ostensible reason for constructing an altar, much less a massive altar, on the western side of the Jordan other than for the Easterners to make a point to the Westerners. If their intent is military, that is, if the construction is actually designed to be used by the Easterners to defend themselves or to launch a strike against the Westerners, it represents an aggressive or rebellious stance against the tribes to the west. If, however, it is intended as a non-functioning, symbolic altar, as the Easterners maintain (22.22-29), then it serves as a potential indictment against later generations in the west who might adopt an exclusivistic policy about membership in the Yahwistic community. In either case, the structure signals a pre-emptive move by the Easterners at the outset, in effect opposing their peripheral status vis-a-vis the center. Whether or not this tradition speaks also for others in the periphery we cannot determine, but it is an intriguingly frank acknowledgment retained in the canonical text that one group might seek the suppression of another, driving them to unfaithfulness ('Your children may cause our children to cease to fear YHWH', v. 25b). A certain skepticism and cynicism—actually, of each group toward the other—pervade this chapter. As much as those in power in the west seek legitimacy, those in the east desire it for themselves as well. Another scenario may explain certain tensions expressed by this chapter. The historical context for this story about tribal territories, religious practices and power relations is probably the period of restoration after the exile. The crux of the issue is not the status of the land east of the Jordan but rather the establishment of a community in Yehud.'1 The north-south line of the Jordan River, highlighted in Joshua 22, marks the eastern boundary of Yehud and Samerina. As noted above, the book of Joshua makes no attempt to draw a clear boundary line to the east of the Jordan, that is, on the eastern side of the territory occupied by the Reubenites, Gadites and Manassites. In light of this focus on the Jordan in Joshua 22, it may be that the postexilic Deuteronomists, who refer here to only the western tribes as 'Israelites', are expressing a concern not so much about those living immediately beyond the Jordan but those still remaining in

11. For another literary example, see Davies (1992b).

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exile far to the east. Will they, when and if they return to Yehud, acknowledge the political and cultic structures already put in place by the earlier waves of returnees? As a story using territory to convey ideology, Joshua 22 is saturated with complex and conflictual meanings. We should expect as much since space itself can have multiple, divergent significance for various individuals and groups. Conflicting meanings can scarcely be portrayed on a map,12 our conventional way of depicting territory, which should make us wary of the cartographic tools on which we often depend. Renderings with economic, environmental and settlement details can be more revealing than those with only political borders; or better: they must all be read critically in light of each other. More importantly, we must remind ourselves that the space so represented always falls short of fully depicting the space as lived. A story such as Joshua 22 can provide more revealing access to diverse impulses of power and resistance than does a map, since a narrative portrays the people's investment in the land under question. For, in the final analysis, the space occupied by humans figures into their self-identity and apprehension of reality, especially when control over it is at stake.

12. In Flanagan's words, 'maps, like other texts, disguise social contexts and impose their own hegemonies of power and privilege' (1999b: 21).

STORIED SPACE, OR, BEN SIRA 'TELLS' A TEMPLE Claudia V. Camp

One of many debts of gratitude that biblical scholars owe Jim Flanagan is for the time and energy he has spent organizing us to think seriously about space in the same critical way we have become accustomed to thinking about history and society. My own interests are less systematically theoretical than Jim's. Not only do I like my theory heavily applied, I don't even mind if an application skews someone's theoretical system a bit. In the end, for me, heuristic possibility counts for more than theoretical purity. I have no doubt that some impurity will taint my neophyte venture into theories of critical spatiality, but I thank Jim Flanagan for the pleasure that this effort on his behalf has afforded me. Largely as a result of the joint AAR/SBL Seminar on Constructions of Ancient Space organized by Jim Flanagan, there are now available several useful summaries of the major theorists of critical spatiality. Flanagan himself (1999b, 2000, 2001) and Paula McNutt (in this volume) focus mainly on the work of geographer Edward W. Soja; Roland Boer (2000) summarizes and applies that of Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre; Jon Berquist (1999) offers a broader theoretical overview that includes other spatiality theorists along with the major contributions of Lefebvre and Soja. The availability of these reviews makes yet another theoretical summary here seem redundant, yet I cannot at the time of this writing assume that my reader will be familiar with the issues raised by critical spatiality theory. Let me then offer the briefest of summaries, focusing only on those aspects of the theory I have brought to bear in my present project, the analysis of spatiality in the apocryphal book of Sirach, and the questions or problems I have encountered in trying to use it. At the heart of critical spatiality is the recognition that, like history and society, space is not encountered as a transparent or objective 'reality', but is constructed in social practice and must therefore be theorized. Soja (1996), adapting the seminal work of Henri Lefebvre's The Production of

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Space (1991), analyzes space as epistemologically triune. Firstspace indicates 'geophysical realities as perceived' (Berquist 1999), 'the concrete materiality of spatial forms.. .things that can be empirically mapped'. Secondspace is imagined space, 'ideas about space.. .thoughtful re-presentations of human spatiality in mental or cognitive forms' (Soja 1996: 10). Thirdspace might be partially encapsulated in the notion of 'lived realities as practiced' (Berquist 1999), yet, as we shall see, is also more than this. Lefebvre names these categories perceived space (or spatial practice), conceived space (or representations of space) and lived space (or spaces of representation);1 Jim Flanagan sometimes substitutes for these terms material space, designed space and lived space. The theorists' agreement in describing the third category as 'lived' space is notable and will be taken up below. It is Thirdspace that has held the most interest for both non-biblical and biblical theorists. Thirdspace as a theoretical category is understood to be at one and the same time distinct from First- and Secondspace and comprehensive and transformative of them (Soja 1996:62). 'Lived space embodies the real and imagined lifeworld of experiences, emotions, events, and political choices' (McNuttthis volume: 35). But Thirdspace is also, in Soja's formulation, a 'critical strategy' that he calls 'thirding-as-Othering', understood as 'a creative recombination and extension, one that builds on a Firstspace perspective that is focused on the "real" material world and a Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality through "imagined" representations of spatiality' (1996: 5-6). Thirdspace interests theorists because of the possibility of creative openness inherent in it, especially in resistance to the oppressive power structures that are associated with the ideologies of Secondspace. Lefebvre regards lived space as clandestine, concealed, as opposed to the overt, frontal quality of Secondspace (Boer 2000). Soja's articulation of Thirdspace, like Lefebvre's, focuses on this dimension as a space of 1. The present paper refers to Soja more than to Lefebvre mainly for pragmatic reasons. Lefebvre presents a far denser version of the three spatialities in comparison to Soja's (relatively!) accessible version, and one that is highly informed by Marxism. My own work on spatiality theory has not yet allowed sufficient time for me to sort out how to move from Lefebvre's complex account of spatialities in relation to capitalist means of production to the analysis of biblical texts. Roland Boer's ongoing work in applying Marxist analysis to biblical studies will make a significant contribution to further discussion (see Boer 2000). Likewise, I am indebted to Soja for my introduction to spatiality theory done from a feminist perspective. The directions for my future theoretical expansion are clear, but remain to be undertaken. In this sense, the present paper may be regarded as a work in progress.

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resistance, as 'politically charged' (Soja 1996: 35). Thirdspaces 'are "the dominated spaces", the spaces of the peripheries, the margins and the marginalized... They are the chosen spaces for struggle, liberation, emancipation' (p. 68), 'the spaces that are ignored' (Flanagan 2001). Reader of biblical texts that I am, my interest in spatial theory is directed towards the possibilities it offers for interpretation. I have a dual agenda. First is the question of what new vision emerges when one focuses this critical lens on biblical texts: what happens when language and ideas about space are foregrounded and then analyzed in terms of a spatial 'trialectic'? My second interest is methodological, having to do with the intersection of social-historical with literary questions and approaches to biblical interpretation. The effort to read literature spatially accounts for some of the challenges noted in the ensuing discussion. Other challenges, however, are inherent in the theory itself, with its doubled understanding of Thirdspace as both distinct from and encompassing the other spatialities. The application of a social-scientific theory to literary interpretation always presents a potential methodological stumbling block, and this theory could end up as particularly reductionistic. For Secondspace—space that is constructed in mental or cognitive terms—is closely connected to language itself. Space is 'conceived' precisely through the spoken or written word. Secondspace is also construed as the space of domination, 'of power and ideology, of control and surveillance' (Soja 1996: 67), constructed and maintained through the word. Those in power make the 'maps' that both design and control experiential access to Firstspace and that validate their right to do so. It would seem possible at first glance, then, that any written text could be so simply classified as Secondspace as to obviate further analysis. This would be particularly true of canonical literature, given its apparent status as the record of the winners. Such a move, 1 suggest, would be too quick. In literature as in life, spatialities exist in complex interrelationship. The problem of the theory's literary application is exacerbated by the problem of keeping in balanced focus all the complex interrelationships among the spatialities in the theory itself. People 'live' in geophysical space, which is ordered, coded, 'conceived', by those living in it and at the same time sometimes impacts life so as to change conceptions. Soja discusses these intersections in epistemological terms—his focus, that is, is on the ways theorists have thought about these spatialities—but his analysis is already value-laden with his preference for Thirdspace (1996: 74-82). Thus, his discussion of the Firstspace-Secondspace interface

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highlights the problem of binary thinking, in which one spatiality is subsumed by the other in some way or other, depending on the theorist. Thirdspace, understood comprehensively and transformatively, appears as the solution to this problem. But this epistemological critique taken on its own weakens the usefulness of the tri-spatial model for analyzing the actual experience and production of space; for, in comparison to Thirdspace, First- and Secondspace become here oddly discrete and narrow categories, these two aspects of the spatial trialectic no longer playing the lively roles they have in real human life. Wesley Kort (2000), whose work on human/place relations in literature adds an important alternative dimension to analyzing spatiality, provides a basis for rethinking the theoretical dilemma posed by Soja's analysis and, at the same time, reformulating the methodological issue of applying it to analysis of literature. Kort critiques Soja for his prioritizing of percept and concept as 'basic or prior to lived space', an ordering based on the socialscientific presupposition of a gap between concepts and percepts and thus between 'facts and value, reality and mind'.2 Kort proposes instead the analytical primacy of lived (Third) space over perceived and conceived space and likewise advocates narrative discourse as 'basic, generative, and necessary' to a spatial theory because it holds together space, time and ideas: Why not begin with the welter of lived space and recognize both our perceptions and our conceptions of spaces and places as abstracted from that primary, fluid, and open sense of place and space that is so important a part of our lives? (Kort 2000).

Narrative embodies a kind of Thirdspace within which concepts and percepts can be identified and analyzed, but which is also more than the sum of those two parts. These moves address, at least in part, the problem identified above in using texts to imagine ancient spatiality, namely the assumption that if it is written, it must be conceptualized, and if it is concepts, it must therefore be Secondspace. One could already appeal, against that assumption, to the notion of the text 'creating a world', that is, a space in which the reader as 2. ' Soja, it seems to me, alters Lefebvre, by draining first and second and loading third space. There is a greater difference between thirdspace and first and second space in Soja than in their counterparts in Lefebvre.' The quotations are taken from remarks contributed by Kort to an online discussion of the Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar during the fall of 2001. I thank Wesley Kort for permission to quote from these less formal remarks that were of particular pertinence to my work.

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well as the characters 'live'. Human 'living', both inside and outside texts, inescapably involves language and concepts. So one issue of spatial analysis—is it First? is it Second? is it Third?—is not decided on the basis of 'is it written?' It depends on what kind of literature is involved. Narrative literature potentially supplies both a model for thinking Thirdspatially and a site of Thirdspace from which lived First- and Secondspatial possibilities can be abstracted and analyzed. Spatial analysis that brings narrative to bear can, in other words, provide a window, precisely through literature, into the ancient world. Critical spatiality theory provides, then, one tool with which to theorize in turn the use of narrative texts in socialhistorical reconstruction. Another crucial issue in spatial theory is that of how power gets parsed, especially in terms of the relationship of Secondspace to Thirdspace. Soja and Lefebvre hold up Thirdspace as a place of marginality and a possibly empowering counterculture. This naming makes a valuable contribution to imagining social change in the direction of a more just society. While the theoretical focus on the creative possibilities found in the kind of space that is normally suppressed and invisible is salutary, I struggle with this formulation of Thirdspace as 'lived' space. There are two issues here. First, in what we usually call 'real life', lived space is infused with the ideologies that would in the spatial trialectic be categorized as Secondspatial. This is not true simply in the sense that Secondspace represents the power that Thirdspace resists. Rather, as Foucault has taught us, power is multifaceted and diffuse. Resistance is also a form of power and demands its own ideology, all the more so if it is to be used effectively. Secondly, oppressors also have lived spaces. Critique and resistance are not the sum of experience in what all these theorists agree in calling 'lived' space. Living involves a lot of things, including the production of power that makes critique and resistance necessary. But 'life' as we usually live it, including its spatially based power relations, tends to be untheorized. Thus, thirding-as-Othering is most often the spatially unrealized work of intellectuals, while the heterotopias of resistance that make life livable for the oppressed usually do little in the way of actual social transformation. Most of the time, life just goes on. It is the power-mongering and maintaining potential of Thirdspace, enhanced if not defined by its capacity to assert the naturalness of its own primary reality, that is my concern in this paper. This more jaundiced approach to Thirdspace is not the result of abstract reflection on my part regarding Soja's theory of critical spatiality. It is,

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rather, the result of my attempt to apply this theory to the book of Sirach.3 Sirach has spatial discourse aplenty and seems ripe for this sort of analysis. Yet I have struggled in applying the spatial trialectic here, partly because the boundaries between one sort of space and another keep collapsing when the matter of power comes into play. Flanagan suggests that '[sjomething is lost when space is translated into words or texts' (2001). But words also create space; certainly they create Secondspace, as well as providing an essential part of the texture of Thirdspace. Indeed, in the writing of Jesus, son of Eleazar, son of Sira, texts create space; specifically, Bible-texts create the space of the Jerusalem Temple as and at the center of the author's lived world, a Temple that the author also encountered in its Firstspatial concreteness. One finds in Sirach a fair amount of Thirdspatial expression (experiences, emotions, events, political choices, indeed narrative itself), yet this book is one of the most ideologically (Secondspatially) oppressive pieces of literature imaginable. Ben Sira's text thus manifests the interpenetration of spatialities that one would expect of Thirdspace, but not its liberating transformation of them. This is a space of struggle, yes.. .but not as part of the list including periphery, liberation and emancipation. This is Thirdspace as power. So, my title: 'Storied Space, or, Ben Sira "Tells" a Temple'. I want to walk around three points. First is a reading of chs. 44-50—Ben Sira's famous poem in praise of famous men—as a text in which the scribe constructs a Temple space by means of compressed, hymnic allusions to the stories of great men from the about-to-be-biblical tradition.4 The second point in my walk is that the spatial experience created by these stories is one of stories: levels stacked on top of levels, that is, vertical space—a tower with its top in the heavens. The third point returns to Thirdspace as periphery and resistance: under critical analysis, especially feminist analysis, the Temple crumbles; the telling leaves but a tell whose broken stories are excavated by the scholar. One final prefatory observation needs to be made before turning to the text of Ben Sira, arising from the work of applying spatiality theory to this writing, and perhaps in turn informing the theory. Just as Kort has identified narrative as a definitive site of complexly interwoven spatialities, 3. By convention, I used the title Sirach to refer to the book itself, and the name Ben Sira to refer to its writer. 4. Formal analysis typically distinguishes the poem on famous men in chs. 44-49 from the poem on the high priest Simeon in ch. 50. Thematically, however, it seems clear that the reader is supposed to see Simeon as the last in this sequence.

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study of Sirach points to another such site, namely the experience of ritual. In ritual as in narrative, lived reality, with all its spatialities, weaves itself into a slubbed and hole-y web: concrete materiality, concepts and ideologies, experiences, emotions, political choices are joined, validated and illumined. In ritual even more than narrative, moreover, the body presents and represents itself as lived space. Soja's discussion indicates the important role of the body in spatial feminist literature. It is the most intimate of personal-and-political spaces, and affective microcosm for all other spatialities. The spatiality and sensuality of the body is being given a central positioning in the critical interpretation of the real-andimagined geographies of everyday life... (Soja 1996: 112).

While feminist geographers focus on the contemporary world and hence the relationship of the city to the body, Ben Sira's ancient text suggests a different point of departure, the relationship of the body to the altar. Conventional scholarly wisdom has it that Ben Sira wrote in Jerusalem during the first quarter of the second century BCE, making his book one of the most precisely dated and located of ancient Bible-related texts. Although both the date and location have come under recent scholarly challenge, I think we have enough contextual mud to wrestle in for now.5 Two contextual things are important to me at the moment. They have to do with text and Temple. First, whether we date Ben Sira in the first quarter of the second century or a bit later, our scribe writes in a time of Biblebuilding. Ben Sira's grandson, who translated the book from Hebrew to Greek in Egypt sometime after 132, refers in his prologue to his grandfather's study of 'the law and the prophets and the other books of our fathers'. While few scholars today take this phrasing as a transparent reference to the current tripartite Hebrew Scripture, it certainly suggests a sense of the canonical, a body of literature with significant social heft, sufficiently well known that it can be referenced with a few tag terms. Canonical, indeed, even in the more popular, current Christian usage of 'revealed' literature. And Ben Sira does not simply promote the divine origin of ancient wisdom but of his own as well. His relationship with personified female Wisdom, who is herself identified with the book of Torah, authorizes his own (written) voice as prophetic. At the end of his 5. The dating, however, has recently been challenged by Ingrid Hjelm (2000), who would time him in the Hasmonean period, though still in Jerusalem. The location has been challenged by Paul McKechnie (2000), who would place him in the Egyptian diaspora, though still in the earlier part of the century.

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poem glorifying Woman Wisdom, he announces, 'I will again pour out teaching like prophecy and leave it to all future generations' (24.33). 'Personified Wisdom's commission is partially fulfilled through [Ben Sira's] own activity', concludes Randy Argall in his comparative study of Sirach and 1 Enoch (1995: 72, 93). This claim to revelation, however, is a bold one, contestable and surely contested, as Argall's comparison of the similar claim in 1 Enoch makes plain. The second important contextual item is Ben Sira's focus on the Jerusalem Temple. Whether or not he actually lived in the city as he wrote, his text's climactic moment is the vision of a high priest called Simeon pouring out libation at the altar. Significantly, just as Ben Sira's paean to personified Wisdom in ch. 24 concludes with reference to the prophetic quality of his own teaching, so also his hymn to Simeon in ch. 50 segues into self-authorization of his own text: Training in wise conduct and smooth running proverbs have been written in this book of Yeshua, son of Eleazar, son of Sira, who poured them out from his understanding heart. Happy the one who reflects on these, wise will he be who takes them to heart! (50.27-28; translation from Skehan and DiLella 1987: 556).

Ben Sira's own book, then, stands with one foot on the shoulder of the written tradition and one on the shoulder of the cult. Lest these two bearers should walk off in different directions, it behooves him to bind them closely to each other. Ben Sira snaps two intersecting chalk lines, one horizontal, one vertical. Horizontal: In chs. 44-49, Ben Sira reads the textual tradition as story line. Such reading is not dissimilar to that of certain psalms (78; 89; 105; 106; 135; 136) that recount moments from the past either to praise God or challenge him.6 Ben Sira not only expands the genre, however, but also reorients the telling from events to persons. His praise 'of famous men' is exactly that: reference to events, often allusive in any case, is cast in terms of what particular men did, or what happened to them; their characteristics

6. Psalm 78 is notable for an introduction that could have come from the pen of our sage: Give ear, O my people to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 1 will open my mouth in a parable; 1 will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us (vv. 1-3).

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of faithfulness, strength and piety are emphasized.71 call this line horizontal because it moves for the most part in chronological order through points in time, and this chronology is experienced textually: it is experienced from side to side (which side to which side depending on the direction one writes and reads). Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, David,8 Joshua, Caleb, the judges, Samuel, Nathan, David again, Solomon, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah and Simeon.9 Nowhere in Hebrew Scripture is there such a catalogue.10 But to what end? The most obvious end is the high priest Simeon. But how do we get there? And what do we find when we arrive? What sort of map is this? Compared to the strong geographical sensibilities of much of the Bible— with its narrative movement from place to place and its tales of places won, places lost—this hymn of men is curiously ungrounded. It seems to happen a few feet (at least) above the surface. Enoch is taken up. Abraham's progeny will inherit not the land of Canaan (which is never named in these chapters), but 'from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth'. Jacob's 'inheritance' is established as 'portions' for the 12 tribes, but no actual territories are ever identified or distributed," and especially not to Aaron, who is explicitly denied inheritance in the land (though he gets a portion in the Lord and a fair amount of space in Ben Sira's text). Moses

7. Mack (1985: 19-20, 207-11). Mack further argues that it is the office the man holds rather than the individual himself that is important to Ben Sira. While there is truth in this, it is also the case that Ben Sira chooses a narrative sequence for his presentation that cannot be ignored. 8. Mack suggests that David appears here, out of chronological order, as part of a Literary unit that develops the theme of covenant (1985: 39). 9. Between Nehemiah (49.13) and Simeon (50.1) are named, out of chronological order, Enoch, Joseph, Shem, Seth and Enosh (49.14-16). The authenticity of these verses is disputed, based on both the varied manuscript evidence and thematic analysis (Mack 1985: 199-203). On the other hand, a case can be made for them as an introduction to the Simeon passage (Hayward 1996: 44-46). 10. Unless one considers the genealogies, which may indeed provide a model from which Ben Sira works. It is possible to read the famous men as the forebears of the illustrious Simeon. This would raise some further considerations about the meaning of kinship in Sirach to those I shall raise below. 11. Skehan and DiLella supply a word from Deut. 32.8-9, where God 'fixes the boundaries' of the peoples, but this spatial term is notably missing from the Hebrew text of Ben Sira (1987: 503-504).

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meets God face to face, but nowhere else. Depending on your textual variant, there may or may not be one city named in particular as conquered by Joshua, though the people did finally make it to the equally unnamed land flowing with milk and honey. Samuel established a kingdom.. .somewhere, and also managed to defeat more specifically the leaders of Tyre and the rulers of the Philistines, though again it is people not places in view. David, who is of the people ('tribe') but not the place of Judah, finally arrives somewhere, and we finally get a hint about the journey's end: He placed singers before the altar, to make sweet melody with their voices. He gave beauty to the feasts, and arranged their times throughout the year, while they praised God's holy name and the sanctuary resounded from early morning. The Lord took away his sins, and exalted his horn forever; he gave him the statute of royalty and established his throne over Jerusalem (47.9-11).

David captures time ('arranging' times throughout the year) and commands space: 'before the altar' and 'over Jerusalem', both amounting to essentially the same thing. The Thirdspatial experience of ritual worship occurs in the Firstspace of power and is, accordingly, mapped onto the Secondspace of royal ideology, which itself is enacted in the First/Thirdspace of the royal bed, complete with sounding (and sinless) horn. Thus is the Thirdspace of the worshiping subject and the fertile king united in authorized power. But the king will not finally get to fix the books. The 'beauty' that King David gives to the feasts but anticipates the ultimate 'beauty' of Simeon the priest (50.1).12 Likewise, the covenant with David was 'the inheritance of one man with respect to his honor', while that of Aaron was 'for all his seed' (45.25). David's son built the Temple, but his honor did not measure up (47.13, 20). Before recording the wise king's fall, however, Ben Sira describes Solomon's glory with expansive spatial language, expressed here in an intimate second person discourse instead of the poem's typical third person:

12. Tf with Hayward we accept the preceding verses as someone's authentic view, Simeon's beauty is set in parallel with that of Adam, which is 'above every living thing' (49.16)—ultimate indeed (1996: 45).

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The shift to this sort of spatial language establishes connections between three of Ben Sira's famous men—Abraham, Aaron and Solomon—connections that provide a framework for the Temple story he wants to build in his own day. The idealized spatial language of universal dominion in the Solomon passage calls to mind the one other passage where such expansive spatial language is used, that dealing with Abraham. Abraham's seed, in claiming their world-wide inheritance, will multiply like the dust of the earth, bringing blessing to the nations (44.21). Solomon's verbal wisdom is similarly earth-covering, but, notably, the fruit of his mouth has replaced the fruit of his loins as the means of domination.14 The latter of course is stained by his sexual dishonor, the reverse of Abraham's honor, on whose sexual flesh the covenant was marked and who proved himself faithful by his willingness to take the knife to the product of that flesh (44.26). Thus the similarity in spatial language used of these two men highlights their difference with respect to honor and offspring. Ben Sira has already suggested, however, in the opening section of his hymn, that the best of men will produce both seed faithful to the covenant and lasting wisdom (44.10-15). It is Aaron, the original priest, drawn into connection with the more recent Simeon, who fulfills the agenda—or almost, at any rate. Aaron, like Abraham, has honor (45.20) and, like Abraham, a single son (Eleazar) and grandson (Phinehas), through whom the covenant is passed, and who ultimately become a multitude.15 In the days of Simeon, the sons of Aaron surround the high priest at the sacrificial altar, splendid, shouting and sounding trumpets (50.12-13, 16). Aaron, like Solomon, also 13. Translating v. 15 with Skehan and DiLella (1987: 523), based on the Greek; the Hebrew does not make sense. Verse 16 is found only in Greek. 14. See Camp (2000: 184-85) for an analysis of the shift from seed to word in relation to Solomon already at work in the Hebrew Bible. 15. In the narratives of Leviticus and Numbers, of course, Aaron has four sons, which complicates the matter of the covenantal lineage considerably. Does Ben Sira not know the whole of this tradition, or has he streamlined it to suit his linear purposes?

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has words: the authority to teach the sons of Israel the statutes and commandments (45.17). It is of no little consequence, however, that, although Simeon continues to speak words of blessing (50.20), the work of instruction in understanding has passed to the scribe, Ben Sira (50.27-29)! In one sense, this language of expansive, indeed universal space that unites Abraham and Solomon seems precisely to exclude Aaron, whose extended description—the longest of any save Simeon—places him nowhere and indeed denies him a portion of space. In fact, however, one of the effects of totalizing discourse is that nowhere can easily become everywhere, and everywhere be condensed to a single point. Aaron, or Aaron cum Simeon, is the perfect union of the issue of Abraham's loins and Solomon's mouth. We need to consider Aaron's (no)space in this light. Though Aaron is denied a portion of space, he receives instead the Lord himself as 'his portion and inheritance' (45.22). But the Lord is, at least in some sense, everywhere: 'he is the all' (43.27). Thus does nowhere quickly take on a universal cast. Aaron's space is the space of holiness itself. With Aaron, however, no-space/all-space remains, as in all of the hymn up to Solomon, ungrounded in any clearly designated Firstspace. Solomon as Temple builder, the encloser of David's altar, marks an important transition in the poem's spatialization. Increasingly, space is both materialized and named. In the first part of the poem, space was construed narratively and, with Aaron and David, ritually—in a word, Thirdspatially—in and through the texts that form the bodies of men. The people-centered narrative continues in the poem's second half, but now becomes identified with the First- and Secondspace of physical experience—the Temple—and conceptual designation—Zion. Thus Hezekiah fortifies 'his city' and brings water into it through tunneling (48.17). His faithfulness helps save 'Zion' from the Rabshakeh (48.18-22). Likewise Isaiah comforts 'Zion' (48.24). The few good kings cannot finally save 'the holy city', however, which burns in spite of the words of Jeremiah (49.4-6). Perhaps predictably, Ben Sira does not mention Exile—change of place—before turning to Zerubbabel and Jeshua, who rebuild the altar and the holy Temple, and to Nehemiah who restores the walls, gates and houses (49.11-13). The first remarks about Simeon also describe his Firstspatial activity: fortifying the Temple, building walls and corners, and, once more, excavating for water (50.1-3). He fortifies the city as well (50.4). At the same time, the Secondspace of universal dominion, narratively constituted in the Thirdspace of Abraham's seed and Solomon's words, attaches itself to the Temple through Aaron's seed and words and, above

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all, through his universal portion in the Lord. If in Aaron space is holiness, in the Temple holiness will take on space. The real physical waters provided by Hezekiah and Simeon recall the universal waters of Abraham's and Solomon's Second/Thirdspace. The house that Simeon builds is 'visited' by God (50.1), who has also 'visited' Joseph's bones, as well as the primordial men, Shem, Seth and Enosh (cf. Hayward 1996:47). Divine visitation is ideological language, to be sure, but also the language of personal encounter, of Thirdspatial experience. Thus it is no real surprise when the ritual experience of Thirdspace returns dramatically in the poem's finale, once more encapsulating the worshiper's experience of the Temple in the body and name of a man, Simeon, as beautiful as the first man of creation, coming out of the inner sanctuary. We realize finally where we have been all along, not moving through time and narrative, but located in one place, meeting body after body, name after name, as the Temple has been erected before us, enclosing the body of the scribe. The names and bodies of men constitute the Thirdspace that contains the name of God. It's a tall building. As we see when the vertical line finally snaps. The magnificent layering of imagery for Simeon begins in the heavens. The high priest emerging from the inner sanctuary is like the morning star among the clouds, like the moon when it is full; like the sun shining upon the temple of the Most High, and like the rainbow gleaming in glorious clouds... (50.6-7).

Once planted in the earth, he grows tall above it, 'like a cypress towering in the clouds' or 'a young cedar on Lebanon'; he is surrounded by his brother priests 'like the trunks of palm trees' (50.10, 12). This vertical heaven to earth, earth to heaven imagery also identifies Simeon at sacrifice with Woman Wisdom of ch. 24, who has descended from heaven to lodge in Israel and minister in the tabernacle in Zion (24.10-11). She too is compared to a cedar, a cypress and a palm tree (24.13,14). Wisdom and Simeon share in other complementary similes as well: both are like olive trees, roses, incense. This sharing is also a displacement, however, of female by male. Once Simeon appears, Woman Wisdom disappears, a point we will return to in a moment. The verticality of the Temple experience embodied in Simeon can be seen also by means of contrast to another famous biblical constructor of Temple space, namely Ezekiel. As demonstrated by Kalinda Rose

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Stevenson (1996) in her book on the territorial rhetoric of Ezekiel 40-48, the prophet 'uses horizontal language' to construct his Temple. The essential thing for Ezekiel is the establishment of boundaries; status is determined by how near or far one is from sacred space, how much access one has to it. Ben Sira's vision is, with the exception of his elevation of Simeon, more democratic (though equally male!): 'the whole congregation of the sons of Israel' observes the libation, participates in prayer and receives the priestly blessing (50.17-21). Access to heaven is available to all, but through a single point in space alone, that point manifest in the body of the high priest in whom the whole space and meaning of the Temple inheres. Ben Sira, then, having built a Temple through textual bodies, identifies all those bodies with one human body, authorizing text with flesh, flesh with text, and both with the affective power of the ritual experience as preserved in his textual space. The sage's own text seems to embody Flanagan's dictum regarding the organization and perception of space in segmented social systems: '...in such societies, people move through people, not through space. Spatiality and people are organically linked' (2001: 13; cf. Malina 1993: 370-72). Ben Sira allows us to extend this insight to texts as well: people also apparently read through people, not through books (or scrolls). Textuality and people are organically linked. As we have observed, however, Ben Sira is not only interested in his readers' reading through ancient textual persons, but also through himself as represented in his text.16 The dynamic of mutual authorization that he brings to bear between text and Temple is also at work between this author and his text. For this reason, even though his book reaches an emotional climax in Simeon at the altar, it does not end there. He turns almost immediately from the blessing of the priest and a prayer for the well-being of Simeon and the eternal priestly covenant (50.20-24) to a self-naming and the assurance that those who concern themselves with the matters in his book will also find blessing (50.27-29). The book concludes with an acrostic, an arguably erotic—or at least eroticized—autobiographical poem about the author's relationship with female Wisdom. This last unit is of particular interest to me here. It links Ben Sira to Simeon in terms of both space and person. Both men preside over a house: 16. Many scholars have noted a new level of autobiographical reference by Ben Sira that shows a greater awareness of himself as author. Ben Sira's authorial selfconsciousness, as it relates to the text-person-temple nexus I have tried to develop in this paper, deserves a treatment of its own.

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the house of God for the priest, the house of instruction for the scribe. Whether or not Ben Sira refers to an actual school in his own case is an interesting historical question, but misses the multi-spatial point. He claims for himself a divinely authorized space that is the equivalent of the priest's. But the two houses involve a separation of functions: the priest speaks ritual blessing but the scribe speaks instruction in wisdom. In the end neither Temple nor schoolhouse matter so much as the mouths of their authorized presiders. But this reality is not merely conceptual; it is also lived. People move through people. People read through people. People move through people, and yet something different is going on with both Simeon and Ben Sira than what Flanagan has in mind with this phrase. His observation about the nature of space in segmentary societies refers to the networks of kin associations, real and fictive, that constitute the space of tribal peoples. In Ben Sira's hymn to the fathers, the reference to kin is much more attenuated; indeed, it is for the most part metaphorical. Simeon has a house but no wife, brothers but no mother. He appears as born of the sanctuary itself, from whose inmost space he emerges. Indeed, real women are missing in general from the Temple built of Ben's Sira's books. Except for one site: Solomon. The man who built the Firstspace Temple had real women. But these wives were the source of stain and shame for the male body, causing its issue in foolish sons (47.1924). Simeon's honor cannot be marred by the presence of women; his beauty is that of Adam, that of Aaron; he is the new man, the perfect manalone. But women do not depart from his space of their own accord, as the reference to Phinehas, both at the end of the Aaron pericope and at the end of Simeon's, shows. Ben Sira discreetly refrains from expounding on the exact nature of the 'zeal' that won Phinehas's descendents the eternal covenant of priesthood (44.23-24). But every (implied) reader knows the untold story of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, plunging his spear through the bellies of the Simeonite(l) Zimri and his Midianite wife Cozbi in the sacred space of the tent of meeting (Num. 25.6-18). How ironic, then, Ben Sira's plea that God fulfill the covenant of Phinehas with the present Simeon (50.24). Ben Sira hints that he himself would like to have the zeal of Phinehas; indeed, he names himself 'son of Eleazar'. But in most respects it seems that he identifies more with Solomon. He has traveled the world, acquiring wisdom and sharing it (34.11-12; 39.4). Like Solomon his wisdom is universal. He compares himself, like Solomon, to an overflowing river, expanding to a sea (24.30-31). But there are also hints that, like Solomon,

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he does not quite measure up on the sexual purity front. His anxiety that he will be brought to shame by women in general and wives in particular is one of the most striking aspects of his textual self-revelation.17 Notably, his concluding poem begins with the line: '[WJhen I was a youth, before I went astray... she came to me in her beauty '(51.13-14). His burning desire for Wisdom (51.19), whom he attains with his 'purified' hands (51.20), is covered by the shadow of the 'short time' he paid heed to her (51.16). How this short time before going astray fits in with his claims that his desire is 'never relenting' and that he will 'never forsake her' (51.19-20) is a mystery. Except of course to a psychoanalyst. The apparent incoherence between his values and his body is only partially resolved by sharing his house with a wife who, though luscious, is actually just a book that has proceeded from his own mouth. For this is the same Woman Wisdom whose presence in the Temple the scribe has suppressed by transferring her attributes of glory to Simeon.18 The shame he casts out of God's house by means of the tradition's stories and the priest's body he cannot quite cast out of his own. To conclude: Ben Sira's Temple is a monument of Thirdspace, a monument to the male textual body. It is a monument that exists only in Thirdspace, in the lived experience that generates such texts and that these texts in turn (re)generate. For the texts become the kind of texts they are— Bible text—by virtue of having made this space, a space in which the authority of heaven is channeled through the body of the priest, but only by means of the mouth of the scribe. Ben Sira's text was not always divorced from Firstspace. He lived in a real city—called, typically, Jerusalem rather than Zion—and worshiped in a real Temple made of earthly substances. In this Temple a real male priesthood celebrated before a male god (whose reality I will not comment on here). Women and their impurity could be ritually, though no less really, expunged. Here is one space in which the Bible begins its odyssey. But writing takes place in the scribal house, one step removed from the purity of the Temple, as the presence of Woman Wisdom hints. And it must address real men, who cannot drive all women from their houses, however much they may hate or fear them. Ben Sira's effort to construct an all-male Temple from the tradition must fail in the face of a larger lived 17. For a detailed analysis of the relationship of sexuality and shame in Sirach, see Camp (1991). 18. On the displacement of the female figure by the similarly imaged male, see Camp (1997).

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space, as well of the tradition itself, where women's stories are not absent. But what to make of these? I think that this effort to understand one moment of Bible-making in spatial terms may help us cut through an interpretive dilemma introduced by feminist analysis. It begins with the early feminist question of whether the 'text itself is patriarchal or 'only' its subsequent interpretation, and it lingers in later, more radical feminist insistence that the problem lies indeed with the text. Both answers to the question implicitly theorize a clear distinction between text and interpretation. A spatial approach to biblical genesis suggests instead a more integrated process. To make a Bible is to make a space in which the Bible can be Bible. Bible only happens to the degree it can keep making this space. In one sense, biblical Thirdspace divorced of any material Firstspace and challenged by other conceptual Secondspaces, as it is in Western culture today, has to work all the harder to naturalize itself as lived space. The fact that one of its spaces of departure was gynophobic at best, misogynist at worst, does not predestine all its spaces to be so. But it was not a good start, and the residues of biblical patriarchy leave one wondering about the cost of further construction.

SPACE AND SECTS IN THE QUMRAN SCROLLS Philip R. Davies

Much as I would like to offer a long-standing friend and colleague something worthy of his innovative and interdisciplinary instincts, I have never been especially adept at theory. The best I can do here is to offer some observations pertinent to one of Jim Flanagan's many current interests, the construction of space, from a field I am reasonably familiar with, the Qumran texts. It seems to me that there is a large and useful agenda here which can perhaps be sketched, but I cannot promise much more. All texts, of course, have their own literary space, and Lefebvre famously (and wisely) cautions about applying spatial analysis to texts.' But my topic embraces not only texts. Scrolls scholarship itself can be included in such a survey. In his own stimulating essay on the topic (Flanagan 1999b), James Flanagan has pointed to the impact of spatiality on the development of the discipline of biblical studies, linking, as an example, the spatial marginality of both Missoula and Sheffield, as homes of new publication ventures, with challenges to the 'progressive pretensions' of establishment scholarship. In reading his essay, it occurred to me that scholarship on the Qumran scrolls is also amenable to this kind of analysis: indeed, as is probably well known, scholarship on the Qumran scrolls has experienced (and I have personally experienced!) a deliberate policy of confining knowledge of their contents to the limited space of a small editorial team, plus a few privileged (Harvard) graduates. The enforced release of this academic space in the last decade or so has generated visible effects in the nature as well as the extent of Qumran scholarship (whether or not that restriction is fully acknowledged or the enlarged spatiality welcomed in Cambridge, Massachusetts!).2 In what follows I shall consider first the relationship between the 1. '[A]ny search for space in literary texts will find it everywhere and in every guise; encoded, described, projected, dreamt of, speculated about' (Lefebvre 1991:15). 2. See, for example, the defensive account by the Harvard-trained Collins in Collins (1999).

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physical space occupied by the ruins and the texts; then the literary spaces of scrolls scholarship; and finally the ideological spaces within the texts themselves. Space, Scrolls and Scholarship There are important observations to be made about the representation of the phenomena, which comprise two sets: ruins and texts. They are certainly contiguous geographically, but the historical relationship between them, once taken for granted, has recently been problematized. Whether or not it was the actual site of production of the scrolls, or even of the groups that are described in it, the location of Khirbet Qumran has long been used in scholarship to illuminate facets of the texts, and certainly the region has provided a kind of metaphor for the space occupied by their textually attested communities within the history of ancient Judaism: a site on the fringes, in the 'wilderness', a place associated with flight, refuge, solitariness, in the strange environment of the lowest inhabited area of the world's surface: marginal, even 'other'. The physical strangeness and perceived distance from the 'centre' (Jerusalem, of course) of this site has regularly transferred itself to the contents of the manuscripts found there: texts undoubtedly 'Jewish' but remote from the portrait of 'orthodox' or 'mainstream' Judaism that previously stood framed on the desk of the scholar; texts that expressed the experience of exile, that renegotiated the iconic (and physical) centrality of the Temple and city of Jerusalem: that redrew the boundaries within and around Judaism, redividing the cosmos according to different dualisms. Here, in short, the scholars of Qumran (and visitors to the site) were irresistibly invited to contemplate an eremite community of Jewish otherness, geographically and ideologically separated, whether by banishment or secession, from 'normative' Jerusalem-based Judaism, their desire focused on the world soon to come. In the light of new regional approaches to archaeology, and of more archaeological discoveries in the area, however, recent reassessment of the Qumran region has taken place, and its geographical and economic isolation now seems less obvious. It lies close to the site of several ancient Hasmonean-Herodian fortresses, to an ancient route west across the Judean desert, and both Transjordan and Jericho are quite accessible. Other similar settlements along the western shore of the Dead Sea have also been identified. Clues to trading have been identified from the settlement itself, which

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was not as inaccessible as once imagined; its inhabitants probably indulged in trade, and it may well have been part of a network of sites forming an economic zone (see, e.g., Davies 1994b; Cansdale 1997; Hirschfeld 2000; Zangenberg 2000). In terms of their place within the history of Judaism and Christianity, these scrolls have also occupied a curious and contested space between 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'. Depending on one's scholarly guide, the Qumran archive either presents a slightly alternative current of a main stream of a Torah-focused Judaism (so Schiffman 1994), or contains the secret history of early Christianity (Eisenman 1983; Thiering 1983), with the once-popular option in between these extremes, that the texts represent a form of messianic or apocalyptic Judaism to which the early Christian sect might be usefully compared rather than with the type of Torah- and holiness-centred 'Pharisaic' Judaism that once passed for 'normative'. In recent years, this ideological spatialization of the texts has also been challenged: Stegemann (1992) has argued in detail that the Essenes (who for the majority of scholars remain the most likely candidates for authorship or ownership of these scrolls) were the major religious group within Judaism, a mainstream movement whose buildings at Qumran housed a major centre for book production. Golb (1995), at the other extreme, has relocated the origin of the scrolls to various Jerusalem libraries and argued for an authorship not of a single monastic group but a plurality of Judaisms, representing in their combination a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices, away from the cramped margins and back towards a spacious centre. The representation of Qumran and its scrolls spatially is itself, then, a subject for an interesting analysis. It might, for example, be suggested already that the spatiality of Qumran and of the 'Judaism' of its scrolls are linked metaphorically as well as geographically, and that the integration of the site into a wider regional context and the placement of the contents of the scrolls in wider Jewish contexts are also in some way metaphorically linked rather than coincidental. Another spatial analysis might also be conducted on the politically and historically sensitive location of the West Bank site of Qumran and on the history of editing of the scrolls, first among Christian scholars assembled in Jordanian Jerusalem, later internationally under Israeli control. Schiffman (1994) has urged a 'reclaiming' of the scrolls for Judaism, a movement facilitated both by the nature of more recently published texts with their halakhic content (11QT; 4QMMT; 4QD) and a sharing of editorial

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responsibility with Jewish scholars. Whether or not he is right to talk of 'reclaiming' in the sense of reasserting the 'Jewishness' of the Scrolls, or correct in his rather narrow view of 'Judaism', he is right to point to this aspect of Qumran spatiality in the contentious land between ancient Judaism and Christianity, and, it could be added, more concretely in the transfer of the headquarters of the editorial enterprise from the Ecole Biblique to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, from East to West(?) Jerusalem. Finally, in this review of spatialities, one can also draw a map of modern scrolls sectarianism, in which certain scholars are deemed outside the mainstream (e.g. Thiering and Eisenman; for some, Allegro) while others elicit (or have elicited) from many a reputation of near-infallibility (e.g. de Vaux and Cross). But this is hardly peculiar to Qumran, though somehow the sectarianism of the texts seems to transfer itself more easily to a sectarianism of scholarship than in many other cases. The possibilities of spatial analysis of the representation of the scholarly field and of the scholarship itself are perhaps too rich and too easy to identify: whether as recovered artifacts, as interpreted documents, or as the focus of modern academic geography, 'the scrolls' as objects are vulnerable to numerous dimensions of spatial representation. My emphasis in the bulk of this paper will focus, despite Lefebvre's warning, upon the internal spatiality of the texts. I will resist the strong and obvious temptation to deal with the space of Qumran itself, if only because the texts do not refer to Qumran in any direct way, and the relationship between texts and ruins remains contentious. We cannot specify the physical space occupied by the authors of the scrolls. But within the scrolls themselves ideological spaces loom almost everywhere. Space, Sect and Symbolization The scrolls may represent physically one archive3 but their contents cannot be analyzed as if constructing a single system. The texts reflect different perspectives, histories, discourses, however much these are related to each other. Nevertheless, it is possible to organize a discussion of a number of selected texts according to an overall scheme based on a recognition of two distinct communities, in each of which a characteristic, and to an extent 3. This statement is open to qualification: there remain some queries whether the Copper Scroll (3Q15) belongs with the remainder, and some manuscript fragments from Masada, especially of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, are regarded by many scholars as having originally belonged to the same archive as the Qumran texts.

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determinative, spatialization is identifiable. Both communities imply a segregated lifestyle and the maintenance of strict boundaries between the members of the community and outsiders. The communities also represented themselves as being, or as being in the place of, the true 'Israel'. They are, on my own definition, eligible to be called 'sects' or 'sectarian' on the grounds that they are both physically distinct from the surrounding society and also represent themselves as the true version of that society.4 Arguably, the essence of a sect is the claiming of privileged space, space occupied by the parent. The challenge for this space is achieved both ideologically, by claiming to be the true heir, fulfilling the proper definition, and thus denying the parent its identity; and also socially, by defining boundaries between the sect and its parent, the wider society from which it emerges. The mechanisms by which such spatialization is accomplished differ in the two communities, and it is these mechanisms and their distinctive features to which I wish especially to draw attention. 'Damascus' The first of these sectarian groups (I would also say 'earlier' in terms of historical formation, but such a conclusion is not mandatory for this analysis) has generated texts that include the Damascus Document and (in my view) the Temple Scroll5 and whose ideological formation may be relocated in other texts also. Physically, the geographical disposition of this community is not in one single place, but in a number of detached settlements called 'cities' and 'camps'.6 It is unclear whether these terms are to be taken literally, designating respectively urban and rural locations, because there appear to be different sets of rules in force for either kind, and in one passage Jerusalem is referred to as the 'head of the camps of Israel'.7 It does appear, nevertheless, that some settlements contained families and others males only8 (in these respects the sect appears to 4. On this definition of sectarian see Davies (1994a). A fuller discussion of the issue can be found in Baumgarten (1997). 5. For the arguments linking CD and 11QT, see Davies (1989). I would include among the texts that belong to the history of this 'Damascus' community 4QMMT, though for an alternative view, see Hempel (2000); there is also a fairly wide range of other texts perhaps belonging to the prehistory of this community, including 1 Enoch and Jubilees, and a number of (recently published) wisdom texts. But these do not fall within my analysis here. 6. See CD 12.19-23; 12.23-13.19; 13.19-14.2; 14.3-12; cf. also CD 7.6. 7. 4QMMT B.61-62. See Qimron and Strugnell 1994: 53. 8. Cf. CD 7.6-8.

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conform to Josephus's description of the Essenes).9 The sect is thus focused, if at all, on Jerusalem,10 but is dispersed. It lives throughout the land of Judah and among other Jews, even though it may not mingle to a large extent with them. It represents itself, too, as the true remnant of Israel, constituted as such by a divine covenant given to it as the 'remnant' after the Babylonian exile. It is therefore related to the historical 'Israel' by succession, and separated from it by election. The symbolic spaces of the social world of this sect are of especial interest. They do not differ radically from those immediately outside its boundaries (namely the 'historical' Israel, 'other Jews'). There exists an 'Israel' defined by Torah and covenant; and Israel possesses a divinely given land; at the centre of this land, and of the people of Israel, is the place of divine presence, the Jerusalem Temple. The community shares the land with the rest of Israel, and shares also the Temple. But it also lives in a kind of internal exile, and indeed expresses its existence in the language of exile, as if the Babylonian exile were prolonged (a view that we encounter also in other texts of the period, such as the books of Daniel and Enoch). I shall illustrate the spatialization of this sect by looking briefly at four key aspects: (a) the boundaries between 'in' and 'out'; (b) the land of Israel; (c) 'vertical space', that of heaven and earth, of the divine and human world (including the Temple); and (d) internal space. Boundaries between 'in' and 'out'.!' Many Jewish scriptural texts express characteristics of exclusivity: the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, the Abraham cycle, the Sinai covenant, the conquest accounts of Joshua and the idealized anti-Canaanite society drawn by Deuteronomy. Each of these reflects a basic dichotomy between Israel and other nations, expressed chiefly in terms of national boundaries and ethnic mixing. The Damascus Document recognizes boundaries between its sect and other Jews as well as between Jews and non-Jews. But the dichotomy 9. Josephus, War2.l24: 'They are not in one town only, but in every town several of them form a colony'; and War 2.160: 'There exists another order of Essenes who, although in agreement with the others on the way of life, usages and customs, are separated from them on the subject of marriage...' Translations from Vermes and Goodman (1989: 39, 47). 10. There is evidence of an 'Essene quarter' in the SE comer of the ancient city. See Yadin 1975; Pixner, Chen and Margalit 1989. 11. For a fuller account of this issue see Davies (1994a).

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inside/outside remains more crucial, and does not become a trichotomy: other Jews and Gentiles are distinguished functionally only in minor respects. The term 'children of perdition' (nrTCT]! [6.15; 13.14]), perhaps the clearest expression of a basic dualism in the sect's world-view, seems to apply to both categories.12 In CD 2.1-13 we also encounter a predestinarian account of human origins, with humanity divided into only two camps: the 'chosen' and the 'wicked'. However, the sect's main target of criticism throughout is the historical 'Israel' outside, and the salvation of the 'righteous' is compared with the sin and future punishment of this 'Israel'. Scriptural rules about dealings with non-Jews remain in force, of course, and thus sabbaths may not be spent close to non-Jews (CD 11.1415), probably so that one may not be tempted to breach the sabbath vicariously (see CD 11.2). Nor may they be sold clean beasts or birds for sacrifice, or any cereal or wine (12.8-10), that is, goods suitable for offering. But such restrictions on relationships do not constitute a significant boundary between the sect and the outside world. If we represent the world of this sect in three concentric circles, representing, from the centre outwards, the sect, Jews and Gentiles, it is the circumference of the innermost circle that matters, that which separates the sect from both external categories and, immediately, from other Jews. However, while strict recriminations against deserters are determined, these are perhaps balanced by an implicit interest in recruiting.13 The sect does not regard the boundaries as manufactured by itself, but by those outside it, whose leaders are called 'builders of the wall', a term borrowed from Ezek 13.10.14 This implies a perception of exclusion o/the sect rather than an exclusion perpetrated by the sect. Such a perspective, incidentally, supports the view of many scholars that 4QMMT represents a final attempt by a group attached to certain traditions to persuade the 12. Rabin (1958: 24, 67) assumes the phrase refers to Jews, but without argumentation. The phrase appears also in 1QS 9.16, 10.19 and 1QH 2.21; in Jubilees 10.3 it refers to those drowned in the Flood (and thus not only Jews); in 15.26 the referent is unclear. 13. In CD 14.3 four categories of membership in the sect are here given as priest, Levite, Israelite and ger. This last term possibly hints that Jews, not yet full members of the sect, were given the same status as the book of Ezekiel grants to non-Jews living in the land of Israel: that of 'resident aliens' with honorary Israelite status. See also the arguments in Murphy-O'Connor (1970) identifying a 'Missionary Document' within CD. 14. See CD4.19; 19.24-25 and 8.18 (= 19.31). CD4.12 also quotes Mic. 7.11: 'the wall is built'.

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ruler(s) of their viewpoint, an attempt that on this view would have failed and led to sectarian formation. But the opposite perspective also appears: the language of 'straying away' and becoming lost is also used of the Israel outside the sect (CD 1.13-15; 2.17-21)—'just as Ephraim departed from Judah' (7.12; 14.1). Either representation sustains the claim that the sect represents the true Israel, occupying the ideologically stable position. It is the outsiders, the false Israel that has 'strayed' away from the true Israel. As is typical of a sectarian movement of this kind, the norm is defined by the sect itself, and those outside have both moved and are responsible for the necessity for boundaries. The central space retains the identity of true Israel, but the fact that the walls around it are seen as the work of 'outsiders' means that these walls are to be challenged in the activity of converting and recruiting. This is perhaps why the sect is distributed (at least in part) within existing Jewish cities. It has not physically withdrawn to a space outside Israel and outside the land: only in a sense symbolically. The Land of Israel. The Temple Scroll underlines what was probably a common Jewish theological perception, that the land of Israel was configured concentrically, with the Temple (whose courts also comprise concentric areas of graded holiness) at the core, and beyond that the holy city of Jerusalem in which, according to the sect, no sexual intercourse is permitted (CD 12.1-2) and which is still regarded, as we have seen, as the real as well as spiritual headquarters of the sect, the 'head of the camps of Israel'; beyond this most holy space lies the sphere of Israel and beyond that space, subject to the regime of holiness, the unholy world of the Gentiles. One of the few significant transformations within the 'Damascus' sect from this general Jewish configuration concerns the Temple itself. The communion between the sect and the Temple is unbroken, but not undamaged. Concern for the purity of the Temple is such that the members have abstained from certain practices, including most sacrifices.15 This is due to the pollution of the Temple (as the sect saw it) through the use of illicit laws regarding holiness and the calendar (affecting the manner and timing of many cultic acts). Hence, the Damascus Document claims that 15. Here again Josephus's account of the Essenes provides a parallel in Ant. 18.19: 'They send offerings to the Temple, but perform their sacrifices using different customary purifications. For this reason, they are barred from entering into the common enclosure, but offer sacrifices among themselves' (translation from Vermes and Goodman 1989: 55).

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its own places of cultic activity, its 'assemblies', are the seat of the divine law, not the Temple: As it says [Amos 5.26-7]: 'And I will exile the booth16 of your king and the kiyyun11 of your images from my tent to Damascus.' The books of the law are the 'booth of the king', as it says [Amos 9.11]: 'And I will raise the falling booth of David.' The 'king' is the assembly, and the 'kiyyun of the images' are the books of the prophets whose words Israel despised. And the star is the interpreter of the law who comes to Damascus, as it is written: 'A star shall come forth...' [Num. 24.17].

The midrash here appears to express the view that the divine law (in 'books') no longer resides in the Temple ('God's tent'), but with the community in its worship, if 'Damascus' is here intended to signify the sect, as most scholars agree.18 The spatialization of the sect with respect to the land of Israel is thus rather complex. The weakening of the Temple's geographical and ideological centrality finds no adequate counterweight in any alternative centre: the scattered settlements of the sect look to the Jerusalem camp as their head: the passage just quoted suggests something similar to the apostle Paul's respect for the Jerusalem church. The Temple remains a place for some cultic activity, and no other place stands as a substitute sanctuary. With the true law residing within the sect, and the Jerusalem settlement functioning as a head camp, the real and symbolic functions of the Temple and Holy City have been splintered into three.19 But Jerusalem itself remains at the centre of the world. Finally, we might look further, or deeper, for a symbolization of the land in the vocabulary of exile that pervades the Damascus Document. The account of the sect's history begins with exile under Nebuchadnezzar, and dates its epoch (like Dan. 9) from that event: the present time is an exile from God too, who is still angry with Israel. Stegemann (1971) has suggested that the 'camps' of the Damascus Document, as indeed the 'land 16. Probably an error for swkt. 17. The meaning of this word is uncertain in the MT. For our purposes it may be left untranslated. 18. 'Damascus' is the place where the covenant that constituted the sect took place; see CD. 19. For a distinction between the symbolization of Jerusalem as 'camp' in 4QMMT and D, see Hempel (2000). Her interpretation seems to me entirely plausible given that the original composition of QMMT probably predates the creation of sectarian settlements.

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of Damascus' itself, symbolized the wilderness existence of the sect. On this view (not implausible, though we still have to reckon with the 'cities' and with Jerusalem's status as the centre), the sect's idealization of itself as Israel assumed a chronological aspect, a retrojection to a pristine purity. But one aspect of this retrojection would also be the expectation of a new conquest in the form of the ending of divine anger and the punishment of the wicked—all predicted, according to a sectarian calendrical calculation, to happen soon. The definitive spatialization of post-'Solomonic' Judaism, which brought, according to the Scriptures, Jerusalem and its Temple to the centre as the sole dwelling of God, the ark and the tablets of the Law, remains for the future as for the past, but not the present state of affairs, for which the metaphor of 'exile' is most suitable. 'Vertical Space'. The vertical spatialization of Judaism during Second Temple times was tied to the Temple as the sole abode of God: Ezekiel's vision of the divine chariot leaving the doomed city symbolized the ending of the relationship between the god and his chosen people in Judah. The chariot, according to several commentators, was bound for Babylon; according to others, it was withdrawing to heaven. The Damascus sect did not view the chariot as having withdrawn to heaven. The presence of God is available to members in their own devotion to the law, in their assemblies of worship (CD 11.22: nnnOTI STO), ideally, and still partially, the Temple is the seat of divine presence. The sect envisages a new Temple (and a new Jerusalem: see, e.g., HQNJar). Its alternative structures are provisional. Its Judaism is one defined still by earthly dimensions. It does nevertheless live under the shadow (or perhaps ' dawn' would be a preferable term to its adherents) of a divine visitation. There is an imminent vertical dimension. The vindication of the sect's status is to come from above, since it does not expect to convert 'old Israel' to its ranks. Its members are chosen 'from of old' (CD 2.7-10) and bear the divine mark (CD 19.12). Even the Temple itself will be 'recreated' by God (11QT 29.9). The ideology of the Melchizedek midrash (HQMelch), which is that Israel's sins against God will be atoned for on the great Day of Atonement in the tenth Jubilee (compare the 390 years of CD 1.5-6), when all debts to God are remitted through the agency of the heavenly high priest, is broadly consistent with the view of the Damascus Document of Israel in a time of divine anger, with the clock ticking off the days until the final reckoning. But the eschatological dimension must not be interpreted as implying that the sect had transformed the horizontal geography of the rest of Israel

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into a vertical one. The only place in which the vertical dimension linking heaven and earth was encountered was the Jerusalem Temple. And indeed, that was to remain true even for the coming divine visitation, when the Temple would again enjoy its proper cult and would once again constitute the seat of divine law. Inner Space. And if they live in camps, following the 'rule of the land/earth' ("ISH "pD) and take wives and have children, these (also) shall follow the torah.. .as it says, 'between a man and his wife and between a man and his child/son' (CD 7.6-9).

The 'Damascus' sect included groups both of unmarried (or celibate) men and also of families. According to the wording of this passage, and the comment of Josephus about the marrying order of Essenes,20 married members were less common. The reasons for celibacy cannot be investigated here, but they provide an interesting and little-explored problem.21 They can be explained as partly due to a mistrust of women as agents of impurity and possibly temptation to impure activities and partly due to the example of the chief 'camp' in Jerusalem, which must have been celibate (no sex in the holy city, according to CD 12.1-2). Other reasons may well be suspected, but can only be guessed at. How the celibate communities functioned socially cannot be reconstructed in much detail. Thanks to the Cave 4 versions of the Damascus Document, we now have a set of disciplinary rules that are similar but not identical to those of the yahad: the so-called 'Penal Code'.22 Although Baumgarten regards this code as being applicable, in its 1QS version, to an all-male society (a view with which I concur), he suggests that it could also apply to a society in which both men and women participated. But here I disagree. If we begin by observing that the married members lived as households, with wives, children and slaves (who must be Jewish, 'in the covenant of Abraham', though not members of the sect: see CD 12.11), we can assume that the biblical laws relating to households supplied much of the social legislation for the sect. Although each 'camp' or 'city' had its overseer (mebaqqef), authority over the household probably remained with the head of that household. In a society of males, however, the entire society 20. See n. 7 above. 21. See on this question Davies (1995). 22. See Baumgarten (1992).

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must function as a household. The regulations for such a household, without & paterfamiliasand without the hierarchical status that a household imposes, must start from a different basis, and this, I think, provides the rationale for a penal code as well as for rules about communal eating and drinking. In short, I suspect that the household furnishes the model of social organization of this sect, as it did for virtually every Jew. The internal disposition of the sect thus reflects, or is based on, that of the biblical (and Jewish) norm: the household, family, father's house. Thus, CD 7.6-9 reads 'if they dwell in camps...and take wives...and beget children...they [i.e. the wives and children; emphasis mine] shall walk according to the Law...' Members of the household were all (slaves apart) automatically members of the sect, which was not highly centralized. The Yahad I now turn to the other major sect described in the scrolls: the yahad. Here I believe a quite different spatialization can be recognized, representing a more radical break with other Judaisms. For reasons I have given elsewhere (Davies 2000a), I believe that this sect was an offshoot of the 'Damascus' sect, from which it separated, following its belief that the messiah had arrived, a claim apparently rejected by most of the members of the 'Damascus' sect. In what way, then, might such a 'sect of a sect' reconceive its location vis-a-vis not only other Jews, but also its parent sect? The symbolic space might seem rather cramped. However, this was not the case. Once its leader, its messiah, was dead (see CD 20.13-17), the question of the status of this sect became acute, its most obvious raison d 'etre being removed. How much of the transformation in the space symbolically occupied by the yahad was effected before this event and how much afterwards is very hard to detect. Only the Damascus Document, which was redacted by this new group, and the pesharim, which offer only fragmentary allusions of dubious historicity, address the figure of this messiah, known better as the 'Teacher of Righteousness'. The major document of the yahad, the Community Rule, is entirely silent about him. Let us nevertheless consider texts that represent the yahad under the same four headings as previously. Boundaries between 'in' and 'out'. And when these exist as a yahad in Israel, according to these principles, they are to be segregated from the midst of wicked human habitation to

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walk in the desert (midbar) to confront (Ipnwt) there the way of God... (1QS8.12-13).23 [The faithless] are those who 'backslide from the way'; this is the time about which it was written, 'Like a backsliding heifer, so did Israel slide back'; when there arose a 'man of derision' who spouted to Israel 'waters of falsehood' and 'caused them to go astray in a chaos (tohu) without way...'(CD 1.12-15).

If I am correct in considering the yahad to have originated not as an autonomous sect but as an offshoot of an existing one, then it is reasonable to consider the above statements as implicating not other Jews but other members of the parent 'Damascus' sect. This sect represents the 'wicked human habitation', and these are characterized as the 'backsliding Israel', led by its 'spouter of lies'. The new sect is hardly concerned with other Jews, let alone Gentiles: it focuses its identity and its contempt on the parent movement, from which it has already inherited the boundaries with these groups and now needs to differentiate itself. It borrows the wilderness symbolism of its parent and intensifies it, simultaneously transforming the 'wilderness' of its parent's symbolic geography into a 'chaos': the state of the world before divine creation of order (see Gen. 1.2). If indeed a small group adhering to a messianic leader seceded from a larger group, the texts from this smaller group present an inverted history (one that several Qumran scholars have accepted!): it was the larger group that deserted them, in rejecting the true leader. In the same way, as seen earlier, the 'Damascus' group had claimed that 'Ephraim' (Israel) had departed from 'Judah' (the sect). Whether the first passage quoted earlier can be taken as evidence of a physical move to such a place as Qumran is still debated. But the proposal implies a small group deliberately separating itself in a 'desert': a single place and a single small community. Entailed in this representation is a necessary heightening of inner cohesion, in which, I would surmise, the entire community functioned in a family-like way, eating together, submitting to a strict hierarchy, occupying a single 'house', forming a single 'household'.

23. The supralinear text indicates the additions of a second scribe. While I cannot deal here with the redactional history of the Rule (see Metso 1997, 2000), the fact of such a history makes reconstruction of the evolution of the yahad itself a complicated and almost certainly provisional matter.

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The Land of Israel. Does this 'desert' mentioned in 1QS 8 symbolize a real place, outside the land of Israel? If the War Scroll represents (at least in its final redaction) the ideology of theyahad, then the land of Israel is viewed as if from outside as being full of wicked foreigners and renegade Jews, and waiting to be liberated by 'exiles': The war begins with the attack of the children of light against the lot of the children of darkness, the band of Edom and Moab, and of the Ammonites and... Philistines, the bands of the Kittim of Asshur, and, helping them, the violators of the covenant. The children of Levi, Benjamin and Judah, the 'exiles ofthe desert', will wage war on them... (1QM 1-2).

But being outside the land of Israel implies being outside the efficacy, the range, the holy effect ofthe Temple. This issue, too, is answered in 1QS 8: .. .the community council shall be built on truth, like an eternal plantation, a holy house for Israel and the foundation ofthe Holy of Holies for Aaron... to atone for the land.. .the tested rampart, the prized cornerstone.. .the most holy dwelling for Aaron.. .a house of perfection and truth (8.5-9).

This group will be set up: .. .in order to atone for guilt of rebellion and for sin of unfaithfulness so as to win [divine] favour for the land without the flesh of burnt offerings and the fat of sacrifices...rightly-offered prayer shall be the fragrance of righteousness and perfection of way a delightful freewill offering... the men ofthe yahad shall set apart a house of holiness for Aaron... (9.4-6).

It was, of course, the Temple and its cult that effected the atonement for the land for the majority of Jews (including members ofthe 'Damascus' sect), who venerated the institution ofthe Temple and accepted the centrality of Jerusalem. But this sect has moved the centre of a (much smaller!) 'Israel' to itself, its own core. We cannot be sure whether the entire community, or only an inner group, assumed the function ofthe 'holy of holies'. But in either case we have a radical redrafting of the geography of the land of Israel. In fact, Israel is not so much respatialized as redefined. Rather than the classical, scriptural opposition of Israel and Gentiles, separated by a covenant and a law, we encounter a different dualism; 1QS defines its members as 'children of light' (1QS 1.8; 3.24) or 'children of truth' (4.5), with (apparently) the remainder ofthe human race (whether Jew or non-Jew) as 'children of darkness' or 'children of falsehood'. This dualism is expressed in both a cosmic and a psychological version of its dualism, in which the two 'spirits' appear now as subordinate deities to the 'god of knowledge'

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and now as internalized dispositions similar to the rabbinic good and evil yeser (the termyeser does occur elsewhere in 1QS). Thus, the category 'Israel', maintained and intensified in D, has hardly any role in this Judaism: historical Israel is not the focus of opposition by this group, nor do we encounter any form of Israel/nations polarity. The anthropological perspective is universalized both cosmically and psychologically. The entire terrain is transformed and becomes one unfamiliar to any student of ancient Judaism.24 'Vertical Space'. In accordance with the relocation of the atoning centre of the land from Jerusalem and its sanctuary to the community itself, and of the replacement of any 'Israel' as a people chosen by covenant by a group elected and preordained by a divine 'mystery', theyahad also aligns itself vertically with the divine presence. I suggest, in fact, that in general it operates much more within the vertical than the horizontal dimension. It is a group present on earth but quite apart from all others on the earth, belonging to the sphere of 'heaven'. This fixation on the vertical is especially apparent to readers of the Hodayoth, though it might be argued that the author(s) of these hymns may not be representative of an entire community, and that the language of praise may in any case be expected to reflect the vertical dimension of communication with the deity. A clearer example, then, is afforded in the Angelic Liturgy, otherwise known as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (see Newsom 1985, 1999). Here we find descriptions of the praise uttered by the heavenly high priests in the liturgy of heavenly worship. It remains disputed whether this text implies an act of human worship, a cycle of 13 songs perhaps repeated every quarter, or is rather a speculative composition. Newsom's suggestion is that some kind of 'communal mysticism' (Newsom 1999: 4) is involved. If this suggestion is correct, the liturgical orientation of the group seems to have been radically reconceived.25

24. This development can be explained to some extent by the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible, underlined by a number of wisdom texts from Qumran Cave 4. But while this perspective was apparently brought into line with Torah in most Jewish circles (including in the Damascus community), here it seems to have broken free to the extent of almost obliterating the 'Mosaic' elements of Judaism. Even its deity is no longer the 'god of Israel' but the 'god of knowledge'! 25. Newsom (1999: 5) also points out that the \ermyahad does not occur in the texts, and that they may have an earlier origin among priestly groups that in some way compared priests with angels and/or treasured the heavenly aspects of the worship in

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Also consistent with the replacement of the Jerusalem Temple and priesthood by a heavenly one is the Melchizedek midrash (1 IQMelch), in which as heavenly high priest the archangel appears at the eschatological Day of Atonement in the final year of the tenth jubilee to work final atonement. But did the sect have its own priesthood and high priest? 1QS refers to the 'sons of Zadok' as having authority over the yahad, while IQSa describes the presence of the high priest at the meal of the congregation. But the role of a sectarian high priest (and obviously not the high priest of the Jerusalem Temple), while it does imply the relocation of sacerdotal functions from the Jerusalem Temple to the community, remains consistent with the essential vertical dimension of the sectarian liturgy. Other than the regular meetings and meals, and texts of prayers and blessings, we have no clear description of any liturgical ceremonies. We do not have a case here of an alternative structure, a 'priesthood in exile' or a provisional or alternative Israel, as was the case perhaps with the 'Damascus' sect. Some definitive transformation of the space—rather than a simpler replacement of function within the same space—seems more likely. A new spatiality is conceived. Internal Space. The most significant features of the internal space of the yahad are the fact that it is a single community, not apparently divided into different settlements or subsets; that it is (all the available literary evidence implies) a male-only and thus celibate community; and that it is strongly hierarchical. In this it differs from the 'Damascus' communities, and from the structures of the historical Israel, which was divided into tribes, clans and families, with the household as the most important social unit. The name yahad itself implies much about the sect's self-understanding. If the correct translation is 'Union', the term implies a solidarity; with God or within itself? Both perhaps, but the fact that it constitutes a single holy body in which the transgression of any one implicates the status of the whole suggests to me that it regarded itself both as a family and as a temple ('household' and 'house', both bet in Hebrew). Holiness certainly is indivisible and highly contagious. I have examined this aspect of 'unity of holiness' in respect of the communal meals in the yahad (Davies 2000b) and a

the Jerusalem Temple. Even if this were the case (and similar texts at Qumran, such as the Berakot and the Songs of the Maskil [4Q 286-7 and 510-11] do contain terms characteristic of the yahad), what matters here is the function of the cycle in a specific ideological and social system, such as that implied by the yahad.

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similar analysis could be made of the 'assemblies' of theyahad, in which fairly strict rules of behaviour are laid down. The celibate status of theyahad (which has recently been contested in some quarters) should, I think, be insisted upon. Not only is there evidence of a tendency towards favouring celibacy even in the literature of the 'Damascus' community, but the notion of the yahad as a 'human sanctuary' in which priestly purity was paramount would necessarily have excluded women (see also 1QM 7.3 of the military camp, where angels are present).26 The evidence of the yahad must not be confused with the evidence of either the 'Damascus' texts or the archaeology of Qumran. Evidence that the yahad was a more rigorously regimented society is apparent in the emphasis on the allotted status of each member (1QS 2.2023), repetition of the word 'authority' (of Zadokites and others) as well as the practice of sharing goods in common (not found in CD). Again, the common ownership of property, while it may have a social function, probably also has an ideological basis: the individual owns nothing outside his membership of the 'Union', and his property, like his life, is subordinated to the 'Union'. He is not an owner, but he is owned, for life. Internally, then, the space of the society is unique, entirely different from the space of the rest of the world; it is shared, it is single, it is vertically orientated. Whether or not this space was conceived at Qumran is really somewhat irrelevant. One might say (as Jim Flanagan possibly would) that this question reflects the modernist concern with 'Firstspace'. We can certainly investigate the spatialization of the Qumran scrolls without needing to know whether or not the sects were ever physically in the area. Postscript I don't expect Qumran scholarship to embrace very enthusiastically such an agenda as spatiality. It has yet to catch up with the traditional literarycritical methods in some areas, and even more with basic sociological or social-scientific concepts. But I have discovered—thanks to some gentle prompting from Jim Flanagan—and hope to have made clear in this rather superficial review, that there is considerable scope for a spatial analysis of the texts, their history and the scholarship surrounding them. I have also 26. The Rule of the Congregation, by contrast, mentions women and children: but the ' Congregation' is not to be confused with the yahad (as, curiously, is so often done in Qumran scholarship).

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come to believe that such analyses may actually prove more productive than many of the more traditional textual, archaeological, historical, political and theological issues that have tended to dominate Qumran research hitherto. Postmodern Qumran studies? It may happen, even before the 'end of days'.

OMITTING THE OMISSIONS: THE CASE FOR HAPLOGRAPHY IN THE TRANSMISSION OF THE BIBLICAL TEXTS

David Noel Freedman and Shawna Dolansky Overton

Haplography is the most common error in the copying of manuscripts. Imagine a scribe working for hours, meticulously copying each Hebrew word for so long that the letters become meaningless as his mind wanders to other things. It is easy for his eye to skip a word, a phrase, or even an entire line or paragraph, particularly if, as is often the case in Hebrew, words look alike. Haplography can occur due to homoeoteleuton, which means that the scribe's eye skipped ahead to a word that had the same ending as the word he was copying, or to homoeoarcton, when two words begin in the same way and the copyist's eye skips ahead to a word with the same beginning as the one that he is writing. Most if not all scribal errors can be attributed to misperceptions of space: between letters and words, above, below and beside. In any serious attempt to restore the original or a more original text of the Hebrew Bible, considerations of space must play a very important role. We are indebted to Jim Flanagan for highlighting the spatial aspect of the writing, editing and publishing of the text of Holy Scripture. Haplography is also known as 'parablepsis', a 'looking by the side', and is defined by text critic Emmanuel Tov: [T]he erroneous omission of a section influenced by the repetition of one or more words in the same context in an identical or similar way. In these cases the eye of the copyist (or translator) jumped from the first appearance of a word (or words) to its (their) second appearance, so that in the copied text (or translation) the intervening section was omitted together with one of the repeated elements. Scholars often distinguish between \\omoioteleuton, when the repeated element(s) presumably occurred at the end of the omitted section, and homoioarcton, when the repeated element(s) presumably occurred at the beginning of the omitted section (Tov 1992: 238).

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E. Tov and B. Metzger (Metzger 1992) both list a variety of cases in which the received texts, the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible and the standard Greek New Testament, contain clear cases of haplography. What remains unacknowledged by the majority of scholars, however, is how widespread and ruthless this phenomenon can be. Many prefer to find other explanations, primarily guided by long-standing (and relatively unchallenged) principles of text criticism, but occasionally, as we shall see below, motivated by more theological concerns. A general principle of text criticism is that when two manuscripts, or parallel passages in the same manuscript, offer different readings, the shorter, more difficult reading is preferred (lectio brevior et difficilior praeferenda est). The rationale is that words or phrases are added by scribes to clarify the meaning of the text, so the shorter, more difficult text is likely to be more original. This principle, however, relies on the notion of active engagement of scribes with the texts they were copying, which no doubt occurred quite often, and we have ample evidence of this in the form of Targumim, for example. However, as any secretary can attest, when copying even the most important (or sacred) of texts for the umpteenth time, even the most disciplined and diligent mind is susceptible to wandering, and copying becomes automatic: what the eye sees, the hand writes. Tov concurs: [T]he validity of this rule cannot be maintained in all instances. In fact, in neither the New Testament nor the Hebrew Bible can it be decided automatically that the shorter reading is original...the rule does not cover scribal omissions. Therefore, since it is often hard to distinguish between a scribal phenomenon and the addition or omission of a detail, the suggested rule is impractical (Tov 1992: 306).

Given the innumerable times the Bible has been copied and recopied over the last 2000-2500 years, the odds are that the occasional scribe may not have been giving the text its due attention, and that the instances of this have added up over time and taken their toll on the text (Hebrew, Greek, and even English) we read today as 'The Bible'. The shorter, more difficult reading is not always better; haplography always produces a shorter text, and almost always a more difficult one. Even the autograph itself is susceptible to it, as any editor can attest. Occasionally, other explanations are more viable, but the purpose of the examples below is to persuade scholars that haplography is a much more widespread phenomenon than they tend to think it is.

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The logical place to begin our survey of haplography is at the beginning, and Genesis 1 provides two prominent examples of the phenomenon. Much commentary has been written on the omission of the formula 'and God saw that it was good' (wyr' 'Ihym ky-twb) after his creation of the heavens on the second day. Traditional commentators have suggested that this omission on the second day was followed by two occurrences of the formula on the third day to make up for it. While they perforce had to deal with the text that they had in front of them, textual criticism shows that the omission on the second day is actually a classic case of haplography. The Greek text supplies the missing formula in MT: after 'heavens', LXX has 'and God saw that it was good', exactly as we would expect. The question arises, however, as to whether or not this is an addition in the Greek, to harmonize the second day with the other days of creation.1 A closer look at the structure of creation week is necessary to demonstrate that the Greek text actually preserves the original. The reason for the two 'goods' on the third day is simply that there are two separate acts of creation, and each one is called good. This is also true of the sixth day, when there are two acts of creation and each one is followed by the 'good' formula. Actually, the statement after the eighth act of creation also sums up the whole sequence, so it is called 'very good'. The arrangement is entirely symmetrical, with one act of creation on each of the first two days, and then two acts on the third day, with the same sequence on the next three days: one on the fourth day, one on the fifth, and two on the sixth. This symmetry in itself shows what the author was up to, and therefore it is most unlikely that the omission of the 'good' formula on the second day was deliberate, especially in light of the Greek text. The clause 'and God saw that it was good' occurs in the Greek text after the word smym in v. 8. It is then followed by wyhy >Z>... The explanation of the omission is thus simple haplography based on double homoeoarcton: wyr '...wyhy... Since most of the sentences in this part of Genesis begin with wy, the incidence of haplography is likely to be high, and it is. The symmetrical correlation between two panels of creation demonstrates an underlying literary structure that is obscured in MT by the omission of the formula on the second day: the first four acts of creation on the first three days are matched by the second set of four acts, spread out over the second three-day segment. Thus one and four, two and five, and three and six match up both as days and acts of creation. The following verse, Gen. 1.9, has suffered from the same kind of 1.

This is argued by Ronald S. Hendel (1998: 23).

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haplography in MT. Fortunately, again, LXX preserves a more complete text, and by reconstructing the original Hebrew reading based on the Greek, the haplography can again be blamed on homoeoarcton. MT w. 9-10 read as follows: '(9) And God said, let the waters be gathered from beneath the heavens to one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. (10) And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters he called water, and God saw that it was good.' In the Greek text, an extra sentence is found between MT vv. 9 and 10: 'And the water which was under th heavens was gathered into its places, and the dry land appeared.' The Greek demonstrates another familiar formula in the creation story (and elsewhere): 'And God said let X happen...and X happened.' The 'and X happened' is what is missing from MT. Again, it is possible that this is not a case of haplography, but rather of harmonization in the Greek text with known formulas—however, but both literary symmetry and the availability of a simple text-critical explanation argue against this. In this instance, the missing sentence begins in Hebrew with wyqww, and the following sentence (v. 10) begins with the word wyqr'. In this case, the argument for haplography due to homoeoarcton is even more convincing, as the first three letters of each word are identical, making it even easier for the scribe's eye to skip from the first wyq to the second, omitting an entire sentence. Again, it is only thanks to the Greek text that this omission in MT can be noted, as the narrative makes good sense without the missing sentence, suffering only stylistically by the omission of the standard formula. At the other extreme, some omissions are so obvious that long before text criticism became a science, they were noted by the Masoretes. A prime example of this occurs in Jer. 31.38. A standard formula in the book of Jeremiah, serving as an introduction to an oracle, begins hnh ymym b 'ym n 'm-yhwh, 'Behold, days are coming, oracle of Yahweh...' This is the case in Jer. 31.31, beginning an oracle about a new covenant with Israel and Judah. In 31.38, however, the word b'ym is missing from the consonantal text in MT. The Masoretes, recognizing the omission, placed the pointing in a blank space between ymym and n 'm-Yhwh to indicate the missing word, and the omitted consonants are in the margin, following the practice of the Qere reading. This is a fairly obvious case of haplography, resulting from homoeoteleuton with the preceding word: ymym b 'ym. While writing ymym, the scribe's eye skipped from the final ym of this word to the final ym of b 'ym, causing b 'ym to be lost entirely from the text.2 Whether or not the 2. Note, however, that BHS has obfuscated the issue, which would seem simple enough, by an apparent misunderstanding of how this case of haplography works. The

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Masoretes understood the nature of the error, it was readily apparent to them that a word was missing, and shorter is not always better! As we have seen, some occurrences of haplography are not quite so obvious. This is particularly the case when no variant readings are available; without the Greek text for Genesis 1, it would be difficult to mount a case for haplography on stylistic grounds alone. Many omissions, however, have occurred in both the Greek and the Hebrew texts, and these are much more difficult to recover. Fortunately, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has added fresh evidence for the widespread occurrence of haplography in the Hebrew Bible. F.M. Cross revolutionized Old Testament studies when he demonstrated that an entire paragraph was missing from every extant manuscript of the book of 1 Samuel. This passage, which fills a gap between the end of 1 Sam. 10.27 and the beginning of 11.1, had only been preserved in Josephus (Ant.), having literally fallen out of all of our copies of the Hebrew Bible, and in every translation. An examination of 4QSama, in which the full text appears, demonstrated convincingly that due to scribal error, all of our copies of the Hebrew Bible are deficient. It is only by luck that a Dead Sea scroll preserved the original reading. This significantly impacts textcritical analyses of the Hebrew Bible. Although it is accepted that each individual manuscript contains errors, the received wisdom had been that by critically evaluating the text from different manuscripts, and in different textual witnesses (LXX, Samaritan, etc.) we can reconstruct 'the original' text. Now it seems entirely possible that there are passages that have been lost forever to us, due to scribal error, and that without a copy of the full text, it is left to scholars' critical evaluation and ingenuity to attempt to reconstruct a more original text than that which has been received. In his commentary on the book of Samuel, Kyle McCarter (1980: 199200) agrees with Cross that there does not seem to be any text-critical explanation for the omission of these lines at the end of 1 Samuel 10. However, if one were to reconstruct the original Hebrew text based on Cross's work, it becomes evident that haplography has occurred here due to homoeoarcton. At the end of ch. 10, the missing passage begins wnhs mlk bny 'mwn; the preserved text of MT begins ch. 11 with wy 'I nhs h 'mwny. Both phrases begin with the same letter, waw: homoeoarcton. In text-critical analysis, there is a definite advantage in the study of a questionable phrase if it happens to occur in several different places, apparatus indicates that the reason for this haplography is the common final m ofb 'ym and n 'm. However, in that scenario, the word that would have fallen out would not have been b 'ym, but rather n 'm\

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because then the phrase can be compared within different contexts to determine its original form. Logic might even dictate that if the phrase occurs in four places, and three of these occurrences provide a shorter reading while only one is slightly longer, this would provide even more weight to the mantra lectio brevior praeferenda est. In at least one particular case, however, the truth instead seems to be that the single longer reading is the more original, while each of the shorter readings has suffered haplography. Exodus 34.7 preserves the following reading of a famous phrase describing Yahweh's sense of justice: 'He visits the iniquity of the fathers (parents) upon the sons (children) and upon the sons of the sons, upon the third and upon the fourth generations.' In other words, God punishes the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren and the great-greatgrandchildren for the sins of their ancestors. The punishment lasts four generations beyond the progenitors. Note that because of the way the generations are counted in this passage, 'the fourth generation' consists of great-great-grandchildren; that is, the Israelites were counting four generations after the sinner, not including the sinner himself. This is important, because in every other occurrence of this phrase (Exod. 20.5; Deut. 5.9; Num. 14.18) it reads, 'He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons (and) upon the third (and) upon the fourth generations. ' 3 Here, it seems to say that Yahweh will punish only children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; so the meaning of'the fourth generation' in this context would seem to include the sinner. Otherwise one would not be able to count four generations. There are two possible resolutions to this problem of determining how the generations were being counted, that is whether or not the sinner was counted as the first of the four generations, or if counting began with his son. One possibility is that the shorter reading is correct, from which we could infer that the Israelites counted generations as we do, and when they mention 'the fourth generation', they are referring to great-grandchildren. Given that this is both the most common reading, as well as the shorter one, many argue that it is therefore the more original one. It might even seem more natural to us: for example, it is said that Job saw four generations of descendants (Job 42.16), which is interpreted as a blessing to anyone fortunate enough to be a great-grandparent even in our own time. However, in order to read Exod. 34.7 that way, it would be necessary 3. Important variants of Exod. 20.5, in which the full text reading 'the son's sons' is present, are Kenn 109, 181 and 369.

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to equate bny bnym, sons of sons, with those of the third generation, which is manifestly not the case. There is one other reference to 'four generations' in the Hebrew Bible that tips the balance of evidence in favor of the second possible resolution, that the longer reading is the correct one. In 2 Kgs 10.30 and 15.12, Jehu the usurper is promised descendants on his throne to the fourth generation. A count of his descendants who actually sat upon the throne shows four kings after Jehu: Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam and Zechariah. The fourth king after Jehu was assassinated after six months on the throne, ending the line of Jehu's descendants. If the shorter readings were correct, and the Israelites began counting generations with the father and not the son, the prediction should have been that Jehu would have five generations on his throne. The promise, however, repeated twice, is that there would be descendants to the fourth generation, and this was understood to mean there would be four more kings of the Jehu dynasty after Jehu. Thus it seems far more likely, if we are to posit a uniform understanding of how generations were counted in ancient Israel, that Exod. 34.7 possesses a more original reading than do Exod. 20.5, Deut. 5.9 and Num. 14.18, even though it is longer and more rare. This also produces a more balanced structure stylistically: 'upon sons and upon grandsons, upon thirdlings and upon fourthlings'. An explanation of this based on haplography is simple to produce: the scribe's eye easily skips from the first bnym to the second bnym mpqd 'wn 'bwt 'l-bnym w 'l-bny bnym 7 slsym w 'l-rb 'ym, eliminating the bny-bnym, the grandchildren, completely from the text. That this occurred three times out of four testifies only to the widespread nature of haplography. A further example of a striking omission that can be explained by haplography is the omission of the bronze altar from among the items fashioned by Hiram in 1 Kings 7. The altar is mentioned, however, in 1 Kgs 8.65 and 9.25, and a story concerning its replacement is included in 2 Kgs 16.10-16. Scholars have tried to avoid this problem by speculating that this bronze altar was David's altar, and was not manufactured by Hiram; hence its omission from the list in 1 Kings 7. However, in the parallel passages in 2 Chronicles, the altar is included in the list of Hiram's endeavors, between the two bronze columns and the Sea (cf. 2 Chron. 3.15-4.25//1 Kgs 7.15-26). The best solution is whole-word haplography. Note that in 2 Chron. 4.1-2 'each verse begins with the same word: wy 's. The scribe's eye simply jumped from the first wy's to the second wy's, thus leaving out a whole sentence. In all likelihood this is a case of vertical parablepsis, as the 12 words omitted would have filled two wide columns,

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or, more likely, three rather narrow columns. In the Facsimile of the Leningrad Codex for 2 Chron. 4.1-2, the word wy's appears at the beginning of 4.12 in almost the same position in the line as wy 's at the beginning of 4.2 (three full lines below, i.e., the fourth line). Inadvertent omission based on parablepsis is the best explanation. The placement in the Aleppo Codex of 2 Chron. 4.1-2 is even more striking, as in both cases wy's is indented and the second one is almost directly below the first, in the fourth line down. This kind of error does not respect the value of a text: it can, and does, occur anywhere. Even the Decalogue itself is not exempt from this kind of error, which can be found in the fifth commandment: 'Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God is giving to you.' This is the form in which this commandment is found in MT of Exod. 20.12. However, both the Nash Papyrus and the LXX of Exod. 20.12 add 'so that it will be well for you' before 'so that your days may be long in the land'. This makes for a longer text, but also for a text that is more similar to the MT text of Deut. 5.16: 'Honor your father and your mother as Yahweh your God has commanded you, so that your days may be long and so that it will be well for you in the land which Yahweh your God is giving to you.' Which is correct, the shorter or the longer text? Both make sense, and it could be that Nash and LXX are harmonizing with Deut. 5.16, and have added 'so that it will be well for you' accordingly. However, note that in Deut. 5.16, the order is reversed: 'so that your days may be long, and so that it will be well for you'. Nash and LXX of the Exodus passage have 'so that it will be well for you and so that your days may be long in the land'. If they were simply harmonizing, why would they both reverse the order of the phrases? The simplest explanation is not harmonization, but that haplography must have occurred in MT of Exodus. The original text read kbd 't 'byh w 't 'mklm'nyytbIkwlm'ny'rkwnymyk 'Ih'dmh 'sr Yhwh 'Ihykntn Ik, 'Honor your father and your mother so that it will be well for you, and so that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God is giving to you', just as Nash and LXX preserve. With four letters the same, the eye of the copyist easily skips from the first Im 'n to the second wlm'«, eliminating the words yytb Ik wlm 'n, the very words missing from MT but included in Nash and LXX. A more famous and perhaps more meaningful example of haplography in the Decalogue did not occur in the Hebrew transmission of the text, but in the copying of an English translation for publication. Printer Robert

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Barker and his associates issued a Bible in London in 1631 that became known as the 'Adulterous Bible' for its omission of the word 'not' in the seventh (sometimes the sixth) commandment (Exod. 20.14). Their version thus read: 'Thou shall commit adultery.' For this occurrence of haplography, the printers were fined £300 and ordered to suppress the thousand copies of the edition. In this case haplography was due to homoeoteleuton, with three words in a row ending with the same letter. The printer's eye seems to have skipped from the final't' of 'shalt' to the final't' of 'not', thereby omitting the word 'not' and significantly changing the meaning of the text. Haplography is often much more devastating than the occasional omission of a word or two. As in the example of 1 Samuel 10-11, entire paragraphs can be lost. In some cases, even more text can be eliminated. In the earliest witness of the Old Greek (LXX) text of Ezekiel, Papyrus 967 (second to third century CE) omits everything from Ezek. 36.23b-38, a total of 15 verses. One scholar, Johan Lust, concluded that the omission is original, that the Hebrew Vorlage of the Old Greek lacked these verses, and they must have been composed by a late redactor. Other scholars, such as F.V. Filson, explain this omission as due to haplography, the scribe's eye jumping from 'that I am Lord' (kyrios) in v. 23b to 'I [am] Lord' at the end of v. 38. M. Greenberg (1997: 739) concludes: 'Precisely what was the origin of the short text of Papyrus 967, and whether it reflects an accident in the course of the transmission of the Greek or of its Hebrew Vorlage, are questions that cannot at present be answered definitively.' However, he also points out that 'the unpublished Masada Hebrew text of Ezekiel, which cannot be later than the first century CE and is thus earlier than all the extant versional witnesses, contains clear remains of w. 24-34, all identical to MT' (1997: 739). In this case, certainly, the shorter text is neither the better, nor the more original text, and haplography seems to be the most feasible explanation. Another example from the book of Ezekiel that has been overlooked by scholars to date concerns the list of precious stones in 28.13. The prophet lists nine stones in an oracle over the king of Tyre: 'odem, pitdd, •weyahalom; tarsis Soham weyasepeh; sappir nopek ubareqot. Note the interesting arrangement of this list: a, b and c; a, b and c; a, b and c. The perspicacious reader might recognize the similarity of this list with one in Exod. 39.10-13: 'odem, pitda, uborqat; nopek sappir, weyahaldm; lesem, sebo, we 'ahlamd; tarsis, soham, weyospeh. This list can be found in Exod. 28.17-20 also (the only variation being an extra waw on the word soham).

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In the Exodus lists, we are told explicitly that the sequence—'a, b and c', four times—is important, in that the list reflects the actual arrangement of the gems on the breastplate of the High Priest, in four rows of three stones. Exodus 28.21 further tells us of the symbolic meaning of these rows of gems: 'The stones shall correspond to the names of the sons of Israel: twelve, corresponding to their names.' The context is more obscure in Ezekiel (in Eden, the Garden of God), but the similarity of the stones, and the arrangement in rows of three cannot be coincidence. Greenberg points out that 'the list of precious stones, arranged in three sets of three, contains—in differing order—nine of the twelve stones of the high priest's breastplate in Exod. 28.17-20, omitting the third set of the breastplate'. However, he further asserts that 'the stones of the breastplate [in Exodus] are twelve because they stand for the twelve tribes of Israel, a symbolism irrelevant to this context' (Greenberg 1997: 582). Ultimately Greenberg is not convinced of a relation between the two texts, but includes an editorial remark from D.N. Freedman: Ezekiel is indicating that these stones go back to the beginning of things— the Creation story and the high priest's breastplate. So he would have every reason to keep the lists the same. A mechanical explanation of the divergences is to be preferred to an ideological one. Thus Ezekiel may not have had the same list that is now found in Exodus... Changes in the order of items are not vital. But MT here is also not original, having suffered loss of a line in the course of transmission—in all likelihood by a scribal error (Greenberg 1997: 582).

Because the stones are not in the same order in Ezekiel as they are in Exodus, and because the prophet does not explicitly explain the arrangement, the haplography is not immediately apparent. However, the similarity of the stones, and the sequence 'a, b and c' are too reminiscent of the Exodus list to be mere coincidence. If we assume the pattern of stones listed in rows of three, we can reconstruct an original text for Ezekiel that contains four rows, including the three additional gems found in Exodus: 'odem tarsis [lesem sappir

pitdd soham sebo nopek

wcydh"ldm \veyasepeh we 'ahlamah] uborqat

The third register of gems, that in all likelihood was written in the original text of Ezekiel, was lost through haplography as the scribe's eye skipped vertically: from the h at the end of wysph to the h at the end of w'hlmh, eliminating an entire line from the text. The fact that LXX

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reproduces the Exodus version here is a secondary adjustment of the Ezekiel text to that of Exodus, likely due to a deficiency in its Vorlage, and demonstrates that the haplography must have occurred very early on in the history of the transmission of the book of Ezekiel. Biblical lists, like the list of gems, are particularly susceptible to haplography. One notorious list, occurring 23 times throughout the Hebrew Bible, has suffered haplography in MT in almost every instance. This is the list of nations dispossessed by Yahweh before the Israelites. K. O'Connell has shown that in over 20 occurrences of this list, there are only three places in the entire Hebrew Bible in which MT has preserved the list intact (O'Connell 1984). By comparing MT with the other primary textual witnesses, O'Connell demonstrates that, despite the preponderance of sixname lists in MT, the original formulaic list had seven nations, as it doe for example in Deut. 7.1 (where the text explicitly states that there were seven nations): hhty whgrgsy wh 'mry whkn 'ny whprzy whhwy whybwsy. Looking at this text, it is easy to see how subject this type of list is to haplography by both homoeoarcton and homoeoteleuton: every word ends with y, and almost every word begins with wh. The fact that in some manuscripts names were added back in a different place in the sequence after having initially been lost confuses the issue only slightly. As O'Connell (1984: 224) states, 'While the seven-name list is vulnerable to multiple haplographies, misspellings, and displacements (often due to careless replacement of words dropped by haplography), as well as to deliberate alteration, it has remained remarkably constant in all its occurrences.'4 The ubiquitous nature of this phenomenon cannot be emphasized enough. Often it is very difficult to detect, as in earlier examples in which we have shown that the shorter text can make perfect sense without the missing words. In some cases these words are missing from most, if not all, of the surviving manuscripts and/or repetitions of the particular phrase. Even if just in a minute fashion, however, haplography always impacts the meaning of the biblical text, and can occur in any language. In the Epistle of James, when the author addresses his audience in 4.4 he calls them moichalides, 'adulteresses', in the standard Greek New Testament. This is the reading in the best and oldest manuscripts, including the fourth- to fifth-century CE Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus. In some later manuscripts, as well as in the original manuscript of Sinaiticus upon which corrections were entered, however, the 4. See p. 116 for an adaptation of O'Connell's chart, showing the different lists and their deficiencies.

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author addresses moichoi kai moichalides, 'adulterers and adulteresses'. Operating under the principles of lectio brevior and lectio difficilior praeferenda est, the text critic is forced to conclude that in the middle of a statement directed to and concerning the entire community, male and female, James only chastises women for committing adultery. In the context of any other sin, this might be feasible; however, adultery is not something that can be undertaken only by women. The consensual participation of a man is required for the act to be completed. So although moichoi kai moichalides is both a longer and more simple reading, given the context, it appears to be the correct one, and doubtless the original one. The shorter and more difficult reading could easily have resulted from a simple instance of haplography owing to homoeoarcton, as the scribe's eye jumped from the first four letters of moichoi to the first four letters of moichalides, thereby eliminating the words moichoi kai completely from the text. There is a possibility that a similar case exists in the Hebrew Bible, one that has had far greater ramifications for fomenting suspicion against women for their evil ways. The malevolent stereotyping of women has historically often gathered additional impetus from Scriptures, and this particular passage has been central to such issues as far back as the Babylonian Talmud,5 and especially in the context of the witch hunts of Protestant Europe and America over a thousand years later. The reading we have of this passage, however, may in reality be a mistaken one, having suffered haplography. In Exod. 22.17 (v. 18 in English translations), we read: mksph I' thyh, 'do not allow a sorceress (other translations have 'witch') to live'. In English, this seems a fairly natural prohibition in the context of a list of laws for the Israelite community to live by, as 'witch' or 'sorceress' is a particular category of magical practitioner in our language. In Hebrew, however, the word mksph is simply taken to be the feminine form of the word mksp, a generic term meaning 'one who practices magic'.6 Interestingly, this passage contains the only occurrence of 5. J. Seidel (1995) briefly discusses the Talmudic commentaries on Exod 22.18 and the issue of gender. In footnote 15, Seidel indicates that b. Sank. 67a comments on this passage, deciding that this prohibition applies to both men and women, however '(most) women engage in witchcraft'; Seidel further cites y. Sank. 7.13 (Leiden MSS) on the same verse: 'But (in mentioning sorceress) scripture teaches you about the way of the world in which the majority of women are witches.' 6. There is also the possibility that the term mksph is not feminine, but rather masculine, in agreement with the LXX, and the final h is simply the rare accusative singular ending. The verb itself, ksp, is a Babylonian loan-word that in its original

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this word in feminine form in the entire Hebrew Bible, although the masculine singular form exists (Deut. 18.10) and the masculine plural form abounds (Exod. 7.11; Mai. 3.5; Dan. 2.2; note also kspym in Mic. 5.11, and Nah. 3.4, in addition to other masculine plural forms of this word with suffixes in Isa. 47.9, 12 and Jer. 27.9). To deepen the mystery of the isolation of female practitioners of magic in this passage (compare Deut. 18.10), the Greek version of Exod. 22.18 does not indicate female magicians, or sorceresses, but rather has the word pharmakous, a masculine plural form that parallels the injunction against mkspym in the prohibitions of Deut. 18.10. Similarly, a footnote in BHS indicates that the Syriac and two versions of the Targum also have the masculine singular form mksp. If the point of this passage were to single out women who used magic, why would the Lxx and others overlook this so blatantly, changing it to male (or collective masculine and feminine) practitioners instead? It is entirely plausible to suppose that, as in the example ofmoichoi kai moichalides above, the original text contained both a masculine and a feminine form of this word, reading mksp 'w mksph /' thyh. As in the Epistle of James above, this kind of phrase is particularly subject to haplography; in this case, we have quadruple homoeoarcton. If the scribe's eye skipped from mksp to mksph, the masculine singular form of the word would be eliminated, and we would be left with only the feminine singular. The feminine form of this word is not attested anywhere in LXX, so it is possible that the translator substituted the masculine plural form of this word to cover both the feminine and masculine forms found in the original text. Likewise, the Targums may have used a generic masculine singular form as a collective term for practitioners of magic. This is all highly conjectural, but entirely possible given the ease with which haplography could have occurred here, the number of variant readings, and the lack anywhere else of a single feminine form of the word mksp in the Hebrew Bible. As entrenched as the formula 'shorter is better' is, in biblical studies the struggle to make scholars aware of the ubiquity of haplography is an uphill one, for more reasons than the binding dogma of text critics. For one thing, it is very easy to take advantage of the mantra that 'the shorter text is better' and eliminate something textually that you may not want to have to deal with conceptually, as in 1 Kings 18. language implies the use of destructive, usually illegitimate magic by a kassap(t)u (as opposed to the Babylonian asipu, who uses many of the same techniques, but has legitimacy as a priest, often a member of the temple personnel). See Abusch 1989.

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The word 'asherah' is mentioned 40 times in the Hebrew Bible. In ancient Canaanite literature, this word is a proper noun, Asherah, the name of the mother of the gods, consort of the chief god El. The archaeology of ancient Israel has produced innumerable female figurines, primarily from the territory of Judah, which, if found among the remains of any other civilization, would doubtless be called 'goddess figurines'; their function in ancient Israel, however, remains the subject of much debate among scholars. Two inscriptions from ancient Judah discovered at Kuntillet ' Ajrud and Khirbet El-Qom mention 'Yahweh and his asherah', but scholars cannot agree on whether the 'asherah' is his consort Asherah, or a cult object made of wood, as it seems to be in most of the 40 biblical references. Within the text itself, 'asherah' seems to refer almost exclusively to some sort of object employed in the cult of Yahweh early on and later decried by reformers and destroyed. For this reason, some biblical scholars continue to deny that the Canaanite goddess Asherah, familiar from the Ugaritic texts, was worshiped in ancient Israel. There are, however, a few passages out of the 40 in which it is very difficult not to translate 'asherah' as a proper noun and the name of a goddess. The most striking of these, 1 Kgs 18.19, is not easily dismissed. Scholars who deny the existence of Asherah as a legitimate (at least originally) goddess in ancient Israel have to resort to calling this reference a gloss in order to maintain their position of denial. 1 Kings 18 relates the story of Elijah's contest between Baal and Yahweh at Mt Carmel. Verse 19 mentions not only the 450 prophets of Baal in this context, but also the 400 prophets of Asherah. There is no doubt that here the word is referring to a goddess worshiped in ancient Israel, as cult objects do not have attendant prophets. To compound further the potential theological problem, it is not her worship that is at issue for Elijah. In fact, Elijah doesn't seem to have any problem with it at all. However, throughout the rest of the context, the prophets of Asherah are never mentioned again, and it is this fact that seems to support the idea that the reference to Asherah's prophets is a gloss. Except there is a problem with this perspective. Asherah is not mentioned again in the MT, but LXX mentions the 'prophets of Asherah' again in v. 22 in a phrase very similar to the one in v. 19: 'and the prophets of Baal, 450 men, and the prophets of Asherah, four hundred'. Is this a gloss too? It is not likely. The onus would seem to be on those who call this a gloss to prove the benefit of inserting this phrase in both the MT and the LXX. Th

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usual argument is that the insertion of 'the prophets of Asherah' is a Deuteronomistic attempt to discredit the worship of Asherah by associating her with Baal. However, in the rest of the 40 references to 'asherah' in the Hebrew Bible, most of which are credited to Deuteronomistic reformation of the cult of Yahweh, the authors don't need an excuse to discredit her worship; they just say that it is wrong and destroy the cult objects and eventually her 'image' that stood in the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem (cf. 1 Kgs 16.32-33; 2 Kgs 21.7; 23.4). Given the widespread occurrence of haplography, it is more likely that the original Hebrew text included the phrase 'the prophets of Asherah' in both verses than that some later Hebrew scribe added this phrase in the Hebrew text of v. 19 and a Greek scribe subsequently inserted the same phrase in v. 22. The omission of 'the four hundred prophets of Asherah' from v. 22 of the MT can be attributed to simple haplography due to homoeoarcton. The scribe's eye must have skipped from the beginning of the phrase 'and the prophets of (all one word in Hebrew: wnby 'y) to the beginning of v. 23, the first word of which is wytnw, 'and you will give'. In English terms, the scribe accidentally skipped from one 'and' to the next occurrence of the same word. The lack of punctuation and verse numbering in the original and in his copy indubitably compounded the ease with which this happened. Fortunately for us, the translators and copiers of the LXX were working from a different Hebrew text that did not omit this phrase from v. 22! This may all seem like a minor textual point that is not worthy of so much discussion and debate. However, this particular passage is crucial in understanding ancient Israelite religion. Almost every other passage that mentions 'asherah' in the Hebrew Bible can be (and has been) dismissed as a reference to a cult object of some sort employed in the worship of Yahweh, that is, unrelated to the Canaanite goddess of the same name. In 1 Kings 18, however, this view is untenable; if she has prophets, then clearly 'Asherah' here is a deity, just like Baal. Furthermore, if we retain the goddess and the prophets in the story, the inevitable questions arise: Why weren't her prophets slaughtered along with Baal's? Why wasn't her worship condemned by Elijah as well? The answer to such questions, that Asherah must have been a legitimate goddess in ancient Israel at this time and at the very least was not seen as a threat to Yahweh (and was likely perceived as his consort), poses somewhat of a theological conundrum. Indeed, any denial of the existence of the goddess Asherah, maintained even in the face of archaeological evidence, must crumble if the text itself affirms her legitimacy.

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Any editor of manuscripts can attest to the fact that haplography is rampant, even in the autograph of a manuscript. Words and phrases are omitted as the author's mind races faster than his or her fingers can write (or type). The likelihood of omission increases exponentially if the text is hand-copied numerous times over thousands of years. Sometimes it is obvious that a word is missing, but most often a missing word or phrase is hard to notice—it's not there! With the help of textual witnesses and a little ingenuity, and usually with the employment of mechanical features like homoeoarcton and homoeoteleuton, we can begin to reconstruct a more original text. None of this is news for scholars of the biblical texts. However, while there is general recognition that haplography occurs, the notion of the kind of textual error in which something is missing has come up against a deeply entrenched idea in textual criticism that shorter is better. These two principles are in direct conflict. If shorter is always better, there is no room for explanations of loss by haplography. If haplography occurs, shorter cannot be considered to be better; by nature, omissions must result in a shorter text. There is also a tendency to see haplography in contrast with dittography, as its opposite. When the phenomenon of dittography occurs, a scribe has inadvertently copied the same word or sentence twice. Thus, in a case of dittography, we can all agree that shorter is better. While both haplography and dittography attest to the fact that scribes are not always paying the amount of attention to the text that it is due, the opposite of haplography is not dittography. Dittography is much rarer (another fact that any editor can validate), and not nearly as serious a problem. If a word or sentence is repeated, it really doesn't matter, because the important thing is that nothing has been lost from the text! The opposite of haplography is rather deliberate expansion. When there is a gloss or an expansion of the text, shorter is better in that without the gloss we have a more original text. When text critics discuss a passage with variant readings, one longer, one shorter, then the debate between opposite choices for reconstruction of the original is one between haplography and expansion. However, the phenomenon of deliberate expansion is fundamentally different from that of accidental omission; it is not a scribal process, but rather a redactoral one. For this reason, expansion is almost always recognizable, because there is a discernible purpose to it. There is no purpose to haplography, it just happens. Expansion does not just happen; it is rather a thoughtful, meaningful, interpretive commentary on the text, and as such, usually involves

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the addition of more than one word. In the cases cited above, as well as in the thousands of other instances of haplography in the Scriptures, to make an argument for expansion as opposed to simple haplography requires reasoning behind it. For example, in the case of the prophets of Asherah, the simplest explanation for the omission of 'the four hundred prophets of Asherah' from MT of 1 Kgs 18.22 is straightforward homoeoarcton, resulting in haplography. To argue instead that LXX of 1 Kgs 18.22 has been expanded requires far more complex explanations, which ultimately beg the question of why someone would see fit to add this phrase in this place, the potential answers to which are mere conjecture. Shorter is not always better, but simpler usually is, when it comes to explaining ambiguities in the text. Otherwise we are forced to impute thought processes and interpretations to a scribe-suddenly-turned-redactor with no real justification. Ultimately, all of these examples have been gathered here for the purposes of demonstrating that there is a very important place for haplography in textual criticism, and that a simple mechanical explanation can be found in most instances where some have sought much more complicated means of resolving textual difficulties in their efforts to stick to the mantra 'shorter is better'. Haplography always results in a shorter text, and surely we can all agree that a text that has suffered omissions is not in any way 'better' for it. In the end, every case has to be decided on its own merits, and not on the basis of a general principle. If we need an overarching guiding parameter in textual criticism and the explanation of variant readings, perhaps we should look to the KISS principle.7 The 'Seven' Nations Out of 23 occurrences of the list of nations in the Hebrew Bible, Deut. 7.1 is the only place in which all seven are intact in MT, in the same order as in LXX. The version of LXX used here is Rahlf s. As O'Connell shows in great detail, LXX manuscripts themselves vary widely in each passage usually differing over which nation is missing, more rarely over the order of the names in the list.

7.

'Keep It Simple, Stupid.'

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'Imagining' Biblical Worlds Figure 1. The 'Seven' Nations

Key: Ht = Hittites, G = Girgashite, A = Amorite, C = Canaanite, P = Perizzite, Hv = Hiwite, J = Jebusite. LXX

MT

Gen. 15.19-21 Kenites, Kenizzites, Kad- Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Ht, P, monites Ht, P, Rephaim, A, C, G, J (10) Rephaim, A, C, Hv, G, J (11) Exod. 3.8 Exod. 3.17 Exod. 13.5 Exod. 23.23 Exod. 33.2 Exod. 34.11 Deut. 7.1 Deut. 20.17 Josh. 3.10 Josh. 9.1 Josh. 11.3 Josh. 12.8 Josh. 24.11 Judg. 3.5 1 Kgs. 9.20 2 Chron. 8.7 Ezra 9.1

Neh. 9.8

C, Ht, A, P, Hv, J C, Ht, A, P, Hv, J C, Ht, A, Hv, J A, Ht, P, C, Hv, J C, A, Ht, P, Hv, J A, C, Ht, P, Hv, J Ht, G, A, C, P, Hv, J Ht, A, C, P, Hv, J C, Ht, Hv, P, G, A, J Ht, A, C, P, Hv, J C, A, Ht, P, J, Hv Ht, A, C, P, Hv, J A, P, C, Ht, G, Hv, J C, Ht, A, P, Hv, J A, Ht, P, Hv, J Ht, A, P, Hv, J C, Ht, P, J, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, A C, Ht, A, P, J, G

(6) (6) f5) (6) (6) (6) (7) (6) (7)

(<>) (6) (6) (7) (6) (5) (5) (8) (6)

C, Ht, A, P, G, Hv, J C, Ht, A, P, G, Hv, J C, Ht, A, Hv, J, G, P A, Ht, P, C, G, Hv, J A, Ht, P, G, Hv, J A, C, P, Ht, Hv, G, J Ht, G, A, C, P, Hv, J Ht, A, C, P, Hv, J, G C, Ht, P, Hv, A, G, J Ht, C, P, Hv, A, G, J C, A, Hv, J, P, Ht Ht, A, C, P, Hv, J A, C, P, Hv, J, Ht, G C, Ht, A, P, Hv, J *Ht, A, P, C, Hv, J, G Ht, A, P, Hv, J C, Ethites (Ht?), P, J, Ammonites Moabites, Moserites, A C, Ht, A, P, J, G

*LXX has an extra paragraph here, in which the list is embedded.

(7) (7) (7) (7) (6) (7) (7) (7) (7)

(7) (6) (6) (7) (6) (7) (5) (8) (6)

EMBODIED TYPOLOGY: MODELING THE MOSAIC TABERNACLE*

Burke O. Long

'Are you ready for the tabernacle?' the Reverend Dick Ludig called out. Dressed head to toe in white linen, he brandished a gnarled and highly burnished wooden staff. It was obvious that not everyone was entirely enthusiastic. Mr Ludig struggled to shape an attentive audience out of parents, restless children and other tourists who had just climbed down from a tram-bus labeled 'The New Holy Land Tour'. They shifted about, trying as best they could to escape the intense Arkansas sun. 'Alright, then, set your calendars to fifteen hundred BC,' Ludig said, ignoring the lack of response to his genial challenge. Lifting the staff, he strode toward heavy curtains that marked the outer boundary of a full-sized replica of Moses' wilderness tabernacle. Thus began the video visit to the New Holy Land Tabernacle in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. On-site tours open in similar fashion every 15 minutes, 9 till 5, 6 days a week, from May to October every year. Mr Ludig is a large man with ruddy skin, thinning white hair and full beard. Lively blue eyes punctuate folksy idiom, corny humor and dramatic flare. He was born of Jewish parents in Indiana, but later converted to Messianic Christianity and served churches in east Texas until, after retiring, he began to lead tours at the New Holy Land. Now probably well in his seventies, Ludig moves more slowly than in the 1994 video recording. But his passion for teaching about the tabernacle has not diminished. Nor has the awe-filled regard in which fellow employees at the New Holy Land hold him. * It is a pleasure to dedicate this essay to James Flanagan, who for some 30 years has been a supportive friend and professional colleague. Apart from his persistent leadership in a series of SBL/AAR seminars, I might not have found my way to recent theorists of space as social construction. And I could not have written as I have about models of the Mosaic tabernacle.

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Tour guide, biblical priest, Messianic Christian evangelist, magus of the tabernacle's mysteries—Mr Ludig held back one of the outer curtain panels and invited entry. He quickly set the coordinates that would plot visitors' movements through this real-and-imagined space: Our journey today is from the world of sin to the throne of God. I hope you'll remember this journey and I hope that as you walk in your own life, you'll know where you're headed (Borden and Rank 1994).

A Subdivision of Christian Nostalgia1 This pilgrimage to the throne of God is offered many times daily to tourists who visit the Great Passion Play™, a theme park set near the northwest corner of Arkansas. On the park's western edge, a seven-storyhigh 'Christ of the Ozarks' faces the valley and hills, which are home to Eureka Springs, population 1900. Once a thriving spa community (a few healing waters hotels survive), the town has now been quaintly restored as a somewhat quirky in-gatherer of tourists, artists and assorted American eccentricities. Its gallery shops, Victorian cottages, cafes and small inns cling to a forested slope that in 1885 was clear-cut near the top to build the gabled and massively chimneyed Crescent Hotel. Nowadays, guests on the elegant veranda of the Crescent gaze eastward toward Christ of the Ozarks. Eureka Springs has prospered in part because of that statue and the subdivision of Christian nostalgia over which it presides. Since the late 1960s, nightly performances of The Great Passion Play have attracted more than six million visitors and plenty of Christian entrepreneurs. A few local motels proclaim 'Christ is Lord' from their marquees. The Best Western Hotel prominently displays books by Tim Lehaye and other popular Christian authors in its lobby. Nearby are the 'Covenant Gardens' (biblical plants) and the Promised Land Animal Park (biblical animals). The Statue Road Inn, which advertises 'Hospitality our Motto, Christ our Leader, Cleanliness our Rule' serves meals and afterthe-show desserts at the 'Daily Bread Deli'. Christian t-shirts and other implements of apparel politics are available at the foot of Passion Play Road. 1. For the geographical readings that follow, I have drawn on a theory of critical spatiality proposed by Edward Soja (1989,1996). I have tried to implement an exercise that Soja proposed: 'Whenever you read or write a sentence that empowers history, historicality, or the historical narrative, substitute space, spatiality, or geography and think about the consequences' (1996: 183).

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\ 19

The model of Moses' tabernacle is among the still expanding 'sacred projects', which, besides Christ of the Ozarks, the Great Passion Play and New Holy Land tours, include two chapels, a Bible museum, and a Sacred Arts Center. The exhibits were initiated in 1965 by the old war-horse of far right Christian nationalist politics, Gerald L. K. Smith. After Smith's death in 1976, heated controversies surrounding his political activities and visionary plans for Eureka Springs were gradually forgotten. However, control of the sacred projects created by the Elna M. Smith Foundation, named for Gerald's wife, remain in the family. Marvin Peterson, son-inlaw to Smith's trusted lieutenant Charles F. Robertson, now oversees the sprawling enterprise. Despite this connection, Smith's politics are no longer in evidence (he always claimed he wanted them kept out of the sacred projects anyway), and the exhibits hardly give much offense nowadays. A glossy color brochure presents a reverential account of Mr and Mrs Smith's endeavors, noting that their projects were 'gifts to humanity' to enable visitors to 'vividly remember God's great gift to man on the cross at Calvary'.2 Yet, the park's spectacles of Christian testimony do not quite cover traces of Smith's America-first, segregationist, anti-Semitic, political gospel tha he preached from the 1930s to 1970s (Jeansonne 1988; Garraty and Carnes 1999: 186-87; Ribuffo 1983: 128-77). For one thing, some of the park's start-up funds came from Smith's ultra-conservative political arm, the Christian Nationalist Crusade, a cause he promoted in a sharp-tongued and bigoted newsletter, The Cross and Flag* For another, Smith's virulent jingoism lives on, though much subdued, in the vocal Americanism and Bible-centered Christianity that pervade the sacred projects today. Within a landscaped enclosure on the shoulder of Magnetic Mountain stands 'Christ of the Ozarks'. A visitor passes Mr and Mrs Smith's enclosed sarcophagi just inside the gateway. At the far end, a colonnaded viewing area allows full view of the statue and surrounding countryside. With his 65 foot arms outstretched, Christ looks out over Eureka Springs in a pose of regal compassion (Fig. 1). Symphonic arrangements of Christian hymns wafting from tastefully disguised high-fidelity speakers urge

2. 'The Great Passion Play', a brochure published by the Elna M. Smith Foundation, Eureka Springs, AK (no date), inside front cover. See also www.greatpassion play.com. 3. According to the Arkansas Roadside Travelogue web site (www.aristotle.net/ -russjohn/sacrpro.html), the facts about the use of National Crusade funds came to light in a 1970 tax audit.

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Figure 1. Christ of the Ozarks, The Great Passion Play Park. (Courtesy the Elna M Smith Foundation, Eureka Springs, Arkansas.)

respectful quiet. The space seems to honor Christ the heavenly king and the belief in resurrection for the saved as much as it distills Gerald and Elna Smiths' lives to an epitaph-like essence: devoted servants of the Lord, awaiting their final reward. A plaque near the statue provides a signature quote: 'And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me' (Jn 12.32). Offering one version of Christ's post-resurrection work, the words of John at the same

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time are made to underwrite the evangelical impulse embedded in all the park's exhibits and performances. They are paradigmatic for the tour guides who actively witness to their Christian convictions and ask participatory assent of their audience. Smith himself, at least in authorized accounts, set the example. The many activities of the Elna M. Smith Foundation, wrote Charles Robertson, editor of The Cross and Flag, would create an expanding memorial to the Smiths' 'desire to bear witness to the world of their love of God' (Robertson 1981: A9). Indeed, posthumously published accounts present Smith as an embattled Christian patriot, a despised defender of Christian orthodoxy who determinedly lifted up Christ in all his endeavors (Smith and Robertson 1978). At its inception, however, Christ of the Ozarks quickly became controversial. Smith's reputation and penchant for outrageous effrontery had not escaped notice by year-round residents of Eureka Springs and the Little Rock Arkansas Gazette. Many citizens were ambivalent toward this infamous orator whose locally ingratiating ways and grand vision of Christian exhibits also seemed to portend much-needed economic prosperity for their town. Surviving resistance, the statue was dedicated in 1966. That did not end the controversy, however. Some four years later, a federally financed road improvement project that would have included a scenic loop around the monument drew spirited opposition. Though finally approved by planners in Eureka Springs, it was vetoed by Treasury Secretary John Volpe, after which Smith complained that a 'little handful of Jews had blocked construction'. His foes had actually done him a favor anyway, he averred, because the new road, which he had supported, would have interfered with his plans for building the New Holy Land (Gazette State News Service 1976: 3A). Visitors today are probably oblivious to the furor that once charged these events. Facing Eureka Springs, his back turned to the park's many exhibits, Jesus' outspread arms lay claim to a supremely apolitical gesture. He offers mute benediction and invitation to all comers who seek private religious inspiration. Except perhaps those leather-sheathed bikers who, as one employee told me, once made loud fun of the place. From parkside, inside the amphitheater where the Great Passion Play is performed, the back of Christ's massive head appears like a sentient marker dominating the distant tree-lined horizon. Like God, Christ of the Ozarks requires no eyes or turning of the head to keep all in view, to invite adoration and to suppress political entanglements of privatized piety. Leaving the Christ memorial and heading back toward the park's central exhibits, visitors pass the single room 'Church in the Grove', a white

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clapboard building moved intact from a nearby Arkansas location. Inside a fenced area and to one side of the church is a bronze-colored, badly weathered Styrofoam replica of the Liberty Bell. A flyer available on site invites visitors to fill the space with their own cultural experiences, listening 'to the walls as they tell the history of the country church and its important role in building our nation'. To approach the muse of the chapel walls, however, most tourists must walk past a memorialized fragment of the Berlin Wall (Fig. 2). They can

Figure 2. Church in the Grove and Berlin Wall, The Great Passion Play Park. (Photo author's own.)

hardly ignore the striking art (touched up every year because of sun fade) or forget the anonymous East Berliner's allusion to the 23rd Psalm, crudely scrawled in German: 'Though I walk through a dark valley, I have no fear.' The Smith Foundation web page urges visitors to admire 'the spirit of the person who risked his or her life to make this declaration of faith'. On site, an explanatory sign, a voice of anonymous facticity, fills the space with testimony: 'In darkness this artist saw light; in despair, the Word of God; in repression, hope for freedom' (Fig. 3). That hope was realized on 9 November 1989, an event that leads naturally, it seems, to scriptural association: 'So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed' (Jn 8.36).

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Figure 3. The Berlin Wall explanation, The Great Passion Play Park. (Photo author's own.)

One can well imagine tourists—I saw mostly evangelical, charismatic Christians when I visited—traversing this mapped space of baptized nationalism. Proximity of artifact and recollection urged them to enact unexamined verities of rural American (Protestant) Christianity and the truism of unredeemable Communism's justified demise. Smith's nostalgia for a simple America and his virulent anti-Communist crusades haunt the space, though their ugliest excesses, like the hysteria of America's McCarthyism, have faded from view. And the political edge given the memorial's dedication in 1991, which featured veteran crusader for conservative causes Anita Bryant singing 'God Bless America', is probably unknown to most visitors today.4 The chapel and grounds now evoke an appealing fantasy enshrined in the old-time hymn 'The Church in the Wild Wood' (the chapel in fact once carried that name, and is a popular site for weddings, a guide mentioned to me). Perhaps, in addition, voices from Smith's nationalist crusades, or from a Protestantism that still guards its fictions of a traditional America, stir the heart. Self-Exculpatory Conscience celebrates Christian4. 'Berlin Wall Section Unveiled at Great Passion Play', The Ozarks Mountaineer, March 1992. Copy in Eureka Springs Historical Museum, Eureka Springs, Arkansas. File, 'Passion Play'.

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America-Democracy-Triumphant. Destroyed is that anti-Christ regime which erected, as a leaflet reminds visitors, a blood-spattered 'edifice of godless leaders' defiance of Holy God Himself. Some three hundred yards from the little church is a 4100 person capacity amphitheater where casts of about 250 townspeople give week night performances of 'The Great Passion Play'. Inside the landscaped enclosure, far away biblical Jerusalem and her environs have been reduced to an intimate geography of melodrama, the pinpointed sites of Jesus' suffering now imposed on Arkansas topography. From the bottom of the natural bowl, one's eye travels from street level, upward and receding, to cut-away buildings, then to the Mount of Olives, Golgotha, the garden tomb, and to the place of Jesus' ascension. Finally, at the uppermost reach, oak trees mark the theater's boundary and in the drama, the limit of Jesus' visible presence on earth. In the far distance presides panoptic Christ of the Ozarks (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Amphitheater, The Great Passion Play Park. The Christ of the Ozarks statue is at upper right. (Photo author's own.)

Connected low-profile buildings, California-styled suggestions of Spanish mission architecture, separate and protect this expectant space from outside distractions (a sign prohibits photographs and video recordings after 5.30 pm). Visitors stream through the grandly colonnaded main

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entry. Here, as one leaflet states, patrons Gerald and Elna Smith used to greet their fee-paying guests before each performance. Flags of Arkansas and the United States fly nearby. The amphitheater enclosure mediates myth, memorial and amnesia. Folklore, leaflets and official publications honor Smith's Christian witness and personal largesse, not his political notoriety. Flags suggest the fervor of (Christian) patriotism. Jesus' passion played out against a geography of melodrama fill the amphitheater with nightly re-affirmations of the only story that matters, Christ's one-time and eternal subjugation of Satan.5 Awareness of Gerald Smith's anti-Semitic ravings disturbed the opening season of the passion play. The script, as Calvin Trillin wrote, contained most of what the Council of Bishops had listed as 'ways in which a Passion play might be subverted into an exercise in anti-Semitism' (Trillin 1969: 76). With stubborn insensitivity to public feeling at the time, the Smith Foundation named the project 'Mount Oberammergau Passion Play' in honor of its Bavarian counterpart, which was then being widely criticized for perpetuating anti-Jewish stereotypes. Despite fading memory of these controversies and a recently streamlined script, the nightly performances have yet to escape ethical consequences of Hollywood-like conventions and a narrowly exclusive Christianity. Duplicitous Pharisees and priests, an evilly sneering King Herod and gratuitously vicious Roman soldiers still strut through the Jerusalem streets and cutaway buildings. Pontius Pilate, who is remorseful of his role in Jesus' death and disdainful of trouble-making Jews, belabors the innocence of Jesus while magnifying the guilt of Jewish leaders and the bloodthirsty mob. In a video recording still on sale in gift shops, the rabid crowd screams the line that has so often fed anti-Semitic frenzy, 'Let his blood be upon us and upon our children' (Elna Smith Foundation 1992). This aspect of the play was criticized by the Arkansas Interfaith Conference as recently as 1991, but has now been dropped in live performance (Arkansas Gazette, 4 May 1991: 8B). Yet an announcer still opens each performance with 'Welcome to Mount Oberammergau and the Great Passion Play'. On the night I attended, a performer dressed as a high priest, brandishing a fist full of 5. After Jesus' burial in the play, smoke and devilish red light emanate from the sealed tomb—a sign of Christ's descent into hell. In solemnly stentorian tones, Jesus binds the power of Satan. Later, many in the audience applauded at Christ's resurrection, and again when he ascended into the heavens. The evening's performance ended with a benediction and a postlude rendering of Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus'. One visitor told me, close to tears, that he felt the 'Real Presence' that night.

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money, cried out, 'I've run out of programs. Who'll give me three dollars for a dollar bill? lama Jewish high priest, after all.' Jesus and some of his followers, it seems, continue to wage a version of Smith's tirades against those he targeted as enemies of Christ.6 Across an open plaza from the amphitheater, visitors pass through a full-size replica of the 'Eastern Gate' in Jerusalem. Of course, the actual eastern or Golden Gate has been bricked up for centuries, awaiting, as legend has it, the Messiah's return to reclaim the earth as his own. So, might this open gate anticipate the expected Messiah's passage? Or does it yet bespeak a sublimated desire to (re)conquer Jerusalem and make it wholly Christian space? In the early 1970s, embarking on fundraising efforts for his 'new Holy Land', Smith urged potential supporters: IMPORTANT: The enemies of Christ are in possession of the original Holy Land. They are desecrating the shrines. They are building housing projects on the holy sites... We are faced with a situation where the enemies of Christ in the Holy Land will use the despoiled areas to glorify the antichrist instead of our Savior.7

Contributors were asked, in oversized type, to help create THE MOST SENSATIONAL PROJECT OF THE CENTURY' by sending in $ 1000. It 6. Issues of the Cross and Flag provide ample evidence of Smith's obsessive battles. The following are typical. 'The Code of the Enemies of Christian America' listed misdeeds of vaguely identified conspirators, including distributors of drugs and pornography; those who 'teach millions to hate the Army, the Marines, and the Navy'; those who are 'sadistically determined to mongrelize our race' with enforced school integration and classroom sex education; those who press to remove crosses from military chapels; and 'every important worldwide Jewish organization [that] has organized a boycott against the portrayal of Christ's last week on earth as presented in Eureka Springs, Arkansas on Mount Oberammergau' (Cross and Flag 28:12 [March 1970], 2,21). On Vatican moves to improve Jewish-Christian relations, Smith wrote: 'My definition of better relationships between Jews and Christians is for the Christians to call on the Jews to accept the Christ whom their ancestors crucified and whom they still continue to deny' (p. 26). The Reverend Buddy Tucker, whom Smith had personally chosen to preside over his funeral, eulogized Smith as an embattled hero in a cosmic drama. 'All issues sink into insignificance,' Tucker proclaimed, 'compared to the battle between the Christ and the anti-Christ Jew. And these same forces which nailed our Savior to the cross are now attempting to crucify Him anew by evaporating our civilization which grew out of His Name and his Blood' (cited by the Arkansas Roadside Travelogue, www.aristotle.net/~russjohn/sacpro.htnil). 7. Fundraising Flyer, Elna Smith Foundation. Archives, Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock, Arkansas. Place File, 'Eureka Springs'; folder, 'Elna M. Smith Foundation, The Great Passion Play'. Cited by Arkansas Roadside Travelogue.

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would be, apparently, a Jew-free surrogate for the despoiled sacred Holy Land. The park's eastern gate now effaces these ugly beginnings. The edifice leads not to Jerusalem (that is still in the offing, I was told), but to some 50 acres of hillside dubbed the 'New Holy Land'. Traveling in a tram-bus, tourists are asked to imagine themselves in a landscape of Christianized biblical memory as they pass 37 'authentic Old and New Testament Exhibits'. Incarcerated by the format of the tour and its loosely scripted commentary, tourists do not, indeed may not, wander independently of the driver or onsite guides. At places deemed especially important to proclaiming and reaffirming an approved version of salvation, costumed guides recall incidents in the biblical narrative of Christ's ministry and work of blood atonement.8 As part-time lay ministers, the guides witness to the gospel's power to convert indifferent hearts. Sometimes they lead a song or offer closing prayer. Given pride of place, the first stop in the New Holy Land is the Israelites' wilderness shrine, Moses' tabernacle (Fig. 5). 'The tabernacle contains God's entire plan of salvation,' Paul Shaw, maintenance and construction supervisor of the New Holy Land, told me. Shaw is a burly Texan, an engineering and construction man who carries a Bible in his contractor's briefcase. He favors open-throated shirts, hard hats and gospel songs (he gives regular performances in the Smith Memorial Chapel). 'The tabernacle overwhelms you, rather than you overwhelming it,' he said with sudden intensity when I asked him why a full-size model was important. 'You discover untold meanings as you actually try to construct it. And imagine yourself inside the very space that contains every detail of God's eternal plan for saving us!'9 A mystery as inexhaustible as the Scriptures, one might add.10 8. The goals for each of the exhibits reflect policies that have evolved in discussions and practical experience over time, said David Brown, ordained minister in the Four Square Gospel Church and Supervisor of the New Holy Land Tours. The tabernacle, for example, should 'help everyone see God's eternal plan of salvation'. Bethlehem is to 'present a more authentic birth place', and the walk with Peter around Galilee, 'one of our key areas', needs to be a 'strong first person presentation helping our guests find out what life with Jesus was like from Peter's perspective'. Golgotha and the Tomb are to clarify the 'central truth of the Gospel concerning the substitutionary work of Jesus on the cross'. People should be encouraged 'to rejoice in the resurrection through song'. The last stop, the Mount of Olives, 'must be able to tie into the rest of the tour, ending with the hope of Jesus's promised return'. Typescript, courtesy of David Brown. 9. Mr Shaw cited Solsbery (1989) as his most important source besides the Bible itself.

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Figure 5. The full-sized model of the tabernacle. The Great Passion Play Park. (Photo author's own.)

Mr Shaw's enthusiasm suggests something of the stake he and other Christians have in the tabernacle. It is not simply important theologically or conceptually, but as emotional urge toward creating a material repository of desire and fantasy, each inextricably linked to the nearly perfectly simulated and unattainable real thing. The model is a full-scale replica that purports to conform in every detail to the biblical description. In on-site and video versions of regular tours, costumed priest/guides, 10. As I later discovered, I need not have settled just for the Arkansas version of tabernacle space. Until very recently, a group of Seventh Day Adventists regularly carried the 'King's Castle Exhibit' on tour in North America. The full-size model has since been donated to the Three Angels Broadcasting Network. Nowadays, the Omega Broadcasting Company offers virtual tours at http://www.alphaomega.org. Former King's Castle tour guide Shirley Thrush and her husband carried the idea northward to Winston, Oregon, where volunteers built Moses' tabernacle, along with Noah's ark, into a new theme park (www.ancientarks.com). Another full-size replica stands outside the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, PA. Virtual tours at www.mennonite infoctr.com/tabernacle.html. Yet another model opened on 13 October 2000 in time for the Feast of Tabernacles convention of evangelical Christians that is annually held in Jerusalem to coincide with Sukkot (Weinberg 2000: 11). Finally, a new evangelical Bible theme park in Orlando, FL (www.zionshope.org) features a multi-media, multisensory presentation of the wilderness tabernacle as part of its 'Holy Land Experience'.

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themselves inventive constructions of a textually imagined biblical reality, perform tourist theater that enables visitors to fantasize about biblical peoples and the youth of (biblical) Christian authenticity (Fig. 6). Desire for bona fide knowledge and religious experience, for the 'real', seems tied to such simulations. Fantasy and reality, which are conventionally held to be opposites, seem instead to clutch one another in dynamic embrace, each desiring, justifying and enabling the other (Boer 1999a: 53-70). As will be evident below, a filmmaker used special cinematic techniques to enhance this powerful trialectic of desire, fantasy and the 'real'.

Figure 6. The Reverend Dick Ludig in costume. (Courtesy the Elna M. Smith Foundation, Eureka Springs, Arkansas.)

Playacting within this meticulously constructed space, even if not expertly done, heaps representation upon representation. The model simulates biblical history where there is none (that is, in Eureka Springs) and replicates a historical structure (where presumably there was history somewhere in the desert near ancient Egypt). But that, too, comes to us as representation, a shrine fulsomely imagined in a biblical text whose details of design are sometimes ambiguous or incomplete. Oriented strongly toward reaffirming fundamental Christian evangelical doctrines, the modeled space then constructs a layered geography of Christ equivalence, the represented 'real' that seems calculated to engender an experiential analogue to the concept of incarnation, or Christ/Word/Flesh. In the guise of

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historical re-presentation, the journey thus imagines and maps time-bound space of ancient tabernacle as timeless territory of Christian possession. Mr Ludig tells his visitors on camera that the tabernacle was made as 'authentic appearing as possible'. And it did seem, in its way, the real thing. To some of the tourists, that is, whose rapt faces the video camera had caught, and to others who, along with me, took the special hour-long study tour. However, during regular daytime tours, the relentless pressure of 15-minute intervals between groups seemed enormously distracting, and of course a number of bored children impatiently tugged at their parents while the costumed priest ran through his routine. I wondered in the end what people would say if asked what their experiences of the 'New Holy Land' and its tabernacle had meant to them.11 Embodied Typologies From beginning to end, Mr Ludig deployed the first premise of traditional typological exegesis: everything about the ancient tabernacle corresponds in some way to Christ.12 In this way, theater and commentary collapsed temporal perspectives into an encompassing experience of all-time, or notime. Perhaps on one level of purpose, demarcated time was actually irrelevant, even in a space ostensibly produced and mapped by historical recollection. While explaining priestly rites, Ludig explained that he wore white linen trousers, tunic and head covering just as the high priest wore on the Day of Atonement when he alone entered the Holy of Holies. 'God gives him the garments to wear,' Ludig explained, turning to his audience. 'And you'll have them too,' he said, alluding to that judgment day when survivors of the great tribulation stand before Christ-God (Rev. 6.9-17). 'I am dressed in those garments today,' he added. The garments of a sinner.'13 11. As yet, I have not yet systematically investigated visitors' perceptions of the tabernacle tour. I hope to remedy the deficiency in due course. 12. Unless otherwise indicated, my observations pertain to the video recording (Borden and Rank 1994). The on-site tours were similar in conceptual content to the video version, but lacked some made-for-video action, such as simulated animal sacrifice. Instead, the tour guide mostly asked visitors to imagine activities as he described procedures in some detail. 13. Later in the tour, Mr Ludig provided explicit eschatological significance for these white garments. 'But you know,' he tells his visitors, 'there's coming a day for each and everyone of us, like it did for the High Priest. We're going to have to lay

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In such ways, Mr Ludig made sure that simple lessons drawn from a journey through the tabernacle could replenish and sustain devotion to a personal savior. His fervent message at times resembled an evangelist's call for recommitment by the faithful, even while Ludig undermined the institutional settings in which such (re)conversions typically occur. 'I don't care about religion,' he noted toward the end of the tour, his blue eyes darting over the audience. 'I care about the Lord Jesus Christ and his people. Don't you? And I care that every sinner would meet him.' Such evangelistic nudging began as the tour group moved just inside the tabernacle's perimeter curtain. Encouraged to imagine themselves as Israelites approaching the wilderness shrine, visitors viewed a reenacted 'sin' offering. While the guide effortlessly blended explanation with homily, attending priests silently led a lamb (clearly a visual and material metaphor for Christ) to the place of slaughter.14 The action followed a conflated biblical text. In Exod. 29.42, God establishes, as part of the law governing the wilderness shrine, a 'regular burnt offering ('olat tamid) throughout your generations'. Leviticus 4.3-7 adds further details of purification ritual and the idea of burnt offering as purging the guilt of transgression. There God's torah to Moses directs that a priest bring an unblemished bull 'before the Lord as a sin offering' (v. 3) to be slaughtered in a carefully prescribed manner and ultimately consumed in the fire of burnt offering ('olah, v. 10). In the video, tourists (and viewers at home) watched all this action as simulacra—the lamb (obviously more symbolically resonant for Christians than a 'bull'), the slaughter, the sprinkling of blood around the homed altar, the burning of the carcass. Action and commentary produced a space of typological equivalence, a dramatization of Christ the Lamb of God as aside everything of the world. And all you have left is a garment that Christ gave you on the first day. You're gonna be in that garment on the day of judgment when you step through that veil and stand before the throne of God. My prayer for you and me of course is that all of our robes will be whiter than snow, 'cause if they are, we are glory bound.' Giving an impish shrug, clasping his hands together, Ludig gleefully shouts, 'Hallelujah!' 14. In the on-site tour 1 observed, Christ equivalence was asserted even before visitors passed into the tabernacle's outer court. Summarizing the daily sacrifices that used to be regularly offered, Mr Ludig—his white robed arms outstretched in crucifix form—told his audience that at the end of the day the officiating priest would announce, 'It is finished.' (Pause for dramatic emphasis.) 'That comes from the Talmud,' he said. 'I seem to recall finding it somewhere else,' he added with feigned puzzlement and a knowing glance to his audience.

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the singularly important 'olat tamid and the consistent focal point for the tour. As members of the audience shuffled inside the perimeter curtain, Mr Ludig noted a rough-hewn wooden structure that would hold fast the animal destined for slaughter. 'The lamb is brought here and led into the hand of God,' he explained, pointing to the five pieces of wood that framed the enclosure, three on one side, two on the other. The logs were angled to form an open ' V shape as though, if one were looking from above, two hands had nearly closed. There's an ancient Jewish teaching about the hand, Ludig averred. 'Give God something. Put it into his hand. Let him have control. Stop trying to run God's business for him. Even from the cross, remember, Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, "Into your hands I commit my spirit."' Meanwhile, other costumed attendants gently pushed the sides of the enclosure together, like five fingers of two hands closing, and the lamb was held fast, enclosed by the 'hand of God'. The video camera closed in with intimate immediacy. A priest draws a knife; another places a small bowl under the animal's neck to catch the blood. Moving in still closer, with softening focus and slowing action, the camera frames the hand that holds the knife, which is deftly drawn under the lamb's neck. The animal's head drops gently, as though dying quickly, and, incidentally, sparing viewers the sight of flowing blood and muscular twitches. Later, a priest sprinkled blood on four corners of the altar as other attendants carried the slaughtered lamb to its place of immolation. It is impossible to assess how the tourists assembled for the video responded to this reenacted ritual. Some actions were less meticulously choreographed than claims to authenticity and faithfulness to the underlying biblical text might have demanded. Furthermore, the simulated sacrifice was apparently done only for the filmed version of the tabernacle lecture. For daily 15-minute tours, visitors must imagine the ritual, without animal sacrifice, from the guide's brief description. In any case, a perfect understanding, not replication, of 'Old Testament' practice is the important goal. Moreover, in theological concept and Christianized space, the old covenant has given way to the new. So the past, or rather one's imperfect representation of the past, can never be the decisive point. Mr Ludig proudly explained: When we built the tabernacle we did everything we could to make it as authentic appearing as possible. A lot of work and research here. Everything you see here is the right size, the right shape, the right color, the right

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function, the right location, the right design. But the laver, huh, we were in trouble before we started here.

Ludig admitted that the Bible gave no instruction on how to build these large wash basins. However, even this insurmountable barrier to authenticity was overcome. 'I know something that I think is more important,' he commented. When associated with Christian baptism, ritual washing in the laver (here the video recording depicts a priest ritually cleansing his hands) prepares one to walk with and serve God. Notice how close the water is to the altar? To me that tells me something about Christian baptism. We need to keep 'em together, don't we? And you're baptized believers. But listen. It teaches you something we don't do very well. We don't teach our people that they're supposed to be walking closer to God after they're a baptized believer. Am I right?

Similarly, as priests carried out the 'sin offering', filming techniques enhanced the illusion of realism even as Ludig's commentary mitigated its shortcomings. My students gasped when they saw the lamb's head drop. And I had to check my own first impressions by repeatedly hitting the pause and slow motion buttons. Of course, the fake was ultimately discoverable. And in any case, interpretive overlay rendered the imperfection, even imperfectability, moot. Coincidentally, commentary and illusion suppressed a clash of values that might have threatened the whole enterprise of making tabernacle simulacra. Actually slaughtering a lamb, even for reasons of historical verisimilitude, would probably have shocked those tourists who adore pets, and who do so in a country where criminal laws protect animals from cruel abuse. Just beyond this potential discord run the unstable fault lines between environmentalists and large corporations, whose clashing interests frequently come down to a fight over protecting a single species of wildlife. The filmmaker seems to have anticipated this arena of resistance, while ever so dimly acknowledging the larger horizon of political struggle. Softened focus; slowed motion; soothing strains of new age muzak; a lamb cradled gently on the way to immolation; a burnt offering that dissolves into sanitized computer-generated flames. All these techniques lent a dream-like quality to the lamb's demise that, as my student's reactions attest, seemed at first anything but a dream. The camera took account of squeamishness, undertook to mollify its outbreak, and at the same time enabled the desire for realia to be satisfied, at least provisionally, in realistic simulation.

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Yet the shock that threatened to destroy this Christian space seems to have demanded even more direct containment. 'Kosher killing is painless,' Mr Ludig stated, authoritatively invoking a familiar apologia for a rule that is felt to be alien and barbaric. Yet the fantasy enabling realia of tabernacle space had within it the recollection of Jesus' sacrificial death, too. The raw horror of that might have pressed upon some of the tourists had it been given the least encouragement to surface. If there was any discomfort, Mr Ludig quickly overcame it. Jesus' death—real, painful and not kosher— vitiates the old ways of Judaism. 'Jesus's death certainly wasn't kosher, was it?' he asked. 'Absolutely awful? You're right. And there's a reason. Your sins and my sins are absolutely awful in God's sight.' Thus, at this spot just inside the tabernacle's perimeter, the first (^enactments embodied the whole tour space—a journey from the world of sin to the throne of (Christ) God. By juxtaposing the ancient 'sin offering' with Jesus' eternal atoning sacrifice, Mr Ludig produced Christian supersessionist space that penetrated and neutralized what purported to be authentic biblical (Jewish) practice and law. God instigated the death of the one sacrificed lamb that counts, not according to the laws ofkashrut (Jesus' death was painful, not kosher, said Ludig), but according to some qualitatively different, hence non-Jewish rule and redemptive purpose. Not surprisingly, the tabernacle's other implements—priestly garments, furniture, tablets of law, the 'glory of God' hovering over the Holy of Holies—counted for little or no spiritual gain in their own right. In commentary, they all were made to generate a space of Christ awareness. Standing alongside the inner reaches of the tabernacle, tourists gazed upon the shew bread—unleavened, not puffed up, the guide explained, signifying Jesus' humble state of no sin. They saw the ark of the covenant with golden cherubim wings enclosing a space for God's 'glory' to appear when Jesus returns (the film shows a pulsing glow). Six hundred and thirteen laws filled the ark, Ludig said. 'That's a lot of law. Don't let it bother you. God's mercy seat is above every bit of it. Thank you, God.' At the end of the tour, Mr Ludig summed his presentation and once again announced the interpretive coordinates that mapped the space he, or the Smith Foundation, regularly seeks to generate. 'Well, that's a Jewish understanding of this journey from the world of sin to the throne of God,' he said with a shrug. He signaled ever so slight a dismissal and ignored the Christian ideas that had animated this tabernacle space. 'But I know you're not Jewish. Now the question is, are you still Christians, or have you been backsliding on me?' Following a joke about backsliding in churches, Ludig continued:

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The fact is, you do have to walk from the world of sin to the throne of God. And we lifted up Christ at the altar, didn't we? And you understood that. We talked about baptism, and you guys understood that. This walking closer to God is where we have the breakdown. And I'd like you to remember some of these things because back home you're gonna have some sleeping beauties and I'd like you to wake 'em up and get them back to walking with God.

That opportunity to follow God was decisively presented in Jesus, and is continually available only to Christians, Ludig explained in a post-tour question and answer period. Someone had asked about King Herod's temple and the sanctuary's inner curtain that was torn asunder at the moment of Jesus' death. Ludig launched into a favorite topic, one which he still will occasionally reiterate on the special hour-long study tours that he alone leads. The royal temple had long since taken the place, religiously speaking, of the more ancient, but lost, wilderness tabernacle. 'A sad day,' he said on site. Claiming 'Messianic Jewish' authority for his teaching, Ludig asserted that Herod's temple had been corrupted by the king himself, a 'great fornicator, a great murderer, a great adulterer'.15 In a return of Gerald Smith's forgotten or repressed crusades, the video recording at this point cut to a moralizing scene from the 'Great Passion Play'. King Herod, resplendent and pompously playing to the crowds, clattered by in a Roman-style chariot. At his side was Salome—gossamered, bejewelled, seductively decadent, the gendered and sexualized archetype of Everyman's downfall.16 The Sadducees, Ludig's voice-over continues, 15. The Messianic Christian (Jewish) connection is strongly attested at the park. The Smith Foundation announces the association by citing Ludig's special 'Jewish' credentials (www.greatpassionplay.com). During my visit, I witnessed festivities at which a costumed member of the Passion Play cast confessed to the crowd that he was a Messianic Jew, a Jew converted to Christ, but still a Jew, now a Christian Jew. A few onlookers nearby softly shouted 'Hallelujah'. Teaching people how to say shabbat shalom (it was a Friday evening), he then sounded the shofar, thoroughly absorbing this, to him, antiquarian act of Jewish ritual into evangelical 'lifting up the Lord'. I suspect that the Messianic Christian flavor in the tabernacle tours may be due largely to Ludig's presence, and that changes may be in the offing. David Brown, supervisor of the New Holy Land Tours, felt that explanations of the tabernacle ought to give clear emphasis to Christian and strictly biblical meanings. References to later Jewish tradition often caused confusion among tourists, he added, who often would seek to find in their Bibles a Talmudic legend or rabbinical statement about the tabernacle. 16. In live performance of The Great Passion Play, Herod's flamboyant entry into Jerusalem has been cut. But Salome, the archetypal temptress, remains. Under Herod's mocking interrogation, Jesus is silent, and Salome, in a remarkably sexualized scene,

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were just as corrupt as Herod, for they 'purchased the right of priesthood from the government in Rome'. Then, too, the 'Shekinah glory cloud' no longer stood over the inner Holy of Holies. (Here the film reverted to the pulsating light hovering in the tabernacle.) Nor was the Ark of the Covenant there. But the temple's inner curtain, the one that split from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus' death—'D'you know what they saw? Darkness. (Pause for emphasis.) Just darkness.' These Jewish violators of holy space had deceived the people, Ludig explained, allowing the vestiges of Smith's triumphal crusades and the tradition of exclusive Christianity to go unchallenged. The true 'glory' of God had already passed from the Jewish temple to its new location. Inserting himself into the space conjured up by this language, and merging his own voice with God's, Mr Ludig cried out with indignation: Do you want to see my glory? It's on the center cross. That's my beloved son. And you do need to have a priest to come to God. His name is Jesus. Yashuah Hammashiah. And we need to follow him don't we?

That question addressed to every member of the audience suggests once again the evangelizing drive that lies at the heart of this Christianized mapping of tabernacle, and more broadly, of the Holy Land tour in its entirety. Tabernacle tour space seemed analogous to the lived space produced typically in Protestant worship services. A minister preaches the word, offers prayers and homilies, and urges congregants to (re)commit their lives to Christ. This experiential aspect to tabernacle space became evident soon after the reenacted sin offering. Commenting on incense that would have been used in ancient priestly rites, Mr Ludig explained that even though not widely practiced in churches today, burning incense teaches good 'Christ' lessons. For one, as the smoke rises up to God it says, 'Let your prayer and praise reach up to God, let your prayer and praise reach up to God' (speaking faster now and waving his arms like an orchestral conductor) 'let your prayer and praise reach up to God.' Perhaps a little startled, the assembled tourists timidly joined in. The attempt at creating an experience of congregational praise, rather than its success, is the important point. The constructed geography of tries to arouse some response. Smoothing the tunic collar of Jesus' robe, she places her hand seductively on his chest, fussing with his garments like an attentive or flirting lover. 'Perhaps he is only shy,' she says, gazing into his eyes. Jesus doesn't answer her either. He is after all stronger than King Herod, woman and Satan.

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wilderness tabernacle involves not simply imagined ancient space and enacted lessons of Christ equivalence, but also immediate religious experience. As a lived space of embodied typology, it encourages worship. The realism of material substance (the model, its costumed attendants and implements, its reenacted sacrifices), along with commentary, enable a fantasy of authentic encounter with the 'old' but discarded ways. At the same time, one may embrace the 'new' ways, Christ alive, or the Wordmade-flesh among believers. Read as affective geography, tabernacle aims at producing a lived journey of symbolically encoded experience. Christians are presumably meant to reaffirm assent to the referential system of Christ equivalence so as to experience Christ's presence in moments of lapse and in anticipation of eschatological closure. If this fantasy is realized, believers might internalize a large spatialized theological possibility, that God became (becomes) flesh in the body of a human being, Jesus (believer). Indeed, at the conclusion of a special hour-long study tour that I attended, Mr Ludig reverted to his talk of the unleavened shewbread, unpuffed up and sinless, like the piece of Passover matzah he held up for display. It is like Christ, he said, transforming the imagined realia of biblical and later Jewish ritual into Christ awareness. 'Without sin, and pierced in body,' Ludig continued, 'as matzah has been pierced to allow steam to escape.' Then with dramatic suddenness, he crumbled the matzah in his hands and passed the pieces around, saying, 'Take, eat—all of it.' Caught by surprise, we willing captives of Ludig's powerful scenarios indeed took and ate. Yet one may read that Arkansas tour space resistively. I have tried to explore it as a complex, layered construction, and to see its problematic elements—its exclusions and inclusions, its effaced histories and privileged scenarios, its assemblage of nostalgic desire and fantasy, its embodied typological interpretations of the Bible. I examined physical space (which has to be imagined in some fashion), as it had been charged with symbolic conceptuality that made place into valorized conceived-lived space. I tried to expose multiple lived perspectives, which allow for different, sometimes opposing, constructions and positioning inside particular physical spaces. I suggested that these elements of socially constructed space overlap and bleed into one another all the time as lived experience. Finally, I staked out a place of counterperspective on The Great Passion Play theme park and its New Holy Land. In these endeavors, and with apologies to Edward Soja

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where I got the concept wrong, I tried always to keep in mind Thirdspace' where potentially 'all histories and geographies, all times and places, are immanently presented and represented, a strategic space of power and domination, empowerment, and resistance' (Soja 1996: 311).

COVERING DAVID: MICHELANGELO'S DAVID FROM THE PIAZZA DELLA SlGNORIA TO MY REFRIGERATOR DOOR

David M. Gunn

History: A Meeting Close on 500 years ago, on 25 January 1504, an official meeting took place in Florence to discuss where Michelangelo's statue of David, then nearing completion, was to find a permanent location. Some 30 people attended, including city officials and artists, among whom were Sandro Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, Filippino Lippi and Leonardo da Vinci. Minutes were kept. It would appear that the consultation took place in a room close to the work site and 'reflects a direct observation and study of the sculpture before the meeting began' (Levine 1974: 31 n. 1; cf. Milanesi 1875: 620). The most advocated site seems to have been the Loggia dei Signori (later called dei Lanzi), although in or at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of the Signoria, the city's ruling council, also had its backers. Both Loggia and Palazzo are located on the Piazza della Signoria. In the event, the statue found its home by the portal of the Palazzo, in the place where Donatello's Judith had stood. There it was to remain until the mid-nineteenth century when it was moved, in 1873, inside the Galleria dell'Academia—and that is where David is to be found to this day (Figs. 1 and 2). Meaning, of course, is in no small measure a function of context, that is, of space and time as well as of subjectivity (whose meaning?). The discussion at the meeting makes clear that the desire to find an appropriate location for the statue included, at least for some, a belief that the statue did have a meaning and that a suitable location needed to be one that would match this meaning. Early in the meeting, Francesco Monciatto says: I believe that everything that is made is made for a specific purpose, and I believe this because [the statue] was made to be placed on the external pilasters or buttresses around the church [i.e. the Duomo]. The reason for

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Figure 1. Michelangelo's David in the Galleria dell 'Academia. (Courtesy Galleria dell' Academia, Florence. Photograph by the author.)

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Figure 2. David. (Courtesy Galleria dell' Academia, Florence. Photograph by the author.)

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'Imagining'Biblical Worlds not wanting to put it there I do not know, for there it seemed to me it would serve well as an ornament for the church and the Consuls [of the Wool Guild]—and the place has been changed.

Why the change of plans? Randolph Parks responds: [I]t is likely that the exceptional quality of the statue was the major reason... We find several members of the practica [the commission]... contemplating a location worthy of the statue, a place where it would be honored and esteemed. I see no reason to doubt, therefore, that after the quality of the David became overwhelmingly apparent, the Signoria elected to bring it down to street level and give it grander exposure... (Parks 1975: 569 n. 41).

That explanation sounds as good as any, especially in hindsight. On the other hand, the notion of 'grander exposure' does prompt another line of thought. It is a matter of curiosity to me, an outsider looking in on an art history debate some years ago on the subject of the statue's location (between Randolph Parks and Saul Levine), that unmentioned is the possibility that even in 1504, in Florence, a giant statue of a naked man with his genitals uncovered might have been considered by many to be a less than suitable adornment for a cathedral. Nor has Martha Fader allayed my curiosity with her suggestion that 'Michelangelo's detailed emphasis of David's genitalia is consistent with the prophetic connotations that the subject matter affords' (Fader 1977: 221; Fig. 3). As Margaret Walters observes, speaking of the rediscovery of the classical nude in general: [T]he nude was appreciated only by a small elite, a self-consciously classicizing avant-garde whose ideas filtered down slowly and against some opposition. Public feelings about the nude—and indeed, about the whole cult of the antique—remained conservative, and ranged from incomprehension to outright hostility. In the 1490s, Savonarola's furious attack on the new paganism and the nude as its symbol woke a wide response in Florence itself, home of the new humanism (Walters 1978: 99).

Clearly Monciatto was not concerned about the nudity and still thought that the cathedral was where the statue belonged (so too Botticelli). He claims not to know the reason for the change of plans, but he may merely be fishing for some direct acknowledgment by others more in the know. If so, nobody takes the bait; instead they seem studiously to ignore the 'problem' with the statue that rendered it unsuitable for the cathedral.

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Figure 3. David. (Courtesy Galleria dell' Academia, Florence. Photograph by Liberto Perugi.)

Yet the discussion could be construed as offering some indirect evidence that some of the participants were aware of a 'problem' with the naked giant. If so, why avoid addressing the subject openly? Some possibilities immediately present themselves. The meeting was being held in the office of the Opera del Duomo (the board of directors of the cathedral works), at the invitation of the Opera, and it would appear that the officials of the Opera were being coy about the true reasons for the change of plans. Perhaps, as cultural sophisticates in the world of the new humanism, they were unwilling to risk ridicule for proposing that a man's genitals were the stumbling block in the way of erecting for public display a great work of art. If so, the participants in the consultation were unfailingly polite and no one was willing to press further the reason for the Cathedral's decision, at least not too directly, lest here too lay embarrassment. The problem was therefore displaced onto the weather, as we shall see, and the dubious premise that the marble was spoiled and fragile. I suggest that 'covering', however, was indeed the name of the game and that the minutes lend themselves to a reading that uncovers this concern.

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'I had in mind,' says Giuliano da Sangallo early in the discussion, 'the corner of the church [the Duomo]...and it would be seen [there] by the passersby. But since it is a public thing [cosapubblica], and the marble is imperfect, being fragile and soft as a result of it having been exposed to the weather [or 'having remained in the open (all'ariay(Klein and Zerner 1966)], it does not seem to me that it would survive permanently.' So he proposes—and Leonardo da Vinci later agrees—placing it under cover in the Loggia dei Signori [Lanzi], preferably in a recess near the rear wall 'with a black niche behind it like a little chapel'. For, he stresses, 'it has to be covered [vuole stare coperta]' (Fig. 4). Levine comments that Giuliano's proposal for the Loggia niche extends his first thought that it be placed in the vicinity of the Duomo. In such a niche, the biblical, Christian aspects of the David iconography would be emphasized, and the contemporary, controversial political aspects of the work would be virtually eliminated... Within such a recess, it would be almost buried in a position significantly distant from normal public view and submerged within the deepest shadows of the Loggia... [T]he David— standing within a tabernacle—would have been rendered...innocuous (Levine 1974: 38-39).

Levine is expounding a political reading of the statue, as a pro-Republican, anti-Medici, emblem (finding special significance in the intense leftward gaze). Accordingly he casts Giuliano as a crypto-Medici sympathizer. But if Giuliano's concern was rather to contextualize suitably the giant's problematic 'nakedness', then Levine's comments about the neutralizing effects of the Loggia site fit equally well. In other words, Giuliano suggests, if you are not going to put the figure high up on a church buttress, then put him somewhere else where he will be suitably 'covered' (Fig. 4). Andrea the goldsmith, called II Riccio, also presses for a location providing ample cover, although there is some ambiguity about whether he is supporting the Loggia (more likely, given his speech in context) or the courtyard inside the Palazzo Vecchio (so Levine), following the suggestion of Messer Francesco, First Herald of the Signoria, who opened the discussion. Says Riccio: [TJhere it would be well covered [coperta] and would here be most highly regarded and most carefully watched against acts to damage it [or read: against its being spoiled] and it is better to enclose it [al coperto] so that the passersby go to look at it; it is not for such a thing to go towards the passersby—the figure should not come to look at us (Levine 1974: 40-41).

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Figure 4. Top: Piazza della Signoria with Palazzo Vecchio (left) and Loggia del Lanzi (right). Bottom: David. (Courtesy Galleria dell' Academia, Florence. Photograph by Liberto Perugi.)

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Although the goldsmith's language is ambiguous, Levine suggests, Riccio is more concerned with damage (guasta)by vandalism than by the weather (1974:42 n. 39). In the Palazzo the statue would find an appropriate setting since it would be confined to the viewing of the members of the Signoria and others with official business. If Riccio is speaking of the Loggia, a similar interpretation of his speech may be made: he is agreeing with Giuliano on the fundamental point that the statue should be isolated from open public space (see also Seymour [1967: 59], on the Loggia providing 'a certain amount of isolation'). Levine interprets in political terms the concern about wilful damage. Again, however, as in the case of Giuliano da Sangallo, I suggest that Riccio may (also?) have another matter on his mind, a concern for public decency. This 'public thing' ought not to be too public! Let the right sort of people seek it out; let it not be thrust into the public eye. Indeed, James Beck finds in the preamble to the minutes a hint that security against attack was a concern of Michelangelo himself: .. .the officials of the Duomo, seeing that the statue.. .is almost finished, and being desirous of placing it in a suitable and commodious place, one that is secure and solid, as Michelangelo, the master of the aforesaid giant, has requested, and [sic] the directors of the Wool Guild, desirous of putting into effect these wishes, decided to call a meeting... (Beck 1999: 123-24).

'Clearly,' adds Beck, 'as he was concluding his assignment, Michelangelo sought assurances that the placement would prevent vandalism...' Beck's argument depends upon his translating locum solidum et resolidatum as 'secure and solid' (cf. 'sound and solid', Klein and Zerner; 'firm and solid', Levine; 'solid and structurally trustworthy', Seymour). He thus appears to be aligning 'suitable' with 'secure' as terms of social space and 'commodious' with 'solid' as terms of material space. While hardly a secure reading, it is one that I believe fits well with the tenor and direction of the consultation. Giovanni Cellini, fife-player (a government official according to Beck [1999: 130]), demurs from Giuliano's suggestion because he believes the statue needs to be seen complete, in the round (Fig. 5), 'but it cannot be seen thus'. In other words, set far back in the Loggia, the statue would be not be fully appreciated; rather, it needed to be more in the open (all 'arid). But then that requirement had its own drawbacks. 'On the other hand,' he adds, now voicing openly what I have suggested is an underlying anxiety of both Giuliano and Riccio, 'some wretch may hurt [attack] it with a bar.'

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Figure 5. David. (Courtesy Galleria dell' Academia, Florence. Photograph by the author.)

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Hence he proposes a compromise that also has the virtue of being in agreement with the First Herald's suggestion (and also, on Levine's reading, Riccio's), namely that the statue be located inside the Palazzo, in the open courtyard. Here, in relative security, the statue could be seen 'in its entirety' by the (distinguished and cultivated) persons who frequented the Palazzo. 'Covering', for Giovanni, is really a matter of 'enclosing'. Levine's extended argument for understanding opposition to the statue as politically motivated finds an echo in Beck's comment on Giovanni's speech: Giovanni.. .introduced a curious suspicion. If located out in the open, some nasty person might do the statue harm. That is, for some unexplained reason, the David might become the target of vandalism (...and such a possibility supports the suspicion that there was a political aura surrounding the David that could have made it offensive to some) (Beck 1999: 130).

As I have argued, however, Giovanni does not introduce the suspicion of the 'nasty person' wishing to do the statue harm. That suspicion is there from the beginning, only becoming unambiguously explicit in Giovanni's speech—and even then, as Beck observes, it is left unexplained. Political motives might account for the inferred hostility, and so might concern about public decency; and in each case we can understand why, in a meeting of utmost civility, no one would wish to name the root problem. In the event, after several governmental changes of mind, the statue was installed in the Piazza, at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio. It would appear, on the face of it, that the 'coverers' and 'enclosers' lost to those who would see the statue 'in its entirety' out in the open. In the event, too, the statue thus thrust into the public eye was indeed attacked, on the first night of its being moved out of the Opera del Duomo, on 14 May 1504. The Diary of Luca Landucci records that during that night 'some stones were thrown at the colossus to harm it. Watch had to be kept at night...' (Klein and Zerner 1966:44). Levine, following Charles de Tolnay among others, claims the stoning was 'quite possibly' organized by supporters of the Medici family (1974: 34 n. 13; cf. de Tolnay 1964: 10; McHam 1998: 184 n. 50). 'Perhaps,' says Margaret Walters, 'but more probably by people shocked by its insistent nudity' (1978: 99); 'probably out of a sense of moral outrage on the part of decent citizens', agrees Monica Bohm-Duchen (1992: 21; cf. Parks 1975: 565 n. 24). Even more to the point is a much overlooked item about which Frederick Hartt has reminded us:

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In a triumphant example of Second Republic prudery, not only the genitals but what Vasari called the 'divine flanks' of the David could not be exposed to innocent Florentine eyes until they had been provided with a girdle. A brass wire sustaining twenty-eight copper leaves was paid for on October 31st according to a document published by De Nicola in 1917 and subsequently ignored. According to a passage from Pietro Aretino's famous denunciation of the indecencies of the Last Judgment, which everyone quotes but no one reads, this girdle was still in place as late as 1545 (Hartt 1986: 106-107,115 nn. 55-56, citing Paolo Barocchi in Poggi 1979: IV, 219 n. 1).

Thus Hartt accounts for the gap between the statue's journey from the Duomo workshop to the Piazza della Signoria on 14-18 May and the final 'uncovering' of the statue on 8 July, as described in Landucci's diary. A girdle had to be provided so that the giant's offending genitals could be decently covered. It would seem that the coverers won after all. 1 am reminded of Leonardo da Vinci's words in the consultation, also singularly unremarked upon by the critics: 'I agree it should be in the Loggia, where Giuliano has said...with appropriate ornament [chon ornamento decente} and in a way that does not interfere [in modo no guasti] with the ceremonies of state' (Klein and Zerner). Or as Seymour translates:'.. .with decency and decorum, and so displayed that it does not spoil the ceremonies of the officials'. Whatever the statue meant to Michelangelo, therefore, I suggest that it meant something else to the officials in charge of its location. They could not accept it as it was, not, at least, all'aria, in the open. Among its manifold meanings, at least in a public space, were sexual dimensions that required covering up. The statue had to be censored. Interpretations of its 'meaning' that ignore the discussion of the statue's 'problem' and its subsequent censorship simply do not adequately account for the statue's meaning in its actual 'lived' space. Intertextual Readings: To London, New York, Springfield, Washington and Beyond London: Queen Victoria's Fig Leaf In 1857 a plaster cast of David, 18 feet high, was presented to Queen Victoria by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and forthwith donated by the Queen to the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. Anecdotal information suggests that on her first encounter with the cast of David at the Museum, Queen Victoria was so shocked by the nudity that a

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Figure 6. Assorted fig leaves: Cynthia Pearl's David (left) and a 'royal visit' accessory for the Victoria and Albert museum's plaster-cast David (top right) (Courtesy Harper & Row and Alinari, Florence [left]; Victoria and Albert Museum London [top right].)

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proportionally accurate fig leaf was commissioned, and kept in readiness of any royal visits, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks (www.vam.ac.uk/exploring/shortstories/fig_leaf; Fig. 6).

The 18 inch high plaster cast of a fig leaf is kept in its own display box behind the plinth of the statue, though from 1997 to 1999 it toured the United States with a Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, drawing much publicity. Curiously, the fig leaf is exhibited under the theme Teaching by Example, which 'discusses the mission of education and the teaching of design by using objects as examples' (www.boston.com/mfa/ london/pressrel.html). I confess to being somewhat nonplussed, though as one American museum director observed, 'It certainly shows the decorum of the period' (www.neh.fed.us/news/humanities/1997-07/design.html). The question is, of what time and space are we speaking? Victorian England or Renaissance Florence? The question is also, whose decorum? New York and Evanston: Cynthia Pearl's Fig Leaf In 1954 a well-known US publisher brought out a volume by Cynthia Pearl Maus, The Old Testament and the Fine Arts: An Anthology of Pictures, Poetry, Music, and Stories Covering the Old Testament. It, of course, covers Michelangelo's David (Fig. 6). Springfield: David with his Pants Down The place is Florence, the time, 1990 or thereabouts. The news is out: Michelangelo's David is to tour the United States, coast to coast (Fig. 7). Well, to be precise, New York, Springfield and, if there is time, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles. And so to Springfield, where Marge, who has been leading a crusade against television violence, answers the door to find her friends, Maude and Helen, on a recruiting drive—to protest against an abomination: Marge: Mm, but that's Michelangelo's David. It's a masterpiece. Helen: [gasp] It's filth! It graphically portrays parts of the human body, which, practical as they may be, are evil. Marge: But I like that statue. Helen: [gasp] I told you she was soft on full frontal nudity! Come on, girls...

As the protest swells, Kent Brockman fills the television screen: Kent Brockman: Is it a masterpiece or just some guy with his pants down? That's our topic tonight on Smartline...

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Figure 7. The Simpsons and David in 'Itchy, Scratchy, and Marge'. (Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.)

Beaten down, Marge desists, and she and Homer go to the museum to see David: Homer: Well, there he is. Michelangelo's 'Dave'.

For her part, Marge wishes that the kids were here viewing this masterpiece of art, instead of watching cat and mouse, Itchy and Scratchy, commit mayhem on the television. Homer is more sanguine: Homer: Pretty soon, every boy and girl in Springfield Elementary School is going to come and see this thing. Marge: Really? Why? Homer: They're forcing 'em! [and he laughs} (Excerpts from Swarzwelder, Itchy and Scratchy and Marge}.

Washington, DC: 'With Decency and Decorum' If you've kept abreast of the news in Washington, you're probably aware of the big cover-up at the U.S. Justice Department... Spirit of Justice, or

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Minnie Lou as she's affectionately called by Washington insiders, is a 12'/zfoot-tall aluminum statue that has watched over the Great Hall since 1936. But now Minnie Lou is hiding behind a blue curtain, upstretched arms, flowing toga, bared breast and all. It's that third part that's got her in this pickle. Her companion, Majesty of Law, a male statue slightly more modestly attired (a loincloth covers the crucial parts), is also hidden behind the curtain, but it's Minnie Lou who's caused the ruckus. Seems she is positioned so that she frequently appears in the background, just above Attorney General John Ashcroft's head, in photos of the attorney general speaking to the press. This made Ashcroft uncomfortable.. .and a member of his staff ordered the curtains (Cathy Frisinger, Fort Worth StarTelegram, 6 February 2002; Fig. 8).

Frisinger observes sagely, moreover, that historical precedents exist for 'such cover-ups', pointing to the papal flap over the 'offending body parts' of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes: 'after the artist's death, judiciously placed cloths were added to his scenes', she notes, though she does wonder if there might have been a cheaper way than $7900 curtains to 'ease Ashcroft's mind and cover up Minnie Lou's naughty bits'. In the Ashcroft spirit of decency and decorum, however, Star-Telegram illustrator Jeremy Cannon proposes some 'blue-curtain treatment to some of our favorite famous statues', adding that 'it's curtains for Michelangelo's lean, mean fighting machine, David, 1504' (Fig. 8). And Beyond: But There Is Yet Another Problem with the Problem STATUE REJECTED: Jerusalem has turned down a gift of a replica of Michelangelo's statue of David because the nude figure would offend Israel's Orthodox Jews and Arabs. The offer from Florence, Italy, where the original work is displayed, was made in honor of celebrations of 3,000 years of Jerusalem's history, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported Friday. Instead, Florence will give Jerusalem a copy of a bronze statue of David by the 15th century artist Andrea del Verocchio. That David is clothed (Atlanta Constitution, 22 July 1995).

Michelangelo's David is, of course, uncircumcised (on which subject see Steinberg 1996: 165-67)—no small irony. David is the giant. Goliath is reduced to nothing. And the Giant is uncircumcised. As David so eloquently put it: 'Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?' So, after all, David does not belong in Jerusalem. Meaning is a question of space.

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Figure 8. Blue-curtained David with Blue Boy and Attorney General. (Courtesy Huntington Library and the American Postcard Co. [top left, with apologies to Thomas Gainsborough]; Atlanta Star-Telegram and Jeremy Cannon [bottom left]; and Associated Press Archives and Kamenko Pajic [right].)

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More History: Social Location and Renaissance Florence Let me return, however, to 'history' again. If we are to contemplate some of the dimensions of David's public nakedness in the Florence of 1504— the Victoria and Albert Museum fig leaf, by the way, is about 18 inches high—there are some more immediate social and historical contexts that we might consider. Artistic Tradition: David in the Middle Ages For a start, we could ask: How was the biblical David customarily displayed in the artistic tradition that Michelangelo inherited? Meaning is also a function of difference. In brief, the medieval David appears in four main guises: as Psalmist or inspired poet-musician, as the penitent in the Bathsheba affair, as the boy or youth who brings down Goliath with his sling, and as the boy who decapitates Goliath. It is not that he is never shown naked, for he is, as in a medieval illumination of Psalm 69 (Salvum me; Fig. 9)—but to my knowledge he always has his clothes on when he is making music, being penitent, throwing rocks and head chopping. In the early Italian Renaissance, we see similar images, as in the well-known painting by Andrea del Castagno, which combines both the sling and sword scenes in one (Fig. 9). David remains covered. Donatello 's David: The Homoerotic Victory/Defeat It is Donatello, in Florence in the mid-1400s (the date is debated), who changes all this. His earlier marble David is, as expected, clothed. His bronze David is naked—more or less (Fig. 10). With his hat and boots framing an adolescent body that many have deemed erotic (and often homoerotic), he stands with his right hand embracing the knob-topped shaft of a sword hilt, a stone cupped lightly in his left hand, and his left boot resting jauntily on the severed head of Goliath. The giant's helmet sprouts wings, one of which is lodged up (or slipping down?) the boy's inner thigh. On the visor is a relief (Fig. 10, top left). It is, I believe (Gunn 1993), a depiction of the triumph of Amor (see further Schneider 1973; 1976; 1996:186-94). A classicist and poet such as Michelangelo would no doubt have recognized the scene. Is the figure in the frieze then Aphrodite, whom Eros serves, or is it perhaps David himself, Eros in human transformation? Whatever the case, the irony is great: Goliath (who some argue is a self-portrait of Donatello) wears on his head the symbols of his downfall. The triumph of the erotic boy is the death of the man. Amor vincit...

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Figure 9. Illumination for Psalm 69, Psalter of Jean de Berry, 1380-85, (left) and Andrea del Castagno 's David, c. 1450 (right). (Courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris [left], BN Ms Fr. 13091 f. 127, and Widener Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC [right].)

In Michelangelo's day, Donatello's bronze David was located in the inner courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio. It was proposed by the Herald at the meeting of 1504 that he should be replaced by Michelangelo's David. His back leg, it was explained (i.e. the one with the wing up it), was somewhat 'awkward' or 'ridiculous' (schiochd). Michelangelo's David, then, was conceived and fashioned in the presence of the dominant David of the preceding century, Donatello's homoerotic youth. Homosexuality in Florence: Michelangelo's Space During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Florence had a reputation for sodomy, by which was usually meant sex between males. In his recent study, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Michael Rocke observes: The sexual renown of Florentine males was remarked on by both local and foreign chroniclers, condemned by preachers, deplored by concerned citizens,

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Figure 10. Donatella's bronze David, with Goliath's visor (inset). (Courtesy Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Digital adaptation by the author from photography by Ken Lawrence.)

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Of course, reputations do not necessarily correspond to realities. But Rocke suggests that this reputation has its foundation. Available to him is extensive evidence, namely the records of the Office of the Night (Ufficiali di notte), a magistracy set up in 1432 precisely to pursue and prosecute sodomy. During its seventy-year tenure from 1432 to 1502, this magistracy... carried out the most extensive and systematic persecution of homosexual activity in any premodern city... In this small city of around only 40,000 inhabitants, every year during roughly the last four decades of the fifteenth century an average of some 400 people were implicated and 55 to 60 condemned for homosexual relations... [That is,] as many as 17,000 individuals or more were incriminated at least once for sodomy, with close to 3,000 convicted. These extraordinary figures [he goes on].. .begin to furnish a sense of the dimensions, the vitality, and the contradictory significance of homosexuality in the sexual and social life of Florence. Sodomy was ostensibly the most dreaded and evil of sexual sins, and was among the most rigorously controlled of crimes; yet in the later fifteenth century, the majority of local males at least once during their lifetimes were officially incriminated for engaging in homosexual relations (Rocke 1996: 4-5).

So, on the one hand, we see in Florence during the early Renaissance, on the part of the elite, a passionate concern for the classical world that might well be thought to legitimate sexual relations between males; and at the same time we see the Church's teaching against sodomy enacted in laws that provided severe penalties, including death by burning—and in Florence, in particular, we see a series of clear decisions by the ruling class to press the issue of sodomy as a serious moral and social problem. Where would this have placed Michelangelo, unmarried like most men of his age—he was about twenty-six when he started on the statue? Though young and of a family of fallen fortune, his reputation as an artist was high. Would that reputation have afforded him some measure of protection were he to have indulged his apparent passion for attractive young men? Artistic reputation had not stopped Sandro Botticelli, at age 57, being charged with sodomy in 1502, the year after Michelangelo began work on his giant, though the charge was dismissed after a hearing—as had the charge against Leonardo da Vinci some 25 earlier (1476) (Rocke 1996: 139,298 nn. 12021). (On the subjects of 'homosexuality' and Italian Renaissance art, in

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general, and Michelangelo's sexuality, in particular, see further Liebert 1983:270-311; Saslow 1986:17-62; 1988; 1991:13-18,26-29; Sternweiler 1993; Kemp 1997: 198; and the criticisms of Beck 1999: 143-54.) The arguments for the political, particularly anti-Medici, import of Michelangelo's statue are double-edged when taken in tandem with a serious consideration of the artist's social location in the Florence of the Officers of the Night. As recent research makes abundantly clear, there is, in the context of the Renaissance, 'the intractability, the impossibility of delivering arguments about sexuality in the period without recognizing how fully embedded they are in the political' (Goldberg 1994: 10; see further Bray 1982, 1994; Smith 1994). If a man were a rebel against 'nature', would it be surprising if he were also a rebel against society and religion? Given the depth of homosocial relations among Renaissance Florentine men, it is easy to see that homoerotic behavior was always a potentially perilous path to take for someone whose life and work fell readily within political profiles. Such must have been the case with Michelangelo. The sexual was always potentially the political. Michelangelo's David: Uncovered It is commonplace to see Donatello's bronze David and Michelangelo's marble giant as twin ideals of the Renaissance male nude—and remark upon their striking difference. The homoerotic dimensions of the small bronze figure are widely acknowledged, including H.W. Janson's apt ascription to him of the epithet le beau garcon sans merci (1957: 85), along with assertions of the statue's political meaning as an emblem of liberty over tyranny. But, in the case of the marble David, while much play is made of the statue's political import (liberty over tyranny), few critics seem to recognize any sexual dimension. A notable exception is James Saslow: His eighteen-foot nude colossus imagines not Donatello's biblically correct adolescent, but a magnificently muscled young adult, glowering and snorting in anticipation of grappling with Goliath. The statue's official symbolism was both religious and civic—David was the city's mascot—but since Donatello the subject had resonated erotically, and Michelangelo here epitomizes male beauty and barely restrained physicality. The artist identified psychologically with the plucky hero—whom he transformed to someone nearly his own age at the time—and perhaps sexually as well. Although his private fantasies remain implicit, they must have been widely shared (Saslow 1999:96-97; cf. Bohm-Duchen 1992: 21).

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For the most part, however, the critics are silent on the subject. The statue is asexual. Those giant genitals are merely necessary appendages, in antique classical mode, to the young hero who scowls at the threatening oppressor. Of course, Michelangelo may have decided to have nothing to do with the earlier bronze. His sculpture was to be different. And, indeed, he chooses to represent a different moment in the biblical narrative. Yet as Saslow suggests, how could his statue have nothing to do with the famous bronze, the first statue to have depicted a nude young David, that had spawned already a spate of young Davids—howbeit with more clothes on—in imitation? It seems to me that he was stuck with Donatello's David, like it or not, and that he managed in his own way the homoerotic theme that Donatello had set in play. The latent political or civic meaning of the work is evident, and it is that 'overt message' and not its 'inner tension' that would have been looked for by most contemporaries, suggests Michael Levey (1996: 146). Yet the poised, inner-spring tension of the statue is widely recognized. It is where Michelangelo, the lover of young male beauty, himself resides, is 'at home'. Caught between desire and action, between liberty and oppression, in a moment and space where sublimation seems the only sure path to victory. Donatello's David looks with satisfaction at his conquest. Michelangelo's David looks anxiously but steadfastly at the oncoming foe—or is it a lover? Those genitals, uncovered, remind us of their owner's affinity with Donatello's erotic conquerer, but at the same time their repose is of a piece with the tense repose of the whole giant figure, which tends to diminish them, render them inconsequential, invisible, covered after all. Michelangelo's David is a giant attempt to sublimate Donatello's iconoclastic homoeroticism. The Biblical David: Uncovered Until recently, though the suggestion has long been voiced, few commentators have been willing to entertain seriously reading the story of David and Jonathan in terms of a 'homosexual' (for want of a better term) relationship. To read a relationship with same-sex possibilities was simply 'reading in', going too far, perverse. On the other hand, a reading that placed the language of love in the framework of political/covenantal language between vassal and overlord, that was worth considering (see, e.g., Thompson 1974). But, of course, as no few have pointed out over the past decade (not least Roland Boer 1999b), a 'homosexual' (or, in Boer's case, 'queer') reading

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finds plenty of play in the text (see further Schroer and Staubli 1996; Fewell and Gunn 1993: 105-108, 141-63; cf. Nissinen 1998: 53-56, 123-34). Let me here just mention briefly the richly layered lament for Jonathan. 'Wonderful your love to me, more than love of women.' He casts the relationship in a particular light. The point of comparison is women. Jonathan belongs in the relationship in the position of a woman, even if only to surpass her. That aligns Jonathan with the passive, the one who is penetrated; David with the active, the one who penetrates—even if, as Boer rightly observes, David is largely passive in his relationships (Boer 1999b: 26-28). His rhetoric makes David the 'man'. Doubly so, since his collection of women is a matter of notoriety. Who else better to judge what love might be more than the love of women! Thus the words that praise Jonathan, and claim his endorsement, at the same time subtly devalue him. And even more so, for as royal prince he should have played the 'man' to the commoner's 'woman'. David has reversed the sexual roles just as he has reversed the political roles. By claiming the homosexual relationship, but strictly on his terms, he turns it into a proclamation of his own ascendency, his inevitable dominion, and of the end of the house of Saul. The sexual is always potentially the political. The reason why the unspeakable reading has become speakable is, of course, all about context, about space and time—the text's location in the space occupied by the women's movement of the past 30 years in the West, and especially in the United States, and, not unconnected, the rise of gay liberation. David's genitals in the books of Samuel are being more consistently uncovered. David in Fragments: The Proliferation of Space and the Dissipation of Meaning David's genitals on the statue of Michelangelo have also been uncovered in recent years, as the statue has been claimed by the gay community (certainly in the United States; cf. Saslow 1999: 96) as an emblem of gay liberation. In such a context the genitals—hidden with fig leaves from the prurient gaze, rendered invisible by the politics of Renaissance Florence, and vaporized by their ascription to 'high art' (via the space of museum, 'art book' and university classroom)—become charged again with sexuality. But if the sexually charged textual David, in the body that Michelangelo gave him, has found his home in contemporary gay communities, this, I suspect, will not be a permanent nostos. This homecoming is elusive, not

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least because the homecomer's own standing as 'gay' man is elusive in the first place, in the biblical narrative, but also because the gigante that he has become retains that ambiguity, not unlike its maker, Michelangelo himself. Whereas Donatello's bronze David is aggressively homoerotic, Michelangelo's David is on the defensive. Is he, or is he not? That remains the question. Even more important, however, in contesting this determined relocation of an uncovered David is the power of technology to disrupt all such spaces. Photography and the postcard, products of industrialization, proliferated the spaces in which David was to be found. Technological change enabled the mass distribution of the David images that have come to signify a communal emblem beyond the reach of the elite who have controlled the ownership and consumption of'high art'. Indeed, the power of the David image as a gay liberation image derived in part precisely from its authority as 'high art' in ironic counterpoint to its derived biblical authority. But technology, especially with David's entry into electronic space, is constantly finding further ways to subvert the authority of that 'high art' and with it any remaining vestiges of biblical authority. By the same token, any meaning David might have as 'uncovered' icon of gay liberation is subject to the challenge of proliferating spaces with multifarious meanings competing, assimilating and fragmenting. The commodification of David makes him as ubiquitous as a McDonald's hamburger, but without the brand name recognition. What does David 'stand for' now? We can digitalize him not from a photo, but from the 'real thing', so that he can be distributed more readily to scholars and museums and studied more 'accurately' (the Digital Michelangelo Project at Stanford University—graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/). But, as the market reveals, we don't need accuracy to recognize David. Accurately or inaccurately, we can view him and use him in manifold ways. We can dress him up and locate for him a space, a home and a meaning of our own choosing. I work in Texas. So naturally I am partial to a western David. Easily done. We can choose to uncover or cover him, exposing or concealing that problematic signifier, moving him towards or away from Donatello's David, determining his sexuality with the click of a magnet on a refrigerator door or the click of a cursor on a computer screen. And we can easily have him express gender confusion, which is always lurking around the place where sexual boundaries are in dispute. At the same time we can recover the political David merely by substituting a head. Same body, new head, new politics. But more than

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that, we can bring David's head home—in parts—the counterpart to Goliath's head. Just as modernist biblical critics—historical critics— fragmented the biblical text in which David lived, rending one part of his story, his life, his person, from another; so postmodernist decorators of refrigerators or filing cabinets can carefully relocate a member of David. So we have David in fragments—arrange them as you please! A nose, an eye, an ear, a mouth. I've not seen it yet, but a 'Bobbiched' penis is bound to happen. In the meantime we can live with the David light-switch plate. David decapitated Goliath and brought him to Jerusalem on a sword or pole, as depicted in Bible illustration and free-standing art since the Middle Ages. Now we can have David's head, or tokens of it, on a pole, for ornaments, like the bodies of Saul and Jonathan's bodies decorating the walls of Gath. David in fragments, the truly postmodern David. David is what advertisers love: a universally recognized commodity. You can have him head on or head off. He sells food and restaurants. He sells books, from highbrow works of biblical academia (Flanagan's David's Social Drama [1988] sports possibly the first hologram to be used on a book not on holography), with a focus on the giant's head, to books with a 'broader' market, with a focus elsewhere. The clothed slingshot David is still hanging in there but being crowded out. Advertisers prefer 'high art' (but not Donatello's high art), and high tech especially so: a 'quality' David stands for a 'quality' sound board. And there's always room for a little joke about those genitals or the naked backside that Giovanni Cellini felt needed to be seen. David even sells 'gay (family values) games' alongside a new companion, not Jonathan or even Tommaso Cavalieri, but, in a wry twist, Bougeaureau's Venus. Last but not least, the gigante also sells himself—finished in antique stone, small with fig leaf, only $138 plus shipping and handling.

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SPECTERS OF MOSES: OVERTURES TO BIBLICAL HAUNTOLOGY Timothy K. Beal

During a roundtable discussion with Jacques Derrida at Villanova University, philosopher John D. Caputo (1997a: 20) asked, 'What do Judaism, the biblical tradition generally, and in particular the prophetic tradition of justice, mean for you and your work? How can biblical religion and deconstruction communicate with each other? Can they do each other any good? Are they on talking terms?' Derrida's response was as follows: I have no stable position on the texts you mentioned, the prophets and the Bible. For me, this is an open field, and I can receive the most necessary provocations from these texts as well as, at the same time, from Plato and others. In Specters of Marx, I try to reconstitute the link between Marx and some prophets through Shakespeare. This does not mean that I am simply a religious person or that I am simply a believer. For me, there is no such thing as 'religion'. Within what one calls religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or other religions—there are again tensions, heterogeneity, disruptive volcanos, sometimes texts, especially those of the prophets, which cannot be reduced to an institution, to a corpus, to a system. I want to keep the right to read these texts in a way which has to be constantly reinvented (Caputo 1997a: 20).

Derrida thereby affirms the provocative value of biblical literature, along with and in relation to other texts, while at the same time leaving the question of his particular relations to biblical and especially prophetic texts appropriately unstable, open to interpretation and further invention. Caputo''s Prayers and Tears (1997b), as well as his commentaries following the transcript of the roundtable discussion with Derrida inDeconstruction in a Nutshell (1991 a), are best understood as serious interpretive play in this opening. For scholars and students in biblical studies and theology, Caputo's work is both provocative and genuinely inviting. He has made clear that scholars in any field should not read Derrida without reading biblical literature, especially the prophets, any more than they should do so without reading

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Plato or Heidegger or Levinas, among others.1 At the same time he makes a strong case that theologians and biblical scholars concerned with issues of ethics and social justice in contemporary culture cannot afford not to read Derrida. Of course, Caputo is not simply arguing that the Derridean and the biblical are one and the same. Deconstruction is not 'reducible to a citation' from Scripture (1997b: 97). Rather, he is suggesting that there is a kinship between them that has not been adequately elaborated. His work occupies spaces of betweenness, the points at which the wires of deconstruction cross with the wires of the prophetic, messianic and apocalyptic biblical traditions (1997b: 337). I want to focus on a particularly significant point of contact between Derrida and biblical literature in Caputo's work, namely his reading, a la the biblical-prophetic tradition, of Derrida's notion of justice, especially as that reading summons the figures Elijah and Amos. My basic argument with Caputo is that although his work involves extremely careful exegetical openings of the Derridean archive, it lacks such close reading in the biblical archive, and therefore does not adequately recognize the tensions and ambivalences present within biblical traditions concerning justice—both within the prophets2 and within the law traditions of Torah in which they are rooted. What is needed is a hauntology of the biblical in the post-biblical Derrida. For just as Derrida has shown that there is more than one specter of Marx haunting the world today, so is there more than one specter of Moses. A Place at the Roundtable for Elijah The first three of the six 'nutshell' commentaries following the roundtable in Deconstruction in a Nutshell focus on important issues and ideas 1. Although few academic philosophers have paid attention to it, there are many works on Derrida and biblical literature by biblical scholars. In Hebrew Bible studies, see, for example, Sherwood (1996) and Linafelt (1995). In New Testament studies, see especially Moore (1992, 1994), and his 1989 groundbreaking work; and Phillips (1990); see also Bible and Culture Collective (1995). On Derrida and theology, see Hart (1985) and Taylor (1990), to whose title (Tears), among other insights, Caputo's book is obviously indebted. On Derrida and rabbinic modes of exegesis, see Handelman (1982, 1983). 2. Caputo rightly understands the apocalyptic and the messianic in biblical traditions to be closely related to the prophetic. For example, in his discussion of the apocalyptic in Derrida, Caputo writes, 'Derrida clearly takes the viens [French translation of the summons repeated at the end of the Apocalypse of John] to be a call for justice to come, a prophetic call' (1997b: 85).

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emerging out of the discussion with Derrida and out of Derrida's texts— on institutions and Derrida's own affiliations within them (Chapter 2), on deconstruction, Khora, negativity and differance (Chapter 3), and on democracy, hospitality and identity (Chapter 4). These issues and ideas, of course, have been discussed in nutshell fashion in several other introductions to Derrida, although the format of the book (tying the topics to Derrida's roundtable comments and to his own cross-referenced texts) makes Caputo's commentary particularly valuable. The next three commentaries (Chapters 5-7), however, push into much less familiar interpretive territory, in the direction of Prayers and Tears. Chapter 5 is on justice and the gift, Chapter 6 is on the messianic, and Chapter 7 is on the 'yes', expectation, waiting and promise. In these last three nutshells, Caputo makes strong interpretive links between Derrida and biblical themes, especially prophetic justice, the messianic and promise, which he reads as idioms of a discourse radically foreign to the Greco-Western philosophical tradition. This interpretation is developed much further in Prayers and Tears, which is a more risky forging of a relation between Derrida and the prophetic tradition on justice (1997b: 42). Caputo argues that biblical-prophetic justice, as an intertextual field in which to read Derrida, is shaped around particularity against universality, and around an ever-unfulfilled promise and expectation against the Western philosophical tradition of the metaphysics of presence. Quoting again from his question to Derrida at the roundtable: One of the things that has fascinated me about your work. ..is how much what you say about justice resonates with the biblical notions of justice and care for singularity, as opposed to the philosophical notion, where justice is defined in terms of universality, of the blindness of justice (1997a: 20).

In Prayers and Tears, Caputo makes this link with biblical tradition over against the Western philosophical tradition as an organizing principle for his interpretation of Derrida's textual corpus. This, Caputo argues, is a more appropriate linkage to deconstruction than the neo-Platonic tradition of negative theology, which has dominated discussions of Derrida and religion: His writing is more inscribed by the promise, by circumcision, and by the mark of father Abraham than by mystical transports, more like Amos and Isaiah than Pseudo-Dionysius, moved more by the prophetico-ethico-political aspiration than by aspiring to be one with the One.. .deconstruction has more to do with bearing an ethico-political witness to justice than with the docta ignorantia (1997b: xxiv; cf. 2).

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The opposition Caputo sets up between Greek ontotheology and Western philosophy, on the one hand, and prophetic justice and deconstruction, on the other, is made particularly clear in his comments on Derrida's apocalyptic, which in Specters of Marx and elsewhere is an opening in the 'abyssal and chaotic desert' to an unknowable, impossible justice beyond calculus (Derrida 1994: 28; cf. 30, 89-90). Caputo writes: The call of 'come', the apocalyptic tone of viens, belongs to another time, other than philosophy's time, to a more Jewish and biblical time, a time organized around the promise and not the present. The Bible does not think of time in terms of the enduring permanence ofousia but in terms of fidelity to the promise of something that is to come, even something a little impossible. What lies behind the 'come' and the 'apocalyptic tone'—John's [of Patmos, the seer in the book of Revelation] or Jacques'—is another, more Jewish 'messianic' time where time is focused on the d-venir. The axioms of ousio logical time, of the more familiar Greco-philosophical time, on the other hand, are all variously organized around enduring presence, even and especially those that are planning for the future, which means for them the future-present.3

Thus for the biblical tradition, as for Derrida, the prophetic, the apocalyptic, the messianic and the justice beyond calculation and law to which they call 'come' are all about the not-present, or the spectrally present/absent, and are 'realized' as anxious, unhomed expectation in the desert without horizon. This is where a certain Elijah comes in, or at least where he always might come in. But which Elijah? In the biblical narrative of the so-called Deuteronomistic History—which begins in Deuteronomy with Moses preaching to the people at the point of entry into the promised land and ends in 2 Kings with the loss of the land, exile and diaspora—Elijah is Moses' ideological heir, the quintessential prophetic voice against exploitation of the poor and also against religious syncretism and mixing with the Canaanites.4 Elijah's arrival and departure in the biblical story are 3. Caputo 1997b: 70; cf. 86, 98,117-18, 133-34, 328, 335; 1997: 178:80; cf. 2425,41-42,156-58. Cf. Caputo's enlistment of deconstruction in heralding the death of 'the God of the onto-theo-logic. That is the God who divinely, eternally precontains all things in a mind so immense that all creation is but a supplemental imago dei, a simulacrum of the Infinite and the Eternal, which means Infinitely and Eternally the Same. Deconstruction can be of service to theology in breaking the grip of this excessively Eleatic idea of God which has overrun the biblical traditions ever since Philo Judaeus decided that Yahweh needed to square accounts with Greek ontology' (1997b: 113). 4. While it has a long and complex literary history, and while the details of that

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mysteriously abrupt. He arrives out of the blue, announcing a coming famine to King Ahab in 1 Kgs 17.1, and he departs in a whirlwind in a fiery chariot in 2 Kgs 2.11. Relatedly, in postbiblical Jewish tradition, Elijah is the one who might return, awaited at the Passover table; his is the empty chair, the unused place setting. In Derrida 's own family, Elijah is the name of Derrida's uncle, and also his own secret, unrecorded, almost illegible name, given to him on his seventh day while sitting on his uncle's lap.5 In 'Ulysses Gramophone' (1992), moreover, Derrida identifies two Elijahs in Ulysses studies. On the one hand, there is the yes-laughing, totalizing Elijah of hypermnesis mastery.. .spinning webs that defy all other possible mastery, as impregnable as an alpha and omegaprogramaphone in which all the histories, stories, discourses, knowledges...would be prescribed... precomprehended, captive, predicted, partialized, metonymized, exhausted, like the subjects, whether they know it or not (Derrida 1992: 292).

On the other hand, haunting the first laughing Elijah, there is the yes-laughter of a gift without debt.. .to contrive the breach necessary for the coming of the other, whom one can always call Elijah, if Elijah is the name of the unforseeable other for whom a place must be kept, and no longer the Elijah, the great operator, the head of the megaprogramotelephonic network, but the other Elijah: Elijah, the other (Derrida 1992: 294-95).

For Caputo reading Derrida, Elijah is the cipher, the empty space in religion and in Derrida's texts that opens to the unexpected, 'the absolute surprise, the one to come, the tout autre' (1997a: 189). He stands at the door and knocks, an envoy of 'something that breaks up the ho-hum homogeneity of the same and all but knocks us dead' (1997b: 113). He is the other to be expected but always unrealizable within the present. He is the unpresentable harbinger of a justice to come, always to come. literary history are a matter of much scholarly debate, it is commonly agreed that the narrative of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings is, in its final form, an extended narrative (the Deuteronomistic History, or DtrH) of Israelite (northern) and Judean (southern) history that interprets the slow slide into exile and diaspora theologically to be the result of turning away from the basic Torah preaching of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. 5. Derrida 1992: 284; Caputo 1997a: 189; 1997b: 253. In Memoirs of the Blind (1993: 21-23), Derrida also relates his secret name to that of Eli in 1 Sam. 4. In his discussion of Memoirs, Caputo calls this biblical character Elijah (1997b: 315). Eli in 1 Sam. 4 is not, however, the same character as Elijah in Kings, and their names are less similar in Hebrew than they are in French.

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Caputo's Elijah-knocking-on-the-door in Prayers and Tears and Deconstruction in a Nutshell has least to do with the Elijah of biblical tradition and most to do with the second Elijah of 'Ulysses Gramophone' (Caputo 1997b: 257-60). In Caputo's reading of Derrida's text, the first yes-laughing Elijah represents the positive Western philosophical tradition described earlier: he is the triumphal Hegelian totalizer, making all things fully present and entirely comprehensible in 'a comprehensive, encyclopedic system', a universal totalizing logic of the same (1997b: 258-59). This interpretation of the first Elijah is very much in line with Derrida's own interpretation.6 Caputo's interpretation of the second Elijah, however, is more risky, pushing beyond Derrida's own discussion of him. As discussed earlier, Caputo's association of Derrida with the prophetic is set up according to a basic opposition between the Greco-Western ontological tradition, on the one hand, and the Jewish biblical tradition of justice, on the other; and within that opposition, the 'religion without religion' of deconstruction is identified with the latter over against the former. Within this larger interpretive framework, and given the first Elijah's identification with Western philosophical tradition, it is no surprise that the references to Elijah here and throughout both of Caputo's books suggest an identification of the second Elijah, whose knock on the door introduces rupture in the first Elijah's totalizing hegemony, with the Jewish and biblical tradition of particularity and justice that is understood to be radically other to ontotheology and Elijah number one. But how is this Caputoan Elijah-at-the-door in Prayers and Tears related to the biblical Elijah of 1 and 2 Kings? Besides his name, not hardly. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find any biblical sketch that even remotely matches either the laughing, totalizing, circumnavigating Elijah (guardian of a universal Western philosophical circumcision) or the laughing, delimiting Elijah who ruptures any totalization in the name of the tout autre. The pre-transfiguration, pre-second-coming Elijah of 1-2 Kings cuts quite another figure altogether. In contrast to the two Elijahs of 'Ulysses Gramophone', he is very stern. He never laughs. And he represents a face of the biblical-prophetic justice tradition that is not adequately acknowledged in Caputo's characterizations of biblical justice. For he is the jealous guardian of justice (Hebrew mishpaf)as law, social order, a system (by no means Greek ontotheological) that works to establish Israelite identity by projecting its other and marking that other for annihilation (without any interest, moreover, in anything like Hegelian aufhebung or der Begrifj). 6.

See, for example, his comments at the roundtable in Caputo (1997a: 25-26).

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To be sure, there are moments that trace the biblical Elijah narratives with the possibility of an inbreaking of the tout autre, as in the wellknown yet enduringly strange story of Elijah at Horeb: There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before YHWH, but YHWH was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but YHWH was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but YHWH was not in the fire. And after the fire a voice of sheer silence. When Elijah heard, he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out and stood at the opening of the cave. And a voice came to him and said... (1 Kgs 19.11-12).

And there are also moments, as Phyllis Trible (1994, 1995) and Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn (1993: 164-73, 182-85) have shown through careful exegesis, in which sameness and otherness get wonderfully tangled together in these narratives: for example, in the spectral effect of the quintessentially other woman Jezebel on Elijah. Indeed, these are deconstructive moments in which something is breaking into the Deuteronomistic History, and therefore into its favorite spokesperson, Elijah. But these are moments of failure in prophetic vision, when the momentum is lost and the horizon is out of sight. Moreover, these moments are rare and easy to miss, and to open them up requires careful exegetical attention, a reading for fault lines, a watchfulness for deconstruction at work within the biblical. And the same holds true when reading the law traditions of justice in Torah. Derrida tells his audience of Ulysses scholars in 'Ulysses Gramophone' that you cannot leave a place at the table for the first laughing Elijah without the possibility that the second one comes too. I am suggesting that at least a third might also show up, and he has no sense of humor. Indeed, this third Elijah may be accompanied by other uninvited dinner guests, specters of those unjustly slain by him, like the prophets of Baal cut down in the valley of Kidron (1 Kgs 18.40). Derrida's second, yes-laughing, breach-making Elijah must also be summoned to laugh against this third, non-Hegelian, laughless biblical prophetic Elijah. A Hauntology of Prophetic Failure Elijah is a central link between the justice traditions of Torah (as delivered, according to canonical tradition, by Moses), on the one hand, and the canonical prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve, including Amos), on the other. Indeed, in the biblical narrative of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, Elijah is one of Moses' clearest and boldest mouthpieces for return to mishpat as return to unity, homogeneity, perfect law—to the

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mythic and utterly impossible moment of presence-in-Torah at the base of Mount Horeb, when the promise of blessing (offspring, land, prosperity) was conceived as entirely realizable, when the choice between blessing and curse, life and death, was as clear as the law-giving voice of God. The inheritance of Torah justice traditions in the prophets is inherently tensive—just as Torah justice is itself riddled with potentially explosive tensions. On the one hand, the shrill cries of the prophets echo with reminders from Moses of former enslavement and oppression in Egypt ('remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt'; Deut. 15.15; 16.12;24.18, 22; cf. 6.20-25; 26.5-9; 'you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt'; Exod. 23.9), as they struggle to open up hospitable spaces in which to hear the voices of the marginalized (Deut. 10.18; 14.29; 16.11-14; 24.17-21; 26.12-13; 27.19; cf.Isa. 1.17; 9.17; Jer. 7.6; 22.3; and Amos 2.6-8, on which see below). On the other hand, the justice which the prophets inherit is built on and around institutions of slavery, patriarchy and class. This is evident even in the ten commandments in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, which clearly assume the subject of the law to be a landed Israelite male with women/wives (same word in Hebrew), children and slaves, along with other possessions. Indeed, the context of the ten commandments in Exodus in particular makes this problematic tension between justice as relation to the other and justice as hegemony and social order remarkably plain: they follow shortly after the exodus liberation from slavery and are followed in turn (in ch. 21) by directions on how to deal properly with slaves. Soon after that, moreover, in Exod. 23.6-9, we read commands against perverting justice in legal relations with the poor and the alien, reminding the addressee 'you know the heart of the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt'. Of course, Caputo is not making any explicit connections between the biblical law traditions and Derrida. His concern is with the prophets, especially Amos, as we shall see. My point, however, is that justice in the prophets is deeply rooted in the tensions and ambivalences of justice—as hegemonic order and law-as-divine-presence, on the one hand, and as emancipation, on the other—that are present in the legal traditions of Torah. As such, Elijah's calls for justice to come, like those of the prophets who follow him, are haunted by more than one specter of Moses, and these specters are not reducible to one another. By emphasizing the opposition between biblical prophetic justice, on the one hand, and Hellenistic justice, on the other, Caputo does not adequately acknowledge the tensions—irreducible specters of Moses—within the biblical prophetic tradition of justice:

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...it is an excessively Hellenistic frame of mind to insist that this matter must be settled—so long as you have a passion for the impossible, are moved by the impossible, stirred by justice, driven mad with the passion for justice, dreaming of something impossible, set in motion by the impossible. That is what it means to let 'my God' be tossed about by the waves of undecidability. Who I am, Yahweh told a nosey Moses, is none of your business; your business is justice (Caputo 1997b: 338).

Whether or not Moses was being nosey when he was called by the burning bush in Exodus 3 (it seems to me that he had been trying not to be noticed), Moses' business is most certainly justice. But this justice business is messy, tangled up in tensions between a radical, emancipatory justice, on the one hand, and a hegemonic, patriarchal social justice, on the other. The deep incompatibilities within these different biblical-prophetic justices make it impossible to set up a simple tension between the Jewish and the Greek or the biblical and the philosophical. Given the frequent general references Caputo makes to biblical prophets and prophetic justice in his reading of Derrida, it is striking how few actual prophetic texts are discussed in any detail. Besides passing references to Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk and Jeremiah,7 there is only one prophetic text that is given focused attention in relation to Caputo's reading of the Derridean a la prophetic justice. That text is Amos 5.21-24, a text made famous in our generation by Martin Luther King Jr's pronouncement from it in his 'I Have a Dream' speech. The passage reads as follows: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice [mishpat]roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream (NRSV translation).

7. Caputo gives some attention to a pair of fragments from the prophet Jeremiah (6.10; 9.25-26), where Israel is chastised for having uncircumcised ears and hearts, which Caputo discusses (as has Derrida) in relation to issues of Jewish identity and covenant (covenant, like circumcision, being both a 'cutting off and a circumcision, a break and a bond, an encircling by and an opening to 'my God'; 1997b: 250-52, 260-

61,283).

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In both Prayers and Tears and Deconstruction in a Nutshell, Caputo interprets this passage from Amos as one that gives voice to 'religion without religion' and the prophetic justice that he believes to be the undeconstructable heart and soul of deconstruction and the passion of Derrida.8 Indeed, in Prayers and Tears, Caputo's Amos has nearly the last word (1997b: 337-39). So it deserves to have nearly the last word here as well. In Deconstruction in a Nutshell, Caputo writes, For whatever parts of Judaism Derrida has deserted (or have deserted him) and let die away, he has been engaged all along in reinventing a certain Judaism, let us say, a prophetic Judaism, the Judaism that still constitutes a prophetic call for justice, but not the Judaism of religious ritual and sacrifice or even of specific doctrines. Amos has Yahweh say that He [sic] takes no delight in festivals, solemn assemblies, or burnt offerings, but injustice... (1997a: 172).

After quoting Amos 5.23-24 ('Take away from me.. .like an everflowing stream,' quoted above), Caputo continues: That is the Judaism that Derrida invokes, the alliance to which he has remained faithful, to which he calls 'come', which he would let come, let come again—this time as deconstruction. Indeed it is what deconstruction is, in a nutshell. For like the religion of Amos, deconstruction takes no delight in sacrifice and burnt offerings, or in the rites and rituals, the dogmas and doctrines, of the several messianisms, but burns with prophetic passion for justice, longs to see justice flow like water over the land (1997a: 172-73).

For Caputo, then, the 'religion of Amos' is a prophetic 'religion without religion', a prophetic burning for justice that is not to be confused with 'the Judaism of religious ritual and sacrifice or even specific doctrines'. Amos's religion is religion without religion, and Amos's justice is a justice beyond the justice of any law, any calculus, and even of any 'of the several messianisms'. It is the unforseeable, undeconstructable, impossible justice that is the passion of deconstruction. Caputo enlists Amos in the same way in the final pages of Prayers and Tears. As in Deconstruction in a Nutshell, he leads into his reading of 8. The passage is alluded to on occasion (Caputo 1997b: 25, 114, 122), but is discussed in detail only once in each book (Caputo 1997a: 172; 1997b: 337-38). On the notion of justice as 'the undeconstructable condition of deconstruction', see esp. Derrida (1994: 28, 90; also 1990), and the discussion of this article in relation to biblical justice and Caputo'sDemythologizingHeidegger (1993) in Brueggemann (1997: 329-32, 740-41).

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Amos by distinguishing the prophetic and apocalyptic tones of Derrida's deconstruction from any particular religious institution or tradition 'of the Book', since to locate him in such a concrete, particular tradition 'would only reinscribe him in the cycle of violence that drives the concrete messianism, of the positive religions that are too positive for their own good' (Caputo 1997b: 337). Rather, again, he sees the passion of deconstruction in a longing for justice beyond any particular religious articulation of it, and he sees the prophets as driven by the same passion. From there he dives into a long interpretive paraphrase of Amos: I do not want your festivals and sacrifices, your loud songs and solemn assemblies, but I want justice to flow like water over the land, Yahweh told Amos (Amos 5.18).91 do not care about the hierarchy, or a new edition of the songbook, about church or synagogue architecture, about Judaism reformed, conservative, or orthodox, about priestly rites or priestly privileges, about preserving a male hierarchy, but justice. 1 do not care about religion, Yahweh seemed to say, but about a religion without religion, or a religion before religion, a religion where the only thing people believe in religiously is justice, where their passion is to let justice flow. So it would not matter to Yahweh, according to Amos, whether you had religion—i.e., whether you had or belonged to the 'determinable faiths', or whether you rightly passed for an atheist in the eyes or the determinable faiths—but whether you had a passion for justice, longed for justice, wept and prayed for justice. Yahweh was jealous about justice, not Judaism... (Caputo 1997b: 338).

Caputo's Amos is the quintessential prophet of religion without religion. While eloquent and moving, however, Caputo's enlistment of Amos in paraphrase here is not entirely fair—at least somewhat against Amos's will. Although things like 'determinable faith' or 'Judaism' or even 'religion' would make no sense whatsoever in Amos or any other ancient prophetic text, when one reads Amos 5.21 -24 in the context of the book as a whole, it is clear that this biblical prophet cares deeply about proper (just, well-adjusted) practices of sacrifice and worship, and even about the hierarchy. What Amos rails against is not the social-political-theological hierarchy as such—as much as we might wish he would—but abuses of power within it. He is indignant for the sake of a concrete God-ordained code of justice that is being slighted or perverted.10 This abuse is perhaps most powerfully described in Amos 2.6-8: 9. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Amos is having YHWH tell the people (Amos is not the 'you' being addressed here), and the text being paraphrased here is 5.23-24, not 5.18. 10. The legal traditions behind Amos's indignance are shared with Torah. This is

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'Imagining' Biblical Worlds Thus says YHWH: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four I will not revoke it [the judgment], because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, they trample the head of the weak into the dust of the earth, and push the poor aside; and a man and his father go into the [same] young girl, thereby defiling my holy name; and upon garments taken in pledge they lay down beside every altar; and they drink the wine of those who have been fined in the house of their God (my translation).

In this passage of indictment there is a clear link between injustices committed against the poor and powerless by the rich and powerful, on the one hand, and abuse of the privileges of priesthood, patriarchy and wealth, on the other. But Amos does not indict these institutions of social privilege in any ultimately subversive or revolutionary way. Rather, again and again, he calls upon those in power to use their power 'justly', that is, according to the legal traditions of justice-as-social-order. In fact, the abuses of justice described here by Amos can be read as direct references to laws now found in Torah (see, e.g., Exod. 22.25-27; Deut. 24.10-14; cf. 21.7-11; Lev. 19.2023), demonstrating a direct relationship between prophetic justice in Amos and the law codes. Indeed, like the other prophets, Amos goes so far as to envision a calculus of divine judgment (the theophanic 'day of YHWH', to which he says 'come') as a direct response to the lack of justice in his time. This judgment, including a poetic-prophetic calculus of violent retribution, is needed in order to put things back into proper adjustment ('judge' and 'judgment' are closely related to 'justice' in biblical Hebrew, etymologically, politically and theologically). Amos has often been read within anti-Jewish Christian supersessionist tradition (and within the European critical tradition that is often subconnot to say that Amos is quoting Torah in the form that we now have it, but rather that he draws from ancient law codes that are shared with Torah in its final form. In this regard, it is worth noting that the words Amos uses for sacrifice here ('burnt offerings', 'grain offerings', 'offerings of well-being') are specific sacrifices discussed at length in Leviticus 1-7. Indeed, Amos's language here and elsewhere may suggest close ties to the priestly traditions as well as to the Deuteronomic traditions. See also the subsequent comments on Amos 2.6-8.

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sciously influenced by Christian supersessionism) as a prophetic critique of a too-Jewish (read 'priestly' and 'legalistic' with a sneer) religion." That is, Amos (along with Isaiah) is often enlisted as a proto-Jesus, proto-Pauline gospel against law and the priesthood. Within this field of biblical interpretation, Caputo's reading of this passage as a voice for religion without religion runs the risk of playing into the same anti-Jewish tradition. Beyond that, however, Caputo's reading is problematic within the larger literary context of the book of Amos itself. Amos does indeed care—and has God care—'about the hierarchy.. .about priestly rites and priestly rituals, about preserving a male hierarchy'. Indeed, the shrill and passionate prayers and tears of Amos well up from his awareness of the abuse of the priestly offices and of the concrete social justice of Israelite law tradition. These abuses create a massive disjunction for Amos. They put things 'out of joynt'—as Hamlet puts it while facing his murdered father's specter—and leave Amos on the margins, screaming for justice at great personal risk (see Derrida 1994: 89-90). But the justice he demands, like Elijah's, is at least on the conscious level a matter of return; it harkens back to law codes identified with the first judge, Moses. It is a justice that is deeply rooted in Israel's particular confessional faith, as articulated, for example, in Deut. 26.5-9, in which one who brings an offering to the priest at the Festival of First Fruits is commanded to own the memory of enslavement in Egypt, revolutionary emancipation by YHWH, and the gift of the land. Indeed, there again is the tension, in a nutshell, that I am arguing is at the heart of biblical prophetic justice and likewise Torah justice: to remember you were once slaves even while you now have land and all the privileges that go with it (including your own slaves). Yet, as with the Elijah stories, I do believe that there is also, simultaneously in Amos and other prophetic texts, an opening toward something beyond any simple restoration of justice, and indeed beyond any horizon of possible, foreseeable justice or law. Moreover, I read traces of such a wholly other justice in Amos's calling for justice to roll down like waters. This text is, in a sense, a point of possible rupture in the foreseeable, an opening toward the unimaginable. But this opening is in tension with justice as return to proper order. It is something that breaks through, or almost breaks through, what Amos (and Amos's God) is actually trying to 11. Note, for example, the critical tradition following the late-nineteenth-century German father of 'Higher Criticism' Julius Wellhausen, whose approving reading of Amos as anti-priestly plays into a larger ideology of anti-Semitism. On Wellhausen and Judaism, see Silberman (1982) and Krause and Beal (2002).

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imagine. It is, in this sense, appropriately beyond the prophet, and emerges out of the sense of the failure of Torah justice, and a sense of the absurdity, in Amos's out-of-joint world, of anything like a return to a mythic time of presence with God and Moses at the base of the mountain. Indeed, there are such openings in Torah itself. Amos, then, like other prophets, lives in a tension between two impossibilities: a conscious desire for return and restoration (which is also a desire for vengeance) and an inbreaking, self-subversive desire for the unforeseeable. The latter, which might open to a wholly other justice, is not present in the prophets—is not what the prophets or their God are about—but happens in the moment of prophetic failure. Caputo does recognize this kind of tension—between a radically emancipatory, wholly other justice, on the one hand, and justice as (often violent) restoration of law and order, on the other hand— in other biblical texts, especially in the Apocalypse of John, a New Testament text with very strong influences from Jewish prophetic and apocalyptic literary traditions (e.g. Caputo 1997b: 92, 94, 128). There, moreover, Caputo (via Derrida) recognizes the impossibility of the justice-as-vengeance envisioned and summoned in that text. Indeed, the Apocalypse of John is simultaneously an uncovering (apokalupto, 'uncover') and an encrypting, an uncovering in the crypt, like the scrolls in John's vision that are simultaneously revealed and left unread (Apoc. John 5.1-4; 10.8-10). Thus one might read the Apocalypse of John, despite itself and its own longing for justice-as-vengeance,'2 as a text that, through the necessary impossibility and the impossible necessity of its imagining of the unimaginable (i.e. this-worldly judgment), points beyond itself to a messianic justice beyond any future horizon and beyond return. But this is the Apocalypse of John in deconstruction—not an apocalypse without apocalypse but an apocalypse against apocalypse, an apocalypse in tension with itself in the same way that 1 propose reading the prophetic against the prophetic and Amos against Amos. To read thus is to highlight the tensions in such a way as to watch deconstruction work in apocalypticism and in prophetic justice. As in the Apocalypse of John, justice is not simply 'there' in Amos and the other prophets, as Caputo knows (this justice is radically not-present). But the summoning of a justice beyond justice and the opening of a messianic religion without religion are not simply 12. Note that many of the texts in the Apocalypse of John where this judgment is most vividly and gratuitously imagined are in fact transcriptions from Exodus, Isaiah, Ezekiel and other prophets.

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'there' either. Rather we may read for such openings, such breathless callings, in the abyssal and chaotic desert of Elijah's failure, of Amos's failure. The prophetic prayers and tears of passion for justice are not explicitly a longing for undeconstructable justice. Rather there are openings to such an unimaginable, unforseeable justice in the prophets at the points of rupture in their imagined, fully expected justice.13 Biblical without Biblical The question itself—whether there is something Jewish and prophetic, something messianic and covenantal, about deconstruction, whether deconstruction is a certain religion without religion, a certain repetition of religion—is a good enough one on its own... It is a question, as I have argued, that opens up deconstruction and religion in an interesting way, even as it closes deconstruction off from mindless charges of nihilism and subjectivism and closes religion off from mindless fundamentalism. The question stands orfalls on the basis of how well it opens the Derridean archive, how well the answer is 'documented', that is, on how well one uses the archives (Caputo 1997b: 279-80; italics added).

Indeed. But the particular question stands or falls differently depending on how well one opens the biblical archive, too. As Caputo opens the Derridean archive, in good faith, in quest of religion without religion, he is simultaneously opening the biblical archive, reading for a biblical without the biblical, that is, a prophetic justice that is without 'the cycle of violence that drives the concrete messianisms'. Yet anyone who spends much time in that archive well knows how hard it is to maintain that particular 'without'. Caputo's prophetic, like Derrida's, may come less from opening the biblical archive and more from opening the works of others who have opened the biblical archive. His reading of messianic and prophetic time, for example, draws less from biblical exegesis and more from Levinas and Scholem (via Blanchot), whom Caputo quotes at a key point in articulating the notion of the prophetic call for justice as beyond all horizons of presence.14

13. Along these lines, I have suggested that deconstruction in biblical studies be described as a kind of 'exegesis of the limit', by which I intend to draw from Cornell (1992), while also emphasizing the affinities between Derrida's attentive exegetical practice and rabbinic tradition (on which see esp. Handelman 1982). 14. Caputo 1997b: 81. Cf. Caputo's subsequent comment, which comes close to remembering the distance between the biblical archive and the Levinasian:' So the step beyond, lepas au-dela, is not a step that I take to the other but the step of the other at

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Likewise Heschel is a central voice for Caputo on behalf of prophetic passion as radically opposed to the Hellenic or ontotheological idea of God (1997b: 335-36). For Caputo, as for a number of other philosophers engaged in discourses around religion and postmodernism, the biblical archive is being explored with an eye to opening up a new kind of lived space. They are bringing out materials useful for breaking up tired old discourses on religion as morality in hopes of producing a new social space—a new 'human geography', to use Edward W. Soja's phrase, opening it up to a radically unpresentable other justice beyond justice, 'a space of radical openness, a site of resistance and struggle.. .where ily a toujours I'Autre'.15 The risk in opening the biblical archive in this way, with this kind of an eye, is that one can easily deny what else lies there, namely a justice that demands an eye for an eye, and, worse still, a justice that works to annihilate otherness in the name of order and oneness. One should open the biblical archive just as carefully and just as provocatively as one opens the Derridean archive, because it is the only way to remember the distance between the archive as trace and the arche as mythic origin—to keep alive the project of a hauntology against what we might call, following Derrida again, an 'archontology', which is common among biblical fundamentalists of all kinds.16 When one opens an archive, reading closely and self-critically, the distance between origin and trace opens up as well. Indeed, as I have suggested, when one opens biblical archives, one finds no origin or ground, but multiple traces, including the traces of others who have been written out, abjected, erased (but never entirely), specters of those who have been murdered in the name of justice. And also traces, perhaps, of a wholly other brushing against the margin of the page, rustling in the spaces between the letters, opening toward something radically beyond. But here again, this rustling, like Derrida's second laugh in 'Ulysses Gramophone', is what might emerge in the breach, at the particular point of rupture, in reading Elijah against Elijah, or Amos against Amos, or John my door, the knock that solicits my welcoming response (I think it is Elijah, or at least Levinas knocking).' 15. Soja 1999:276. Like nearly every other biblical scholar who has come lately to studies in the production of space, I am indebted for this reference, along with much invaluable prodding, to James W. Flanagan. 16. See Derrida's discussion on the archontic in Derrida (1995: esp. 10-11); and Caputo's excellent discussion of that work (1997b: 264-80).

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against John. It is what might emerge in the longing, out of joint, in the desert, for a moment of prophetic failure, that is, a failure of the prophetic visionary to present justice, a failure of vision, an unveiling that is an opening to blindness.

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Part II SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTS

RETHINKING THE ORIGINS OF ANCIENT ISRAEL Norman K. Gottwald

Most aspects of Hebrew Bible studies are currently unsettled and in great flux, and this is especially true of the various attempts to reconstruct the origins of ancient Israel. I want to take note of the developments that have contributed to the present uncertainty and offer a tentative outline of what I think a convincing hypothesis about Israelite origins will have to take into account and how it is likely to differ from existing hypotheses.1 The biblical text pictures a patriarchal family in the line of AbrahamIsaac-Jacob coming from Mesopotamia to Canaan, seeking refuge from famine in Egypt, and emerging from that land as a fully formed 12-tribe entity that goes on to conquer Canaan and divide the land among the tribes. A period of virtual anarchy follows under the judges before the monarchy restores 'law and order'. The impossibility of treating this scenario as straightforward history is accepted by the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars. Three Principal Origin Hypotheses Until about 20 years ago, there were two prevailing ways of assessing this account for its historical validity. One approach inclined toward acceptance of the main features of the biblical story, emphasizing an initial unified conquest followed by mopping up operations extending over the period of the judges. It claimed corroboration for this view in archaeological discoveries of destroyed Palestinian cities. The other approach believed that the biblical account of a unified Israel under Moses and Joshua was a late literary fiction and that the Israelite emergence in Canaan was a gradual settlement process by semi-nomads, completed only in the time of David, concerning which archaeology contributed little understanding. 1. This is a revision of the lecture delivered to graduate and faculty seminars at the University of California Irvine and the University of California San Diego, spring 1999.

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A third view, the so-called peasant revolt or retribalization model, launched a new stage in the discussion. While differing in their views of the process of Israelite origins, both the conquest and settlement hypotheses had assumed that Israelites were from the first ethnically distinguishable from the resident Canaanites. They also assumed that the Israelites entered Canaan as semi-nomads. This meant that Israel was ethnically, socioeconomically and culturally distinguishable from the Canaanites, as well as religiously. In contrast, the revolt hypothesis argued that Israel was an indigenous Canaanite phenomenon primarily composed of highland peasants, who developed a socioeconomic, cultural and religious unity in the course of their struggle to be independent of city-state control. Israel in Canaan may have received an impetus and catalyst toward religious unity when a group of escaped slaves from Egypt joined them, but Israel already had a developing identity into which the so-called Moses group was merged. As for archaeology, the conquest hypothesis had focused on destroyed walled cities and the settlement hypothesis had largely dismissed archaeology as unable to throw light on a slow process of settlement by semi-nomads. The peasant revolt hypothesis took the evidence of destroyed cities as ambiguous and inconclusive and preferred to favor the potential value of surveying and excavating the small village settlements that it understood to be the main site of the Israelite culture. Furthermore, for both the conquest and settlement models, Israel was primarily distinguishable by its religious beliefs and practices in devotion to the deity Yahweh seen as a god of history over against the nature religion of Canaan. Advocates of conquest saw this Yahwistic faith as derived from Moses. Advocates of semi-nomadic settlement saw Yahwism as emergent in Canaan but soon coming to form the basis of an Israelite inter-tribal league. While recognizing some affinities of Yahwism with Canaanite religion, both models stressed the uniqueness of Israel's faith as the virtual sui generis foundation of Israelite identity. The revolt and retribalization model, while recognizing the significance of religion in early Israel, emphasized its close connection with social, economic and political conditions. It saw religion and society interacting with one another, with Yahwism proving attractive as an ideology of agrarian independence from oppressive rule by Canaanite city-states. The divide between Israelite and Canaanite was not primarily ethnic but cultural, social and political, which in turn found ideological expression in devotion to Yahweh as the Liberator deity. The coexistence of three rather than two models of Israelite origins introduced complexity and stimulation to the discussion comparable to the

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difference between dyadic and triadic relations involving individuals. It served to generate further hypotheses favoring processes of internal nomadism or symbiosis and highland transformation. The effect was to decenter the controversy to the extent that no single one of the rival views was able to command majority allegiance. Each hypothesis seemed strong on some points and weak on others. The points of vulnerability and uncertainty in all views tended to blur the lines between hypotheses, and the advocates of any one general hypothesis frequently held differing views on many details. Furthermore, the explosion of field archaeology in examining small settlement sites throughout the hill country came to play an influential role in the formulation and reformulation of hypotheses. In addition, the proliferation of new literary methods in studying the biblical text and a tendency to date biblical sources later than once thought forced a reevaluation of the textual grounds for proposing any reconstruction of Israelite origins. Indeed, a fair number of scholars now entertain serious doubt that we know anything substantial about Israelite origins. The Current Impasse in Origin Studies So where do we stand today? Obviously, one cannot speak at all of a comprehensive consensus, but there are pivotal issues around which the discussion turns, and we can discern some trends in the debate that augur new understandings. I shall first briefly review the present status of the hypotheses and then indicate some of the developments in biblical studies that condition all efforts to fashion a more convincing account of earliest Israel. Finally, I shall note the essential criteria for any viable origins hypothesis and sketch the outlines of my present thinking on the subject. 1. The conquest hypothesis by a united Israel no longer commands support, since the archaeological and textual claims for it seem less and less convincing to a vast majority of scholars. Nonetheless, the military dimension of Israelite origins remains an open question, as does the possibility of some scaled-down historical element underlying the Moses traditions that does not depend upon the grandiose exodus and wilderness accounts. 2. The settlement hypothesis, while not so grievously invalidated as the total conquest hypothesis, is problematic in its claim that the first Israelites were separate bands of semi-nomads who eventually coalesced in an agrarian inter-tribal league based on religious affiliation similar to the Greek amphictyony. Early Israel looks overwhelmingly agrarian with a pastoral component, and the existence of a tightly knit tribal league based

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largely on religion is hard to sustain from the texts. Nonetheless, the precise place of semi-nomadism in Israelite origins remains an open question, as does the issue of what it was that provided a sense of common consciousness among these people who lacked state organization. 3. The peasant revolt or retribalization hypothesis appears to many to lack textual support and to assume a revolutionary peasant consciousness otherwise undemonstrated in ancient times. Its claim that Israel was indigenous to Canaan, composed of a sector of Canaanite peoples who developed a distinctive culture and religion, has found greater favor than its hypothesis of a peasant uprising. Its stress on agrarian village life has spurred field archaeology to explore rural sites, and its focus on social, economic and political conditions has influenced most thinking about Israelite origins but without any conclusive results. 4. More recent hypotheses try to work around or repair the weaknesses in the conquest, settlement and social revolution hypotheses. Internal nomadism emphasizes that Israelite semi-nomads had been in the land for a long time in extensive symbiosis with the sedentary population prior to settling down. Indeed, one version has it that centuries earlier the forerunners of Israel had been settled in Canaan, then turned nomadic when central authority deteriorated, and finally resettled at the beginning of the Iron Age to form Israel. Highland transformation theories stress the unique blend of frontier conditions in the highlands, where, with the loosening of city-state authority and a population decline, there was opportunity for newcomers from other parts of Canaan to develop independent agrarian life up to the point that over-population and the revival of trade led to a breakdown of the tribal order and the introduction of monarchy, which marked the closing of the frontier. Most of these hypotheses are influenced by the centuries-long time perspective favored by the French Annales School. None of these proposals has had much to say about the role of religion in Israelite origins, and they have made minimal reference to biblical texts. Nor is it always clear if or how they differ from the settlement and social revolutionary hypotheses on particular points. Developments in Biblical Studies that Impact Origin Studies As for the broader developments that have profoundly impacted efforts to reconstruct Israelite origins, the following are critical. 1. The archaeological information for Iron I has increased dramatically in recent decades, revealing a significant increase of small self-sufficient rural settlements in the hill country with an agrarian-pastoral mix but with

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almost no public buildings or certain religious installations, and a marked dearth of inscriptional material. One estimate is that in the two hundred years before the monarchy, population in the Cis-Jordan highlands may have doubled from about 20,000 to 40,000. Beyond dealing a virtual death blow to the total conquest theory, it cannot be said that these rich finds argue conclusively for any one of the other origin hypotheses. Whether the nature of the material remains and the domestic layout of the settlements argues for or against semi-nomadic origins is highly disputed, but probably a majority find that the cultural continuity between these Israelite settlements and their predecessors in the highlands and contemporaries in the lowlands argues against semi-nomadic origins. Also, since religion per se is so little attested in the finds, they give us little to go on, except perhaps to confirm what was already suspected, namely that the religion was primarily celebrated and transmitted orally and without an elaborate cult. With all that said, the archaeological finds compel rethinking of every hypothesis since we now have a much fuller picture of the material base of earliest Israel than was available when the three 'classical' hypotheses were developed, even though it does not touch directly on many of our questions. 2. In contrast to archaeology, which has increased our knowledge, textual studies have developed in such a way as to unsettle the uses of the biblical text for historical reconstruction in two important ways. a. First, there is the matter of the dating of the sources. Several influential studies have relocated the J and E sources to the exile or later, and even the Deuteronomistic History, which includes Joshua and Judges (our main textual sources on Israelite origins), has been placed in the Persian or Hellenistic period. In itself, the later dating is not so unsettling, since, even on older views, decades and centuries separated the component elements of a source from its final composition. In principle, the need to evaluate the age of diverse elements in a composite source is no different than it has always been. What is different is the stress on the virtual composition of the entire Hebrew Bible in Persian or even Hellenistic times as an aspect of the exilic restoration of Yehud. On this view, the newly constructed religious identity of postexilic Judaism created a literature that purports to tell of Israel's preexilic history but cannot be trusted to do so. Whereas, for example, we had been accustomed to assessing the extent to which Josiah's militarism and religious reforms have shaped the accounts in Joshua and Judges, we are now encouraged to imagine that the situation of return and restoration after exile has skewed, or even fabricated, both

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the biblical portrait of Josiah and the narratives of Joshua and Judges. Thus, the old historical-critical issue of how much historical information the history-like stories in the early biblical books actually give us has been thrown into deeper confusion and doubt. While many scholars continue to see authentic memories of premonarchic Israel in the biblical text, to be maximally persuasive in their claims they must now show cause for thinking so. It may not be wide of the mark to say that the burden of proof has shifted from the obligation to show why certain elements of early biblical history are unreliable to the obligation to show why any elements of early biblical history are in some manner authentic, even if that authenticity consists of evoking a social historical world that predates later Israelite experience. b. The second aspect of textual studies that reinforces uncertainty about using biblical sources for historical reconstruction moves along a different front in that it is synchronic in its approach rather than diachronic. The explosion of new literary methods has shown that texts are susceptible to a wide variety of readings, that there is not a single stable reading from which all other readings can be judged inadmissible. A reading can be assessed by its adherence to a particular method, but an agreed basis for adjudicating between methods does not exist. Strictly speaking, this may seem to have no bearing on historical reconstructions, since the great majority of newer literary studies make little of the dating or historical reliability of the text. But in fact it does have a bearing. First, because a lot of energy that once went into older source critical and historical issues now goes into synchronic textual studies, which can be interpreted to mean that the history in which these texts emerged does not matter. Second, that texts are so polyvalent, that they can be read profitably in a number of ways, further disquiets our use of sources that we already know are problematic bearers of historical data. In my judgment we are pushed toward a reevaluation of what we mean by history and history writing, which in biblical circles have generally been conceived from a positivist mindset. Suppose, however, that the writing of history is a significantly imaginative act that is itself a social and literary phenomenon reflecting not only on names and dates and kings and battles, but upon the social and cultural processes of community-formation and self-imaging. Granting that they do not give us documentary history, can these deliberately 'a-historical' literary readings of Joshua and Judges tell us something about the lifeworld of their traditionists? Can the synchronic and diachronic readings of texts enhance one another? Do they

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converge? Can they be synthesized? There is no easy or obvious solution to this puzzlement. Nevertheless, I do not see how we can avoid circling back to a basic diachronic question: Do these new literary readings show us anything about the lifeworld of preexilic and premonarchic Israelites or only about the lifeworld of Persian age Jews? 3. The study of the religion of ancient Israel has undergone a similarly radical new development. There is a very strong trend to locate the emergence of exclusive monotheism in Persian Yehud. Older notions that monotheism began with Moses or with the prophets are now widely dismissed. This is because both archaeological and textual studies have exposed beliefs and practices in preexilic Yahwism that were later ruled out of bounds in the developed monotheism of the restoration: ancestor veneration, necromancy, divination, icons, such as the bronze serpent, fertility rites at local sanctuaries, and even a consort of Yahweh. These religious features once thought of as thoroughly Canaanite are now widely understood as having been accepted among many if not all Yahwists in preexilic times. In short, the preexilic cult of Yahweh was not as standardized as we formerly thought. It emerged only slowly in convergence with and differentiation from other cults to become the all-embracing monotheism of late biblical times. This means that one of the touchstones of the three 'classical' hypotheses about Israelite origins, namely that a strong comprehensive Yahwistic cult unified the people from early times, is highly vulnerable. We can no longer easily take for granted what premonarchic Yahwism was like or how pervasively and with what conviction it was adhered to. 4. Finally, the foregoing trends in literary, historical and religious studies of ancient Israel have conspired to force the issue of the interaction between frames of meaning within texts and frames of meaning within the interpreters of texts. Ideological criticism, for instance, underscores and systematizes what has long been recognized, namely that whatever authentic historical memories there may be in Joshua and Judges, they are selected, grouped and commented upon within much later interpretive frames. Ideological criticism identifies layered and inserted frames of meaning often signaled by seams or fissures in the text that reflect social contradictions in the world of the traditionists. These layers and insertions, once treated primarily as a source or redaction problem, are now seen to attest to unresolved social and political conflicts among the collectors/redactors. More startling still, ideological criticism suggests that the frames of meaning we see in the text are closely connected with the frames of meaning we bring to

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texts. We see some things more readily in the text because we are predisposed to see them. For some interpreters, this admission of ideology is thought to undermine the very possibility of any stable hermeneutics. Others, however, see it as a call to interpretive humility, requiring greater care in entertaining our interpretations and more sustained discourse among those who favor diverse frames of meaning. One form that this ideological disquiet takes is over the question of how much it matters to present interpreters and interpreting communities whether Israel originated in one or another way. What is at stake in the choice among hypotheses? For example, a triumphalist Jewish or Christian frame of meaning may be closely wedded to the need for a reading of Israelite beginnings that leads on smoothly to established Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices. Such a reading may not be attentive to how different earliest Israel was from its successors or even how contradictory it may have been of assumptions long held about it. On the other hand, an anti-triumphalist frame of meaning, which could be either religious or secular, may be more open to differentiating earliest Israel from later Judaism and Christianity because it allows for radical change and development in religious views and does not require support for its own views on religion from biblical texts. Such a reading, however, if excessively iconoclastic or skeptical, may so stress discontinuity that it misses the seeds or anticipations of later religious developments in the early period. There does not appear to be any rule of thumb, other than robust criticism of self and others, to make the allowances and corrections in our interpretations necessitated by a consciousness of the role of ideology in all interpretation. Fundamental Criteria for a Viable Hypothesis of Israelite Origins In the light of all these uncertainties and creative new possibilities in biblical studies, what criteria would a viable hypothesis about Israelite origins have to satisfy? In my view, there are six fundamental criteria. 1. A viable hypothesis has to take full account of the archaeological data. Since archaeologists themselves disagree in greater or lesser degrees about the bearing of their data on Israelite origins, this obligation gives considerable latitude of interpretation. The point is that any hypothesis must specify how it reads the archaeological record and how it integrates that reading into a larger reconstruction. This task includes extrabiblical inscriptional material, such as the Israel stela of Merneptah and the Amarna tablets. Among other things, the relatively small scale of earliest Israel, involving only some tens of thousands of widely scattered people, must be

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recognized, and close attention must be given to the environmental factors that shaped Israel's early development, especially the constraints of marginal rainfall agriculture. 2. A viable hypothesis has to establish how it is using particular biblical texts in its reconstruction. We may, I think, profitably posit a continuum or spectrum along which historical data are distributed, with one pole consisting of information about specific persons, places and events in a spatial and temporal framework (admittedly sparse for the premonarchic era); and the other pole consisting of information about social and cultural structures and processes with minimal or no space-time contextualization (social world data commonly dismissed from premonarchic studies). A well-constructed hypothesis will show cause for how it distributes the textual data along this continuum. 3. As a critical aspect of source evaluation, it will be necessary in particular to give reasons for believing that textual information compiled or created in exilic or postexilic times gives historical data of a certain sort for premonarchic times. This is perhaps the greatest challenge but absolutely necessary because, without this secure foundation, the synthesized hypothesis will be inadequately based. It may be an appealing 'hunch', possibly useful in heuristic terms, but it will be vulnerable to textual counterarguments, which it is going to have to face in any case, however well it is constructed. 4. A viable hypothesis will need to grapple with how to draw on synchronic literary readings as sources of historical information in the broad sense. This is very uncharted territory. If, for example, Mieke Bal's readings of Judges 4 and 5 (1988) are convincing in exposing the problematic of whether it is men or women who are going to get the glory for defeating Sisera, does this say anything about gender roles and relations in premonarchic Israel? An extension of this approach would be to ask if some of the primary organizing themes of the Pentateuch, along with their incorporated narratives, such as Robert Carroll (1977) has proposed for understanding the reported conflicts in the wilderness traditions, regardless of the date of their present formulation, may encode the social conflicts of premonarchic Israelites? This straggle with synchronic, possibly symbolic, readings of texts will open toward a reconceptualizing of history-writing as more imaginative, literary, social and cultural than has been the norm in most biblical historiography to date. 5. A viable hypothesis will need to take account of our present perception of a very slow growth of Yahwism toward its eventual postexilic

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exclusive monotheist form. If one wants to argue that the cult of Yahweh was a measurable factor in premonarchic Israel, one needs to be careful not to naively retroject later religious understandings into earlier periods, and, in particular, not to assume that ideas and practices judged 'heterodox' by late traditionists were necessarily so regarded in the premonarchic era. In such terms, some of the harshly judged religious practices recounted in Judges may not have fallen outside acceptable Yahwistic behavior at the time and thus need not imply a blatant capitulation to Canaanite practices. 6. A viable hypothesis must take the measure of ideology in the texts and in the person or community formulating the hypothesis. Identifying the ideological layering and insertions in texts is in itself a demanding enough task, but in the end probably easier to identify than to grapple with the ideological ensembles that the hypothesizer favors or opposes. Bringing these motivations in ourselves and others to light is not to prove anything about which ideas are correct, but only to bring them onto the table for scrutiny. It has been customary to charge others with ideology while exempting oneself, but this will no longer do. Advocates of the conquest hypothesis have been thought to operate with the notion of early Israel as an incipient nation-state. Advocates of the settlement hypothesis have been thought under the sway of a romanticized notion of semi-nomadic life. Advocates of the revolt hypothesis have been seen as romanticizing social revolution and idealizing egalitarian Israel. Moreover, advocates of all these hypotheses may now be seen as overstating Israel's early religion as a conscious or unconscious retrojection of later Jewish or Christian beliefs. This does not mean that strong resolute readings of Israelite origins cannot or should not be proposed. What it does mean is that they will be most persuasive if they are not only well-constructed but self-conscious about the ideology or ideologies that move the hypothesizers. Outlines of a Viable Hypothesis of Israelite Origins Very briefly, the Israelite origins I presently visualize go something like this. A primarily agrarian population in the Canaanite highlands, joined by some semi-nomadic pastoralists, mercenaries, brigands, artisans and priests, slowly developed a viable economy and social order over decades of time. The decline of adjacent city-states combined with their own intention to be free of tributary controls enabled them to defend their agrarian living space and to develop a culture that put family and clan obligations at the center of their concerns. The social organization was loosely coordinated self-rule

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with extended ties among the various smaller and larger segments for particular purposes. Cooperation was necessary for economic viability and military self-defense. However, the inertia toward disunity was powerful, and there were serious differences and open conflicts among these groups. A variety of religious cults were practiced alongside the Yahweh cult, which itself incorporated ideological and ritual aspects of rival cults. The attraction of the Yahweh cult was that it offered a paradigm for unity among groups of people who in isolation could not adequately prosper and defend themselves. The cult of Yahweh accordingly stressed both human and agricultural fertility and deliverance from and protection against political oppression. The Yahweh cult, however, was not categorically unlike other cults in any formal particulars that we can determine with certainty. Its distinction apparently consisted in the way its elements combined to dovetail with the urgent needs of these highlanders for joint action to secure livelihood, internal order and protection against external political dominion. The aspects of any viable reconstruction that remain especially problematic in my view are twofold, and it is these issues that should command much more attention than they have received. 1. How are we to evaluate the exodus-wilderness-conquest traditions? Do they attest to an actual movement of refugees from Egypt into Canaan to become part of the Israelite movement? If they do not, as most would concur, do they nonetheless in some way attest to premonarchic life conditions? For example, does Moses yield the portrait of a bicultural leader of the sort who played a role in organizing and leading the peasants in the Canaanite highlands? Do the themes of deliverance from Egypt, struggles in the wilderness, and covenant with Yahweh project experiences of Israelites in the land into a narrative past that serves as a foundation myth or master metaphor for the nascent Israelite movement? And did this process begin already in premonarchic times, even if on a smaller scale than Noth (1930) hypothesized in his reconstruction of the Pentateuchal traditions? 2. What sort of linkages existed among the loosely coordinated subdivisions of Israelite society? If the case for an all-Israelite amphictyony as envisioned by Noth is unconvincing, and if Yahwism was a struggling cult that had to win its way to ascendency, what structures united the separate social units? Was there an inter-tribal council of elders? Were occasional military leaders enough to keep the groups in touch with one another? Were there strong men in particular tribes who exercised influence and authority over other tribes, indicated perhaps by the so-called minor judges? Was there a core of Yahweh adherents, such as the Levites, spread

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throughout the tribes who maintained communication and fostered united action in vital communal matters? Did gatherings for festival, covenant renewal and warfare encourage exchange of social and economic information and help over time to foster a wider Israelite identity? This issue of the level and extent of organizational linkages among groups is closely connected to the environmental locus of earliest Israel in the highlands of Samaria, Gilead and Galilee, regions with a mix of broadly similar agrarian-pastoral settings and decentralized political conditions. Given very similar self-interests among the segments, it might not have taken much inter-tribal organization to meet the most urgent needs for cooperation. In other words, there are other possible forms of cooperation and even formal confederation than the monolithic amphictyony envisioned by Noth. To my mind, the key to going forward lies in a fresh assessment of the individual traditions in order to establish working criteria for marking the features in Joshua-Judges and earlier books that are not likely to have been fabricated in later times. In this project, a major resource will be the comparative study of other prestate societies taken as living wholes rather than ransacked for out-of-context 'parallels'. As I read these traditions, there are all sorts of details in language and in plot, stamped with local color and at odds with the primary thrust of the overall narrative design. It is difficult to believe that such 'undigested' features would have been of sufficient interest or importance to have been invented after the tribal era had passed away. With so great an emphasis on religious unity and purity after the exile, what would have been the point to making up stories about Rahab and the Gibeonites, about partial conquests by individual tribes, about Abimelech who aspired to be king in Shechem and Manasseh, about tribal rivalries and conflicts, and about the heterodox religious practices reported in Judges? To be sure, once the stories existed, passed down in whatever form, it is understandable that the later Yahwistic monotheists might include them as cautionary tales to explain why the exile happened and why such beliefs and behaviors must be avoided in the future. But there remain so many idiosyncratic details in these traditions, unsystematized except as editors have put a 'spin' on them. Reading like off-handed 'throwaway lines' in a primary script, many of these traditions appear to be old threads taken over for the tapesUy eventually woven on exilic and postexilic looms. To evoke the premonarchic scenarios to which these old traditions belong is the challenge facing anyone who today aspires to offer a hypothesis of Israelite origins that will command attention as more than a clever piece of guesswork.

'WHERE ANGELS FEAR TOTREAD. ..':

AN ACCOUNT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

John M. Halligan

Let me issue a disclaimer at the outset that this is not a comprehensive account of the origins and development of the social-scientific approach to the study of the biblical world. A reliable narrative of the origins may be found in the essays of Frank S. Frick, James W. Flanagan, Stephen L. Cook and Ronald A. Simkins in volume 87 ofSemeia (1999).1 From 1974 to 1987 In a larger view the work of the movement would have to embrace several groups active during this period. A thumbnail sketch of the movement would start with Frank S. Frick and Norman K. Gottwald convening the Consultation on the Social World of Ancient Israel (1974-75) and then forming the Social World of Ancient Israel Group (1976-81). The Sociology of the Ancient Monarchy Seminar (1982-87), which flowed from the Group, was chaired by Frick and James W. Flanagan. Contemporaneous with the Group and the Seminar, Frick launched the Social Roles of Prophecy in Israel Group (1981-85). From 1988 to 2006 Building on a proposal made at the last meeting of the Sociology of the Ancient Monarchy Seminar by Philip R. Davies, he and John M. Halligan

1. These essays reflect the development of the discipline of social world studies over the past 25 years. Semeia 87 is a volume of essays selected from scholars and papers given in the Social Sciences and the Interpretation of Hebrew Scripture Section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

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initiated the Consultation on the Sociology of the Second Temple (198889), followed by the Sociology of the Second Temple Period Group (1990-94) and culminating in the Sociology of the Literature of the Second Temple Period Group (1995-99). After a one-year hiatus Halligan returned to co-chair with Alice W. Hunt the Social-Scientific Studies of the Second Temple Period Section (2001-2006). Concurrent with these developments, Frick, Don C. Benjamin and Victor H. Matthews began the long-running Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures Section (1990-). Meanwhile, Flanagan and JoAnn Hackett established the Constructs of Ancient History and Religion Consultation (1988-89) to pursue the 'meaning and interpretation in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities...especially where their respective theories and diverse methods are combined in innovative biblical, archeological, and religious projects'. This became the Constructs of Ancient History and Religion Group (1990-94) (later co-chaired with Paula M. McNutt). This evolved into the Constructs of the Social and Cultural Worlds of Antiquity Group (1995-99). More recently, Flanagan teamed with Jon L. Berquist to chair the sequel Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar (2000-2004). On the New Testament Side Pioneers Leander Keck and Wayne Meeks were conducting discussions of the Social World of Early Christianity by the mid 1970s. Quite independent of what was occurring in research on the social world of Ancient Israel, such scholars as Bruce Malina, John Elliott, Jerome Neyrey, Richard Rohrbaugh and John Pilch brought a host of interested parties together in the Social Sciences and the New Testament Interpretation Section, later passing into the Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament Section. The group, studying the social history of early Christianity and begun in 1983, changed in 1990 to the Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism and continues today. The work of these New Testament scholars should not be excluded from a comprehensive review of the development of the social-scientific movement in biblical studies, but it must be a narrative separate from the present one. These groups, both Old and New Testament, did not grow organically as this thumbnail sketch may infer. They grew around the particular interests of a select number of scholars as reflected in the research undertaken and shared at the Annual Meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. In par-

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ticular, the efforts of Frick and Flanagan stand out for direction and organization in the early years, and Davies and Halligan took the movement on one path, while Flanagan, Hackett, and McNutt drew it in another. This account will take responsibility only for the events that occurred within the Sociology of the Second Temple Period Group. The Semeia 87 volume captures the gist of what kinds of studies have been presented in the Social Sciences and the Interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures Section. The narrative covering what transpired in the Constructs Groups has yet to be penned. Also excluded is all of the splendid work of the various New Testament groups. Indeed, other sections, groups and a host of individual papers have addressed biblical topics from the social-scientific approach in an increasing number as the years have passed, but are too numerous to be reviewed here. Sociology of the Second Temple Period Group At the final meeting of the Sociology of the Monarchy Seminar in Boston, 1987, Philip Davies made an oblique proposal in his paper, 'Taking up Social Scientific Investigations of the Second Temple Period', to continue the investigation on into the Second Temple Period. In Chicago in 1988, the first meeting of the new consultation, Sociology of the Second Temple Period, was convened by Davies with a full slate of papers (see Davies 1991). In 1989 John Halligan joined Davies as co-chair in Anaheim, and, in 1990 the Steering Committee determined that there was sufficient strength to move in 1990 to the status of a working group for the next five years. A schema of five periods of the Second Temple was adopted as the outline: Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hasmonaean and Roman. The group was renewed by the Society of Biblical Literature as the Sociology of the Literature of the Second Temple Period, and four types of literature were investigated: legal, sapiential, prophetic and historiographical. A fifth year was inserted to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the literature of Qumran, a topic well within the purview of the group. In all, there were 12 consecutive working years using the social-scientific methods to address the issues of these periods and literatures. In his preface to the first volume of Second Temple Studies. I. Persian Period (1991), which contains the papers given in Chicago and Anaheim, 1988-89, Davies acknowledged his indebtedness to James Flanagan, Carol Meyers and Joseph Blenkinsopp for their support in launching the new Consultation. He outlined four reasons for doing so:

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1) to redefine the meaning of the term 'biblical period' to denote that time during which the writings styled 'biblical' were ratified as such, 2) to replace history with sociology, viz., to take seriously the assumption that the subject of the literature is man as a social being, thus always in a social system, with an ecology, economics, politics, and ideology, 3) to use the phenomenon of the Temple as a centralizing social agent to span ethnic, religious, economic, and ideological factors, and 4) however philosophically vulnerable to focus on a social reality resident in the biblical text and discoverable in its historical context (Davies 1991: 1).

The Chairs were aware from the outset that objections might be raised regarding methods, selection of data and competence of non-experts to speak to traditional topics from a social-scientific view. They encouraged the tension and ambiguity and believed the Group would be the forum for constructive discussion. They took no position on what sociology was. They favored neither the European nor American approaches. They asked only that the contributors take seriously in their study a social-scientific approach, whether it be questioning history writing, assumptions concerning economics, politics of religion or kinship, relevance of archaeological data, applications of cultural anthropology or the social meaning of architecture. Although they had a framework for series of studies they had no preconceived idea concerning what should be brought to the table. In retrospect this might not have been the tidiest of plans. The Group did not seek to be symbiotically joined to the previous Sociologies, nor espouse a particular social model, nor a particular -ism. The papers did not have to be agreeable ideologically to chairs. Interest in the Second Temple Period flourished in the International Meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature from 1990 onward with no direction from the Sociology of the Second Temple Period Group.2 The Consultation years focused on Achemenid Yehud, noting how material culture information highlighted resettlement patterns, how exilic experience forged new identity bonds that would carry into new social settings, and how the biblical text was suspect in its inference that the land of Yehud was empty, waiting to be filled by the returnees. The social reality of the rebuilt temple and its new power elite were examined, and the prophetic texts probing this brought forward (an analysis of the several papers given may be found in Davies 1991).3 2. Volume II of Second Temple Studies: Persian Period (Eskenazi and Richards 1994) contains papers from the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Rome, 1992. 3. See the papers of Hoglund, Smith, Carroll, and the responses.by Jobling and

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Each of the next five years addressed an historical era. The first gave a series of status reports: evidence for the physical Second Temple, the notion of space as power within the Persian Yehudian city, and a review of archaeological data. The second examined the concept and term 'Hellenization' for the process of acculturation in Yehud, and investigated the book of Daniel as a product of the colonization of Ptolemaic Yehud. The third year traced the social niche of the scribe, the education format for Hellenized Yehud, the conflicting ideologies surrounding the Temple, and the current archaeological data from the Seleucid era. In the fourth year the Hasmonaean period was examined from several angles: the Damascus Document as a document representing a community within a community at Qumran, the identity of the Samaritans, the relationships of the Hasmonaean rulers to the populace of Galilee, Jews and non-Jews. The fifth and final year concentrated on the impact of Herod on the economy and the prodigious building program during the Roman period. As one may see from such a diverse agenda, considerable latitude was exercised in approaches taken to the target studies. Thus it may be surmised that not every paper was a perfect study in the application of a social-scientific methodology, yet no study ignored the social context of the subject, text or event under scrutiny. Persian Period Although 1990 was the third consecutive year examining the Persian period, it did address fundamental issues not yet examined. In that the entire enterprise assumed the presence of the rebuilt temple by Zerubbabel, the preliminary question would be: What physical description, aside from the enigmatic one found in the text of Ezra 6.3 that it should be 60 cubits by 60 cubits (the third dimension is missing!) might be given? To Halligan's surprise, no ruins remain upon which a reconstruction might be made (Halligan 1990). Asher Kaufman's deduction that it was not at the locus of the current Dome of the Rock, but a short distance to the north, has convinced but a few. Neither text, nor tell, nor extra-biblical evidence yielded a reasonable description of the Second Temple. From a socialscientific view, was it possible to build a temple at the time the text indicates? The negative conclusion led to a series of studies, one more surprising than the previous (Halligan 1994, 1996). If this sacred prop was not there, could not have been there, what does one do with the text of Halligan. In Anaheim the papers were by Blenkinsopp and Petersen, with responses by Horsley and Bedford.

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Ezra-Nehemiah? Seen from the vantage of economics, social organization and political dependency, an age-old assumption had to be put aside and a new explanation devised. Taking inspiration from Michel Foucault, John Wright (1990) explored the meaning of space within the Iron II Israelite city. The gate was both an entrance and a point of departure. It was the civitas, the place of all significant civic activity. Within the gate stood the space known as the square. In early texts the square is public and fraught with danger, especially at night, and is sexual. In the Neo-Babylonian texts the square still has its dark side, is still a place of chaos because social control is tenuous. In Achemenid Judah the square is the space outside the temple where civic commerce is conducted. It is where the life of the city happens. Wright concludes that the square is where citizenship is exercised, social power stratified and legitimacy verified. Wright's detailed and programmatic analysis of the gate and the square in each period developed the picture of an evolving physical entity embodying new and powerful meanings for the social structure of Persian Yehud. Hoglund (1990) alerts his audience at the start that material culture study requires an explicit research design before one examines the archaeological data, for the stones do not speak for themselves. If one is to know the social design of Yehud, does one begin with an urban or a rural center? No reliable source, written or artefactual, exists for establishing the physical and social borders of Yehud. In fact what does emerge from surveys done by Kochavi in the Judean hill country is that unwalled farming communities increased by 63 per cent over the Iron II period and in the Ephraimite hill country new settlements increased by 58 per cent. Thus a decentralized social structure would be more the conclusion than a Jerusalem-centered urban one. Ptolemaic Period The phenomenon of Hellenization in the Ptolemaic period was explored by the historian Grabbe (1991). He reviewed the benchmark position of Hengel (following Bickerman) with the idea of setting the stage for the variations he would later suggest. Hellenization was a process that encompassed language, custom, religion, commerce, architecture, dress, government and literary and philosophical ideals. It was a centuries-long process, and therefore it may not have been the pervasive cultural imposition in the early stages, when the only citizens and the only elite were Greeks in the Alexandrian empire. In accord with Hengel, Grabbe believes that there

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was no significant difference between Palestinian Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism. The only aspect of Jewish life that could not be Hellenized without loss of identity was the religious. Thus Grabbe drew the conclusion that Ptolemaic Jews were open to the new cultural changes if these were a way of acceptance in the political and social domain. However, they resisted the cultural impositions in the area of religious life. Reid (1991) applied the epistemological model of Cornell West to the Ptolemaic colonial period, in particular, the book of Daniel. He selected the exceptionalist component of West's typology as best representing what is happening in Daniel. In a colonized world the exceptionalist community adheres to its native roots and stands above the dominant or colonizing culture. The educatable rulers appear early in Daniel and seem to represent Ptolemaic figures, while the intractable ones of Daniel 10-12 are Seleucid. This theme of sovereignty provides the broad umbrella for this theology of the colonized. While the exceptionalist model explains the sense of superiority the colonized Jew has, it is the revolutionalist model that provides a necessary eschatology. Reid characterizes the entire Second Temple Period as an era of colonization, and what may be said of colonization in Africa or America will have analogous terms in Judea. Seleucid Period

The Tiller and Horsley (1992) contribution on Ben Sira and the Sociology of the Second Temple is a concerted effort to uncover the social matrix of the sage's Judea of the Seleucid period. Earlier attempts to write a sociology of Hellenistic Judea, such as those of Tcherikover, Hengel and Rostovzeff, suffered from the weakness of projecting modern social constructs back into the past. Tiller and Horsley state: We are engaged in what is primarily a historical inquiry in which sociological models should be used to elucidate textual and historical particularity, and not to dissolve or obscure it. We are drawing primarily on evidence provided by Ben Sira and adding sociological inquiry to the usual philological, archaeological, literary, and historical investigations in an attempt to further our understanding of the social conflicts and events of Second Temple Judea (1992: 3-4).

They find indications in Ben Sira that his readers/audience were primarily fellow sages/scribes who would immediately benefit from the admonitions given. However, there are enough references to ruler/priests, the wealthy (in an unflattering vein), the skilled workers, physicians and merchants, the unskilled farm hands, slaves, transient freemen and generic poor so that one may distinguish classes by division of labor and power.

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They critique Gerhard Lenski's model of an agrarian society, concluding that, while his schema of ruler/governing class and subordinate peasantry does explain well the ancient Near Eastern scenario rather than the medieval European feudal model, or the Greek and Roman city-states paradigm, it does not account for the ideology/theology of the ruler/god as power source for social cohesion: We should reaffirm that historical sociology should be historical, attentive to developments, conflicts, shifts, etc. from time to time insofar as they may appear through the few windows provided by our limited literary and other sources (Tiller and Horsley 1992: 16).

With some care Tiller and Horsley illustrate from the literary text of Sirach that the author envisioned a temple-state governed by a high priest, surrounded by his brothers (ruling class) and joined by the 'whole congregation of Israel' (the peasantry). Thus the peasant farmers, free and slave, the skilled and unskilled workers, traders and merchants are all in the employ of the ruling aristocracy to produce goods and services in the name of God. By way of contemporary contrast, Tiller and Horsley review the Enochic Book of Watchers, which reveals a distancing from the concerns of Ben Sira, and his stable harmonious temple-state. The Enochic sages may have served a priestly party that (at least in the third and second centuries) unsuccessfully competed for influence and authority (Tiller and Horsley 1992: 28). The Enochic sages claim to receive their wisdom from cosmic sources and are beyond questioning. This is contested by Ben Sira, who relies on reason and tradition. These two positions may reflect two Jewish parties in conflict during the Seleucid period. In his essay 'Questions about Education', Doran (1992) focuses on the role of the gymnasium in Jewish education in Seleucid Jerusalem. If the viewpoint of the text of Maccabees regarding Jason is accepted, the problem seems to be one of hard-core Hellenization. Doran begins with a study of Jewish education according to Sirach: The one teacher we know of in pre-Hasmonaean Jerusalem is someone who maintains a strong interest in Jewish traditional literature but is not averse to including in his curriculum suitable literature from other traditions (39.4), nor would he discourage the study of foreign languages. In this, Sirach is not that different from what is going on in Rome at precisely the same time (Doran 1992: 6).

In contrast to Hengel and others whom Doran believes have accepted without evidence that the curriculum for the gymnasium found in Greece

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or Rome was also the same as the Jerusalem one, he advocates a moderate use of non-Jewish materials alongside traditional ones: Given the developing literary education curriculum among Jews in Alexandria as well as the attempts by Sirach to include Greek and other literature under the umbrella of education for young Jews and the work of Eupolemus, I would argue that a Roman rather than an Athenian model should be applied to Jerusalem. The literary education of wealthy young men would have remained an education in the language, laws and literature of Judea, their processions would be the festivals of the God of Jerusalem; alongside this, education in Greek language and rhetoric would have taken place. This would not preclude use of a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Doranl992: 11).

The crux of the problem is understanding the meaning and extent of the process of Hellenization. Doran argues that the education of young ambitious Jews aspiring for a place in the political and social life of the Seleucid world could accept the study of some things Greek—after all, the Hebrew Bible had been rendered in Greek at Alexandria—while retaining a study of Jewish texts. Jason built the gymnasium as a means of bringing his people closer to citizenship, which in turn carried much-coveted privileges. So the construction of the gymnasium was a means of securing stability in a buffer state and making it into a centre devoted to the Seleucid cause. Such an explanation of the building of the gymnasium says nothing about its curriculum in literature, and certainly does not require any change in ancestral religion, laws and constitution. It is the author of 2 Maccabees who has given it this spin. One does not therefore have to posit motives of hellenization, i.e. apostasy from Judaism or an enlightened reform of Judaism, to explain why a gymnasium was built in Jerusalem (Doran 1992: 14).

The Halligan study, 'Conflicting Ideologies Concerning the Second Temple' (1992), takes up the third component of the Group's quest: 'to use the phenomenon of the Temple as a centralizing social agent to span ethnic, religious, economic, and ideological factors'. The temptation is to chase after the ideologies, to seek a political or religious cause for the variants without paying heed to the underlying social structure that could support such diversity. In the Tiller and Horsley adaptation of Gerhard Lenski's agrarian society sociological model, they demonstrated that the scribe, while not a part of the ruling class, participated in its functions, and likewise, while not a member of the labor class, the plowmen and artisans, they were close enough to be sympathetic to their needs. It was the scribe's privilege to

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gather wisdom broadly, but guided by the covenantal traditions dear to the Aaronide priesthood and the law of Moses. Their own authority derived from both their employer's commissioning (something they were careful to protect as their instructions to their students indicate) and the content of what they taught. The scribe perpetuated the ideology of the hierocratic class, bearing the responsibility of governing the temple-state,4 maintaining the identity of its people and the welfare of all its faithful (Tiller and Horsley 1992:28-32). Sirach supported the Temple, its Aaronic priesthood and a wise ruler. Trouble enters when the Oniad line of high priests, commencing with the new rule of Alexander, takes control of the temple-state. Onias II withholds tax revenue from the Ptolemy Euergetes, so authority is transferred to Tobias, and the Tobiad family become the tax collectors for Egypt. Onias II is succeeded by Simon the Just, who manages to strike a deal with Seleucus IV to exempt the Temple from taxes. The political shift has been made from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids. Onias III quarrels with Simon the Benjaminite, temple director, over funds and to clear his name seeks Seleucus IV to clear his name. Before he can, Antiochus Epiphanes murders Seleucus IV and Onias is betrayed by his younger brother Jason for the position of high priest before Epiphanes. It is a Zadokite line from Onias II to Jason the high priest. Jason is betrayed by his envoy Menelaus, who secretly outbids him for the office of the high priest, although he is of no priestly lineage. Mattathias of the priestly line of Joarib rebels and leads an insurrection. He is followed by his son Judas the Hammerer, who captures Jerusalem and rededicates it after its desecration by Antiochus and Menelaus. Alcimus, of Aaronic descent but not priestly family, secures the support of the new king Demetrius for the position of high priest. At first supported by the Hasidim because he had a claim to priestly blood ties, he is rejected when he turns on the Hasidim and slaughters them. Meanwhile Jonathan, younger brother of Judas, continues the cause for independence and proclaims himself high priest, the first in the new line of Hasmonaean high priests. He is succeeded by his brother Simon, who is acclaimed the high priest by popular demand. 4. The term 'temple-state' is central to the Weinberg hypothesis that postexilic Yehud constituted a collectivity, a 'civic temple-community' (Burger-TempleGemeinde), which was a union of temple personnel with free landowners. At first this group stood opposed and distinct from the 'people of the land', but in time the latter came to be incorporated as citizens of the community. This thesis bears a resemblance to that of Lenski but it is quite different in the place of the religious factor, the centrality of the temple.

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The Sirach ideology would have an Aaronite as high priest-ruler faithful to the covenant of Moses but open to the advantages of the Greek way. The Oniads, a Zadokite line, shifted allegiances from Egypt to Syria and displayed support for a modified adaption of Greek culture. Onias IV fled Judea to Egypt to establish a temple at Leontopolis, while Jason and Menelaus fought for control. Menelaus had no claim to an authentic priestly line but did have the cunning to secure the office and pursue an aggressive policy of Hellenizing. His successor, Alcimus, did have some claim through his Aaronic line, but his brutal treatment of the religious supporters and his proactive Hellenizing put him at odds with the traditional Hasmonaean family of Mattathias and sons. The Hasmonaeans succeeded through force of arms in freeing Judea temporarily from Seleucid occupation and in seizing the high priest's position.5 Some degree of uncertainty arises from the multiplicity of temples during the period. The Jerusalem temple remains the central and prize cult locus for Judean society. Dissident families, such as the Tobiads, afforded refuge for Jason and may be responsible for the temple at Araq el-emir.6 Onias IV, unable to assume his hereditary position as high priest in Jerusalem repairs to Egypt and with the Ptolemies' support establishes a temple at Leontopolis. The Samaritans maintained a functioning temple on Mt Gerizim serviced by disaffected priests from Jerusalem, according to Josephus. But of what line of priests? There are remains of a temple at Lachish from this period. The temple at Elephantine may have been a precedent for this profusion of temples at a time when the ruling group could not wield sufficient authority to prevent other places of cult. In sum, if one accepts the Lenski model with the Horsley and Tiller modifications, one sees a Zadokite priestly family in place in Jerusalem during the quiet time of the Ptolemies, then a shift to allegiance with the Seleucids. However, the Seleucids pushed a more active program of acculturation that caused a division of leadership in the ruling family, the rift between Onias III and his brother Jason. The political figure of Menelaus inserts itself as ruler-high priest until replaced by the Aaronic candidate 5. 1 Mace. 2.1 derives the Hasmonaean priesthood not from Zadok (as one might expect on the conventional understanding of Sadducee origins) but from one Joarib. See also 1 Mace. 14.29. 6. Jason retreats to the Tobiad fortress of Hyrcanus in the Ammanitis for safety upon Menelaus's return as the new high priest. Hengel suggests that Jason may have functioned as the high priest at the temple at Araq el-emir, the site of the Tobiad cleruchy.

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Alcimus. Jason, Menelaus and Alcimus promote to varying degrees the Seleucid program of Hellenization, which was not accepted by other families in the ruling group. One such family, that of Mattathias, rose in rebellion during the days of Menelaus but only succeeded to the ruler-high priest position in the days of Jonathan Maccabee, followed by his brother Simon thus establishing the Hasmonaean priestly line as high priests. The process of Hellenization was thus a catalyst in the struggle for ascendancy in the Jewish ruling group during the Seleucid period. Kenneth G. Hoglund (1992) reviewed the evidence for the material culture of the Seleucid period and arrived at some salient conclusions. Settlement patterns pointed to a Seleucid emphasis on urbanization. This process took two forms: the expansion of existing indigenous cities and the founding of urban colonies with non-indigenous populations. While there has been no systematic study of the placement of these new urban centers, it appears that they are frequently situated along major roadways and secondary trade routes (Hoglund 1992: 5).

While some indefiniteness remains regarding the exact dates for the beginning and end of the Seleucid era, Hoglund posits 'from the final victory of Antiochus III at Paneion in 200 BCE to the overwhelming victories o Judas Maccabeus in 165 BCE'. During this time the movement of rural populations to cities would indicate an increased commercialization taking place in the urban areas. New settlements along roadways confirms this. Trade traffic invited the appearance of tolls for revenue generation. Beneficiaries of the new wealth would be 'a core of citizens committed to Hellenism was a Seleucid goal in most urban areas', a conclusion consistent with the ruling elite that the Lenski model spoke of but modified by Horsley and Tiller. Hoglund gives the Akra in Jerusalem as a 'demonstration of the allure of Hellenistic culture attracting to its precincts a well-off clientele'. Hasmonaean Period This period studies produced several papers treating the multiple forms of Judaism that appeared in this era: the sects at Qumran, and in the Galilee and Samaria. Davies (1993) examined the structures of Judaism that CD reflects—holiness, Torah, Temple, separation from non-Jews—that occurred in Palestine beginning only with the Persian period, and were always closely associated with the Temple. Hellenism is not the catalyst for the formation of the sect; rather it was internal tension within the Hasmonaean society. If the Temple was still a valid seat of Jewish holiness on

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par with the Torah, then the group, disaffected with the Temple group, separated from it but retained claim to the true observance of the Torah and thus was the 'true Israel'. Davies concludes that the origins of the sect are not outside Palestine, for example, Babylonian, but rather Palestinian. Why they separated from the group and other sects/factions, such as the Pharisees and Sadducees, which remained within the political system, is the subject of further study. It could be that a change in political circumstances, whereby different groups previously following their own cultic practices were obliged to conform, may have been implemented by the Hasmonaeans, with the restoration of political autonomy and control of the Temple cult (Davies 1993: 10). Lester L. Grabbe (1993) encountered difficulties in developing a sociology of the Samaritans during the Hasmonaean period. He notes: 1. The origins of the community and cult are still uncertain. 2. The ethnic diversity of Samaria is unknown. 3. It is not known precisely who is being referred to when the sources speak of 'Samaritans' and the like. 4. If or when major Samaritan/Jewish hostility arose is uncertain (Grabbe 1993: 17-19).

On the other hand, the process of Hellenization affected the Samaritans as much as it did the Judeans. The Temple-centered community at Mt Gerizim would have felt the same restrictions as the Temple-centered community in Jerusalem: They had much the same basic customs, with the main difference being the appropriate place for God's temple. They both had a Diaspora population. They both suffered religious suppression or persecution, the Samaritans suffering also at the hands of the Jews and possibly vice versa (Grabbe 1993: 19).

Although it is only speculation on Grabbe's part, he raises the issue of intermarriage between members of the upper classes of Samaria and Judea as an instance of socializing that was forbidden to the hoi polloi but enjoyed by the privileged. Richard A. Horsley (1993) continued his study of the social structure from Seleucid to Hasmonaean times in his paper, 'The Expansion of Hasmonaean Rule in Idumea and Galilee: Toward an Historical Sociology', utilizing the Lenski model. He situates the conflict in late Seleucid times to a conflict among ruling families in the Jerusalem power group. The Hasmonaean family of Jonathan and his brothers emerged in a moment of Seleucid weakness with a military force capable of winning strategic

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skirmishes at first, but not able to control Jerusalem effectively until the days of Simon. Thus it was not religious fervor that propelled the Hasmonaean faction to the forefront, but rather military force. Their relations with the Idumeans to the south were not characterized by proselytizing them, but by forming alliances. In time, the Herodian Idumean family would through intermarriage continue the dynasty of the Hasmonaeans. Horsley believed the Galileans were descendants of the peoples who long ago established themselves as members of the Mosaic covenant. They were not converted to Judaism as practiced by the Jerusalem party, but functioned under their traditional understanding of the laws of Moses. There was a ruling aristocracy in Idumea with which the Hasmonaeans interfaced, but no similar ruling group in Galilee, so the Hasmonaeans utilized the services of the Pharisees under Alexandra Salome to bring the 'laws of the Judeans' and the 'traditions of the elders' to Galilee to maintain their control over the populace. Thus Idumea was ethnically distinct from the Judeans but politically aligned. The Galileans as descendants of the tribes of Issachar, Zebulon and Naphthali had ancient ties with the southern tribes of Judah, if one accepts that David brought them together, but they did not align themselves politically with the Temple-state group from Jerusalem. Like the notoriously ambiguous term 'Hellenization', 'Judaism' in the Hasmonaean period cannot be accepted as an adequate designation for a social-religious phenomenon. James Pasto (1993) examines the rise of the Hasmonaeans not in the light of nineteenth- to twentieth-century sociology of knowledge, but in terms of current cultural anthropology. Thus the Hasmonaeans are not national and religious liberationists, but 'village strongmen' who seek to stop the southern flow of Seleucid influence.7 The Hasmonaeans do not 'convert' the Idumeans to Judaism but dominate them politically. They assimilate the Itureans of the Galilee because they share the custom of circumcision and incorporate them into the ancestral tribal traditions. Therefore the Hasmonaean rise is one of consolidation through the processes of 'village strongmen' (military force), acculturation (Idumeans)8

7. Pasto sees the Hasmonaeans acting as local warlords practicing guerilla tactics to seize and control villages in the absence of strong imperial presence. They may have begun as allies of the Oniad and Tobiad familes but shifted to a program of Torah and status-quo in contrast to the factions more accepting of the Greek ways (1993: 12-15). 8. Pasto defines acculturation in this manner: 'Acculturation is to be distinguished from assimilation in three ways. (1) Acculturation is a two-way process while assimila-

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and assimilation (Itureans). Pasto does not employ the Lenski model to explain the rise, although his analysis does not eschew it either. The Hasmonaeans were a rival family among others (Oniads, Tobiads) in the ruling group in late Seleucid times who gradually seized power in Palestine. Roman Period The centrality of the Second Temple is once again the focus of attention in Richardson's study, 'Herod's Temple Architecture, Its Innovations, Origins and Significance' (1994). Although at least 18 temples were built in the first centuries BCE and CE the Jerusalem temple stands out as a monument to the enigmatic Hasmonaean Herod. In particular Richardson draws certain conclusions from the physical layout of the Temple that indicate social innovations in Roman Judea. The new temple provided places for the ritually excluded, the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of the Women (children). This departure from tradition reflects the influence perhaps of the temple at Leontopolis, but also the more common admittance in Greek and Roman temples of foreigners and women. The various courts express the social and ritual differences that were accepted in Roman era Jerusalem. By combining the archaeological data with select texts, especially those more historically rooted rather than ideologically driven, he builds a case for Herod as a Hellenistic Jew, keen to demonstrate through his gift of monumental building that Jews were citizens contributing to the cultural richness of the empire. It did mean some compromises with traditional Jewish ways but he did it on such a scale that Jews were hard pressed to disagree. E.P. Sanders (1994) supplies the answer to what the financial impact of building the Second Temple of Herod was. It was good for Jerusalem and the kingdom because it provided employment for day laborers and artisans, and encouraged a vast number of pilgrims to go to the holy city, which in turn engendered increased trade. Herod spent lavishly to curry the favor of Antony and Cleopatra, and after Octavian's triumph at Actium Herod switches his gifts to Octavian and receives as his own the lands he paid rent on previously. He shrewdly managed his resources and his tion is unidirectional. (2) Acculturation does not require a change in values or reference group (though both may occur); assimilation requires value changes and a change in reference group. (3) Internal change and out-group acceptance are not required in acculturation; in assimilation they are. What both acculturation and assimilation share is that they are both a dynamic process rather than an event, and that they may both be treated on an individual or group level' (1993: 10).

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political opportunities to maximize his revenue. He did tax his people but on three occasions remitted a portion and then a third and a fourth of the annual tax levied. Sanders argues that the tax burden for the ordinary farmer was never greater than 15.2 per cent, at worst 20.4 per cent. The delegation that complained about Herod's taxation came from the monied class. Herod had large sums of cash on hand to use as gifts for political rewards, to carry the people in lean times, and to underwrite a mammoth building program in both Palestine and the Diaspora. At his death he bequeathed generous sums of cash to his sister Salome, Augustus and Augustus's wife Julia. The temple tax was an annual fee paid by every male Jew no matter where they resided in the empire. Thus the Temple was supported by revenue collected empire wide, not strictly from the backs of the farmers and artisans of Judea. Reflections If there were lessons learned during these years, two stand out: (1) the Lenski model made sense of a wide variety of data extending from late Persian to Herodian times, and (2) the process of Hellenization affected the fortunes of all whether it was those who embraced it or those who distrusted it. The appearance of Nehemiah and Ezra at the behest of locals and Persians may well signal the need for imperial support of a struggling native power group in Yehud. The Achaemenid authority structure created a flow chart from the crown to satrap to local appointees. The fortunes of the Persian-backed group in Jerusalem were not stable, but the instability did not create civil war. Grabbe draws attention to the fact that the acculturation process of Hellenization was a way for Ptolemaic Jews to acquire a position in the empire without sacrifice of their traditions. The ruling group, the Oniads of Zadokite color, had forged a working relationship with the non-intrusive Ptolemies. Reid would see on the one hand a native group resistant to the colonization (Hellenization) program, defiant against the dominant group whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish. The book of Daniel is a script for reading this tension. The Tiller and Horsley reading of the role of the sage in Seleucid era is the watershed study because it assigns a social place for the ruling priestly families—the Temple is the organizing social agent here—the intermediate sages, and the peasantry comprised of skilled and unskilled labor. By moderately embracing the acculturation process, the ruling group assures peace with the Seleucids, even respect, while maintaining a core orthodoxy of cult and practice. But the power struggle among the contesting families

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within the ruling class unsettles the religious-political leadership from the days of Jason to the Hasmonaean John Hyrcanus, as Halligan observed. Here Hellenization becomes the foil for gaining imperial favor or the impetus for dissent and separation. Doran makes it clear that Greek education was for the ruling families and their means to acceptance in the wide world of the empire. In a reflective way, one sees the gap between the opportunities of the ruling class and the social stagnation of the peasantry. Davies discerns that internal strife over holiness as relative to the Temple or to the keeping of the Torah led to the separation of a group from the ruling class responsible for the Damascus Document. Even the Samaritans suffered the same religious invasions as the Judeans under Seleucid rule. Their ruling group also sought approval through the acculturation process. Like the Damascus faction, they had different ideas about where God may be worshiped from those of the Jerusalem party. In fact the Hasmonean family, with tenuous claim to priestly legitimacy, strong-arms its way to the forefront in Judea, strikes an alliance with the Idumeans, and incorporates the Itureans on a slate of true Israel versus Hellenized Israel. Horsley and Pasto illustrate how members of this ruling family consolidate their power with classical ingenuity. Intermarriage was only a sub-theme, but was instrumental in the rise of the Idumean Herod. Perhaps the wealthiest and most able politician ever to rule Palestine, he utilized his fiscal reserves to build monuments across the Levant to demonstrate his Jewish piety and to express his civic loyalty. His acceptance of Hellenized forms of cult space appears in the magnificent Second Temple in Jerusalem. Herod's rule was not without opposition from other powerful families, but he adroitly balanced his Roman connections with a program of prosperity through good crop management and public works. These conclusions could not have been foreseen because certain preconceptions existed. Historiography is always the activity of social beings driven by proclivities for self-preservation, enhancement and salvation. These studies concentrated on the social dimension of those groups and families that were the major players/agents during the Second Temple period. The papers examined the material culture, the literature, the social institutions, political and religious struggles, and the ideologies and theologies that constituted the Judaisms of the Second Temple period. Wiser scholars would have been content to do historical-, literary-, rhetorical-criticism, or engage in archaeology alone, or linguistic studies. The participants in this adventure went 'where angels fear to tread...'

RITUAL AND SOCIAL REGULATION IN ANCIENT ISRAEL: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SOCIAL CONTEXT FOR RITUAL STUDIES AND A CASE STUDY—THE RITUAL OF THE RED HEIFER

Frank S. Frick

What might be called the 'archaeology of religion' is often faced with the problem that religious belief systems and religious rituals—those patterned actions that are performed in response to religious beliefs—are not always given expression in the excavated realia of material culture. And when they are, there is the additional problem that such actions are not always cleanly separated from the other actions of life—that is, cult can be embedded within everyday functional activities, making archaeological evidence of cultic activity difficult to distinguish. The first job of one seeking to do the 'archaeology of religion' is to recognize this reality, and to recognize the evidence for cult for what it is, not making the old mistake of classifying as religious activity all those actions in the past that cannot be explained functionally. Even though no one (at least since Durkheim) seriously doubts that religion is a social institution, numerous attempts at explaining religious ritual in ancient Israel and in the Hebrew Bible have faltered because ritual activity has not been situated firmly in its social matrix, nor has serious consideration been given to ritual as part of a social system. Neither has scrupulous attention been paid to precisely what kinds of acts might be identified as religious rituals. Inadequate attention has also been given to the relationship between religious beliefs and religious rituals. In other words, what has been lacking is a comprehensive appreciation of ritual as the practical matrix of religious life, the very ground from which religion grows. Regarding the place of ritual in society, Louis Levine has reminded us that cult does not exist outside the matrix of the society in which it operates; it is not an independent entity. Indeed, when considered within its social setting, cult can quite often be used for other than cultic purposes. As Levine puts it:

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A related pitfall of the study of religious rituals has been the all-tooprevalent assumption that a sacred-profane dichotomy is a universal feature of human world-views. As a starting point for a fresh consideration of ritual and social regulation in ancient Israel, therefore, we need a definition of religious ritual that does not presuppose such a dichotomy on the part of ancient Israel. The British social anthropologist Jack Goody tackled this issue some years ago in a pivotal essay titled 'Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem'. He concluded: By ritual we refer to a category of standardized behaviour.. .in which the relationship between the means and the end is not 'intrinsic', i.e., is either irrational or non-rational.. .there are religious acts, which may be irrational (as in the case of many forms of sacrifice and prayer) or they may be nonrational, as in many public celebrations, but all of which involve supernatural beings... It is impossible to escape from the fact that the category of magico-religious acts and beliefs can be defined only by the observer and that attempts to see either this or the sacred-profane dichotomy as a universal part of the actor's perception of his situation are misleading (Goody 1961: 159-60; emphasis mine).

While the text of the Hebrew Bible can be used, only with some circumspection, in formulating hypotheses about behavior patterns in the ritual performance of ancient Israelites and about the role of religious rituals in their society—beyond any presupposed sacred-profane dichotomy—we must constantly remind ourselves that the Hebrew Bible contains very little dispassionate information about 'popular' religious rituals (or the rituals of 'family religion' as they have been called by Van der Toorn). For the most part, the Hebrew Bible is concerned to sound alarms about how such rituals deviated from the path of 'official' religion. The study of ancient Israelite religious rituals as they were actually practiced by people and not as some kind of 'official' norm is thus still in its infancy, and biblical scholarship can profit from the studies of ritual that have been done by social anthropologists, who have had the distinct advantage of being able to observe living communities, and thus can offer biblical scholars some suggestive paths to follow in the study of ritual as embedded in life. For illustrative purposes, I cite here two suggestive recent works by social anthropologists, who deal with religious ritual in two disparate societies.

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The first is by Michael Nihil (1996), who is concerned with exchange and ritual amongst the Anganen of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua, New Guinea. Nihil focuses on delineating the ways in which two major rituals interrelate with two major categories of exchange. He concludes that it is the structural parallels, differences and interconnections between the two exchange categories and ritual types that guided much of the development of the pre-colonial social structure of the Anganen. A second example comes from the work of Katherine Snyder (1997), whose fieldwork has been with the Iraqw of Tanzania. In an article titled 'Elders' Authority and Women's Protest: the Masay Ritual and Social Change among the Iraqw of Tanzania' she focuses on the relationship between ritual, ideology and authority over time in an Iraqw community. Her analysis incorporates attention to changes in the wider politicaleconomic context in which ritual is performed. In doing so she illustrates the ways in which ritual secures consent to, and recognition of, authority—or fails to do so. In the particular case with which she is concerned, she discovered that the ritual authority of male Iraqw elders increasingly has become dependent on legitimation by elder women because the key ritual—the rnasay—no longer communicates, as it once did, universally shared values of the Iraqw. In the present essay, however, which is particularly concerned with the relationship between religious rituals and social regulation in ancient Israel, the focus is especially on the work of another social anthropologist, the late Roy A. Rappaport. For many years, Rappaport's scholarship evidenced a special interest in the relationship between religious ritual and human ecology. He first published on this subject in a 1968 monograph bearing the intriguing title Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (enlarged edition, 1984). The relationship between ritual and human ecology was also the subject of a 1979 collection of his essays called Ecology, Meaning and Religion (1979). The earlier work, Pigs for the Ancestors, has three main foci: (1) ritual and its effects; (2) human populations in ecosystems; and (3) information and meaning. This work introduced the use of systems theory in an extended manner to anthropology and helped dissolve the then current notion that the world of religion was sealed off from the sphere of the social. This volume provoked so much comment in anthropology and related disciplines that when a second edition of it appeared in 1984, the material concerning criticisms and comments on the first edition increased its length by more than 50 per cent. Between the first and second edition of Pigs, Rappaport published

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the collection of essays mentioned above under the title Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Central to this 1979 work was a 27-page essay titled 'On Cognized Models' (1979:145-72). In this essay Rappaport extended what he called his first crude approach to the systemic relationship of cultural understandings to ecological processes, which he had first made in Pigs. In his posthumously published final work, a 535-page magnum opus, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, which was published in April of 1999 as part of the Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Rappaport combines adaptive and cognitive approaches to offer a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance. Because he considered ritual to be the ground from which religious conceptions spring, the preponderance of this volume (12 of 14 chapters) is devoted to the analysis of ritual. This volume, which constitutes a mature application of social anthropological theory to the study of ritual, amounts to a veritable treatise on ritual: first on ritual's internal logic, then on the products (like sanctity) that its logic entails, on the nature of their truth, and finally, on the place of ritual and its products in humanity's evolution. For the purposes of this essay, it is important to establish Rappaport's definition of ritual in this, his final work. He says that ritual is 'the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers'1 (1999: 24; emphasis mine). He then proceeds to specify that ritual does all the following (p. 27): [It] logically entails the establishment of convention, the sealing of social contract... the investment of whatever it encodes with morality, the construction of time and eternity, the representation of a paradigm of creation, the generation of the concept of the sacred and the sanctification of conventional order, the generation of theories of the occult, the evocation of numinous experience, the awareness of the divine, the grasp of the holy, and the construction of meaning transcending the semantic. Rappaport was interested not only in the role ritual plays in relationships occurring within a social group, but also with the social control aspect of how ritual regulated the relationships between a social group and its environment. This latter point, given the numerous microenvironments in ancient Israel, is especially important in helping us to appreciate the diver-

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sity of ritual life that must have existed. Of course, simply to state that a people's ritual actions may measurably affect components of their environment is, as Rappaport himself recognizes, to state the obvious, if not the trivial. Obviously, a ritual sacrifice will require the slaughter of one or more animals, which just as clearly affects the environment by reducing the number of animals in a particular ecological niche. Rappaport, however, does not stop with this patently obvious observation, but goes on to observe that ritual is a mechanism, or set of mechanisms, that regulates the relationships of a group with multiple components of that group's environment. The use of the terms 'regulate' or 'regulation' implies a system, and for Rappaport a system is any set of specified variables in which a change in the value of one or more such variables results in a change in the value of at least one other variable. A regulating mechanism is one that maintains the values of one or more variables within a specified range or ranges that permit/s the continued functioning of the system. Furthermore, systemic relationships are not only regulated, they are selfregulated. The term 'self-regulation' is applied by Rappaport to systems in which a change in the value of a variable itself initiates a process that either limits further change or returns the value to a previous level. This process involves mechanisms that change the values of some variables in response to changes in the values of others. As a simple example of a mechanical regulating mechanism, Rappaport suggests a thermostat. The variables that a thermostat regulates are the quantity of hot or cold air emanating intermittently from a controlled source and the resulting temperature of a surrounding medium (1984:3-4). Rappaport graphically illustrates the ways in which religion, through ritual, helps to regulate the social and economic processes of a social system in two feedback diagrams—one simple and the other more involved—which are reproduced at the conclusion of this essay as Figures 1 and 2—the simpler one from his earlier work in 1971, and the more complex one from 1999. Rappaport's model suggests two basic ideas: (1) the relationship between religious beliefs and rituals; and (2) the impact of those rituals on a group's environment. Religious rituals, when considered in this way, constitute a primary part of the informational processes of preindustrial human societies. Rappaport categorized two broad classes of messages that are transmitted in human ritual. First, whatever else may happen in some human rituals, in all rituals the participants transmit information concerning their own current physical, psychic or social states to themselves and to other participants. Rappaport calls this class of messages 'self-referential' or 'indexical' (1999:

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52). The second class of information, what Rappaport calls 'canonical' information, is concerned with enduring aspects of nature, society or the cosmos, and is encoded in apparently invariant aspects of liturgical orders. Rappaport correctly understands religion as a set of sacred beliefs held in common by a group of people, together with the more or less standard actions (rituals) that are undertaken with respect to those beliefs. It is from this understanding of ritual that Rappaport developed, first in an essay titled 'Sanctity and Adaptation', the concept of the cybernetic loop, which is graphically illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. In describing this concept he said: Inasmuch as the religious experience is an intrinsic part of the more inclusive emotional dynamics of an organism, and inasmuch as the emotional dynamics of an organism must be closely related to its material state, it is plausible to assume that religious experiences are affected by material conditions. But the latter are, particularly in primitive societies, in some degree a function of the operation of the control hierarchy which the religious experience itself supports. Thus the willingness, indeed the ability, of the members of a congregation to affirm through religious experience the ultimate sacred propositions which sanctify the control hierarchy may be in considerable measure a function of the effectiveness of the hierarchy in maintaining equilibrium in and among those variables which define their material well-being in the long run, and thus adaptation (Rappaport 1970: 62).

At the conclusion of his 1999 work, Rappaport spelled out in more detail the way in which ritual encompasses regulatory hierarchies in cybernetic structures. Rappaport also delineated those particular aspects of rituals that suit them to function as both homeostats and communication devices. In this regard, both the content and occurrence of rituals are important. Ritual occurrences that are not locked into a specific calendrical date may provide a 'yes-no' signal triggered by the achievement or violation of a particular state or range of states of a 'more-less' variable (1971:63). Sacrifices and/or votive offerings presented by individuals can be seen as examples of such rituals, in which such things as the status of herd sizes or crop production vis-a-vis the human population could be communicated at unspecified intervals. The content of a ritual is particularly important in the transmission of quantitative or more-less information, and is of significance mainly within a single system or subsystem; the occurrence of a ritual is especially important in the transmission of information across the borders of separate and unlike systems or subsystems (1971:65)—-thus the well-known calendrical function of religious ritual in ancient Israel.

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Echoing features of Rappaport's model, Carol Meyers has suggested that current modes of interdisciplinary analysis can reveal how the formal aspects of ancient Israel's religious life existed within the context of material reality and also as essential parts of a sociocultural system. However sacrifice may have functioned, on a symbolic or phenomenological level, as an expression of a particular belief system, Meyers has demonstrated, in a particular case—the sacrifice of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1—-how it was also integrally related to the socioeconomic and environmental conditions of ancient Palestine. She asserts (1995: 79): 'Indeed... ritual behavior stands in sensitive relationship to environmental factors and is instrumental in sanctioning subsistence patterns that maximized the various ecosystems.' Taken as an aggregate, the material items of the sacrifice discussed by Meyers represent the typical constituents of ancient Israelite village food production in villages that had a mixed pastoral and agricultural regime: animal husbandry, field crops (wheat) and horticultural activity (in this case, wine). Rappaport's model urges caution about simplistic identification of cultic places by suggesting that the places where rituals were performed were not necessarily monofunctional. Too often one reads circular definitions that are little more than variants of the argument: 'This artifact is cultic because it was found in a cultic place; this is a cultic place because it contained cultic artifacts.' On the contrary, Rappaport informs us that so-called religious rituals are often used for other than strictly 'religious' purposes—as a vital part of informational processes in preindustrial societies. Ritual sites, considered in this way, may indeed be multifunctional, eliminating any need to draw sharp either-or distinctions between cultic, domestic and commercial activity areas, a distinction that is both artificial and which has increasingly been unsupported by archaeological method and theory in the anthropological community. In a volume titled The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (1990), Ralph Merrifield systematically surveyed the archaeological evidence for European ritual over time. In his introduction he cites, with approval, these words of Bryony Orme: The present dearth of archaeological studies in this field [ritual studies] has been aggravated by the way in which the word 'ritual' has been used, to cope with evidence that was not immediately explicable in commonsense terms. This is generally held to be a misuse of the term, in the sense of it being overworked, whereas the real abuse has been to use the word without exploring its meanings, to use it as a final explanation of the data when it should have been no more than an initial classification. Therefore, instead

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'Imagining' Biblical Worlds of perpetuating the avoidance brought in to counteract over-use, we should be doing the opposite—we should explore the fields of human behaviour classified as religious or ritual in order to achieve some measure of understanding (Merrifield 1990: 218).

As several Palestinian archaeologists have observed, ritual activities occur not only in large public buildings such as sanctuaries or temples, but also in what Yigal Shiloh (1979) referred to as 'cult corners' in residential locations, structures which, according to William Dever (1987: 134-35), gained popularity during the Solomonic period and retained many domestic functions. Ahlstrom (1982) has made a similar argument regarding 'cultic corners' during the Solomonic period. Walter Rast (1994: 361), in connection with the Iron Age cultic structure at Taanach, has also endorsed such a conception of the diversity of places in which religious rituals were performed, and has modified it by suggesting that what we likely may have, in the case of the rooms or parts of buildings at Taanach, Megiddo and other sites, which were called 'cult corners' by Shiloh, are actually residences that belonged to priestly groups, who used them to extend the control of a centralized Jerusalem administration. In the centralization of the cult that occurred during Solomon's reign, as a means of bringing society under royal control, Rast maintains that priestly families in outlying areas were assigned responsibility for religious ritual and were entrusted with ritualistic materials, which they kept and used not in 'shrines' set apart for that specific purpose, but in their residential quarters. Rappaport has also argued that the use of everyday objects or valuables in rituals may substantiate self-referential messages, making certain of them indexical (1999: 145). A weighty problem that biblical scholars face in examining the religious system(s) of ancient Israel, which is not addressed by Rappaport, however, is the fact that religious belief systems and their accompanying ritual expressions are not always transparently represented in material culture. When they are—in what one might call the archaeology of cult, defined as the system of patterned actions in response to religious belief—there is the problem, to which Rappaport has alerted us, that such actions are not always clearly separated from other actions, but can be embedded within everyday functional activity. Here is yet another cautionary note, suggesting that in our consideration of rituals we should be careful not to abstract rituals from their social and environmental settings.

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An Application: The Red Heifer Ritual The ritual of the red heifer, which is described in the Hebrew Bible only in Numbers 19 and referred to in the Mishnah tractates Ohaloth and Parah, is assuredly a unique one in the Hebrew Bible. The description of the ritual (in Num. 19) prescribes that the Israelites provide a perfect, unblemished red cow that has not been used for agricultural work. The cow is given to that priest who is next in line to become high priest, who then takes it outside the camp. An unidentified slaughterer then kills the animal under the priest's supervision. The priest takes some of the cow's blood and sprinkles it seven times in the direction of the front of the tent of meeting. An anonymous person, probably the same person who did the slaughtering, then burns the entire cow under priestly supervision—including the blood and dung. While the cow is burning, the priest throws three items into the fire: cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet thread. Finally, a person who is ritually pure (i.e. someone other than the priest or the slaughterer/ burner, since they have been rendered ritually impure by what they have done up to this point), gathers the resulting ashes and stores them in a ritually clean place outside the camp for later ritual use. One of the problems associated with the analysis of this rite in ritual studies has been whether it should be considered a sacrifice or a ritual slaughter. Some details of this ritual argue for regarding it as a sacrifice. It is in fact called a DKtDn (vv. 9, 17), that is, a purgation sacrifice (otherwise known as a 'sin offering'). The ritual's sacrificial nature is also suggested by the fact that it is supervised by the priest Eleazar. His sprinkling of blood seven times toward the tent appears to be the means of initiating the ritual and consecrating the animal and its blood. Other details suggest, however, that if this was a sacrifice, it was a very curious one. Rather than being slaughtered on the sanctuary altar, the heifer is killed outside the camp, and apparently not on an altar, in clear contradiction to priestly law as delineated in Leviticus. This particular locus of the slaughter may be related to the subsequent use of the ashes. The requirement that the cow must be perfect and unblemished conforms to sacrificial rules, but the additional condition that it should not have been agriculturally worked does not. That the cow is totally burnt, on the surface, seems reminiscent of the total burning of a burnt offering or of the incineration of n^t3PI carcasses. On closer inspection, however, it is really quite different. The burning of the offering constitutes the way in which it becomes an offering; the burning of HNftn carcasses, however, is for the

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purpose of disposing of an impure thing. In the red heifer ritual the burning also serves as the means of producing ashes that will then later be ritually used; not as a means of either offering or disposal. Also the burning of the animal's blood is a unique case, since in proper sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible the blood of the sacrificial animal was normally drained off and sprinkled by the priest at the altar. Finally, the use of cedar, hyssop and scarlet material together is found nowhere else in descriptions of sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible. The only other place where these three elements appear together in any type of ritual context is in the distinctly nonsacrificial rite for purification from scale disease (in Lev. 14.5-7, 51-52). There, however, the three elements are used with a purifying liquid, not with ashes, as they are in Numbers 19. These three elements must have possessed some symbolic meaning that went beyond any functional significance they had, but that meaning is irrecoverable. Perhaps, following Rappaport's lead, they may have some particular ecological significance. Although its identification is uncertain, Syrian hyssop (Origanum maru) or Syrian marjoram (called in Arabic za 'tar) is the most likely identification for the biblical DITK (Exod. 12.22; Lev. 14.4, 6,49, 51, 52; Num. 19.6,18; 1 Kgs 4.33; Ps. 51.7), which first appears in the Exodus narratives, where it was tied into bunches and used as a brash to sprinkle blood on the doorposts in Egypt (Exod. 12.21, 22), since its hairy leaves could absorb liquids, a use to which it is still put by the Samaritans in their Passover ritual. This use of hyssop in the Exodus ritual seems to have established the tradition for most of the other biblical references. The combination of hyssop and cedar, without any reference to scarlet material, occurs in reference to Solomon's legendary natural wisdom in 1 Kgs 4.33: 'He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall...' Josephus stands in the stream of tradition that believes this was a reference to Solomon's legendary understanding of nature (Ant. 8.2.5). Probably the same 1 Kings passage, or at least the tradition built on it, is behind Wis. 7.15-22, where Solomon is said to know astrology, 'powers of roots' and 'forces of spirits'. The red heifer ritual provided ashes for the subsequent purification of persons and things from corpse contamination, and thus a way of communicating to the community that they were 'safe' from the danger of corpse contamination, which was regarded as a major impurity. To purify someone or something from corpse contamination, the ashes obtained from the red heifer ritual were mixed with spring water. A pure person then dipped

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hyssop in the water and sprinkled it on the corpse-contaminated persons or objects (Num. 19.18)—once on the third day of the period of impurity and again on the seventh day (Num. 19.19). In addition to sprinkling with the water for purgation, persons had to bathe and launder their garments (in regular water) on the seventh day and wait for evening, when they became pure (Num. 19.19). According to the regulations in Numbers 19, objects that can endure fire (such as those of metal) were to be passed through fire, apparently an additional verifying sign to the community. Objects that could not endure fire (i.e. organic items) were simply immersed in water. One of the most striking things about the ritual of the red heifer and the ashes is that while, on the one hand, they lead to purification from corpse contamination, at the same time they pollute those pure people who participate in the preparation of the ashes, or who even touch the ashes or the water. Even the priest who supervises the burning of the cow is regarded as impure for a day and must launder his garments and bathe (Num. 9.7). The one who burns the cow and the one who gathers its ashes are similarly impure (Num. 9.8, 10). The person who sprinkles the water for purgation or who otherwise touches it becomes impure for a day (Num. 9.21). This paradox is explained by the character of the red heifer ritual as a nKtsn. The purpose of other n^ISi! sacrifices is to purify; the blood is applied to various articles in order to remove impurity. Many recent discussions of this ritual, beginning at least with de Vaux in 1961, have focused on its nature before it was incorporated into the Priestly legislation in its present form, suggesting that it probably came into the Israelite sphere from some other ancient Near Eastern source. A fixation on this ritual's having being imported, however, betrays a rather narrow understanding of Israelite 'popular' religion and ritual, an overly restrictive view of the relationship of religion and magic, and reflects our limited knowledge about the significance of particular objects that were used in Israelite ritual. De Vaux, for example, maintained: This rite certainly originated in pagan practices, and it must have been originally a magic rite: many peoples regard red as a protective colour to avert evil and to put demons to flight...it appears to have been an archaic rite which lived on side by side with the official religion; it was not even part of the ordinary life of the people, and yet, in the end, it was incorporated, at a very late date, into the Priestly legislation (de Vaux 1961: 461-62).

Wefing (1981) has more recently argued, mainly through a literary critical approach, that originally the rite was a non-Israelite burnt offering that was incorporated into Israelite liturgy not as a sacrifice per se, but as a

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kind of ordeal declaiming against pagan sacrifice. Milgrom (1981), from a more traditio-historical point of view, has maintained that an earlier, non-Israelite, purgation rite for corpse defilement was taken over into the Priestly corpus and assimilated, as much as it could be, to its sacrificial system, particularly to that of the n&isn sacrifice. As alluded to above, a central concern of the red heifer ritual was to deal with corpse contamination. Certainly the dead are widely regarded as objects of dread, and many societies have proscriptions against contact with the dead, since it was believed that contamination could spread from one individual to other members of society. Several ancient Near Eastern societies incorporated rituals to deal with such contamination. For example, the 'Great Purification' rite (the baresnum) of Zoroastrianism originally was intended for purification from serious polluting contacts, especially for corpse bearers after contact with death, and was only later pre-empted for initiation into the priesthood. Rappaport maintains that proscriptions, such as ones concerning contact with the dead, comprise an important class of directives that are 'especially significant because they reach out into everyday life...taboo appropriates for liturgy important aspects of daily life' (1999: 316). The modern appropriation of such functions of religious ritual can be seen in the highly developed mortuary profession (especially in Western countries), which protects persons in contact with death not only from grief but probably from non-rational pollution fears as well. Surely, the complicated ritual for the rehabilitation of the 'leper' in Leviticus 14 dramatizes the fact that the Israelites typically divided the world into sectors with strong barriers, which, before they could be traversed, necessitated powerful social rituals to enable such crossing. The restored 'leper', for example, after shaving off all his hair, washing all his clothes and bathing, had to spend seven days in a peculiar liminal situation, inside the camp but outside his own tent. On the eighth day he again shaved, washed his clothes and bathed, so that the final offerings for his full restoration to society could be made. What might such an approach as Rappaport's have to contribute to our reflection on this peculiar ritual? First, it is obvious that this ritual is not fastened to a particular point in the calendar, so its occurrence may be sending information to the participants that is not transparent to us, the outsiders—information that is clearly not 'indexical', but is encoded in such things as the color of the heifer, the fact that it has not been agriculturally worked, the status of those who conduct the ritual, the particular method of burning, and the inclusion of the three particular items of

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cedarwood, hyssop and crimson material in the fire. There are some aspects of the symbolism about which we might meaningfully conjecture: that hyssop was believed to have purgative properties is suggested by its symbolic use in Ps. 51.7 ('Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean...' [Hebrew = 51.9]); hyssop and cedar together may represent 'totality' by including the opposite ends of a spectrum, as in the 'knowledge of good and evil' (Gen. 3.5), with hyssop as a representative of the small and insignificant, in that it can be found growing out of a wall, and cedar as representing the large and noble. The 'scarlet material' burned with the heifer clearly harmonizes with the color of the heifer and with its blood. The burning of things that are scarlet may visually encode the change from one state to another—from red, the color of sin to white, the color of purgation, as in Isa. 1.18:'.. .though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.' While we might speculate about the symbolic significance of these elements in such a way, and while some may have purely functional significance, one suspects that there is more here than meets the eye, examples of what Rappaport labeled 'canonical' information that is concerned with enduring aspects of nature, society or the cosmos, and which is encoded in the apparently invariant aspects of this liturgical order. It becomes clear, at least to me, that, if Israelite rituals and Israelite selfawareness are to be approached in this sort of manner, a quite different picture will emerge. Reality for the Israelite, in fact, was carefully ordered and structured, and religious ritual was a way both of encoding and transmitting information about the status of the society, individuals within it, and their environment. The task of future research in this area should be directed toward elucidating the systemic nature of this order more thoroughly, while avoiding the abstraction of ritual from its practical, social matrix.

Figure 1. Adapted from Rappaport 1971.

Figure 2. The Cybernetics from the Holy from Rappaport 1999: 431.

LEVANTINE HORNED ALTARS: AN AEGEAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIO-RELIGIOUS REPRODUCTION*

Louise A. Hitchcock Horned altars are frequently mentioned in the Bible (see Aharoni 1974a: 4; Shanks 1975: esp. 1) where they are regarded as important for use in connection with sacrificial offerings and obtaining amnesty from execution. The meaning of the horns themselves is not explained, although Fowler (1985: 27) notes the symbolic associations of horns in other biblical contexts with strength and political power. Aharoni (1974a: 4-5) believes that the horns were substituted for massebot (standing stones) placed on the corners of the altar, but this explanation does not seem satisfactory, as the horns tended to have a relatively uniform appearance bearing little resemblance to massebot. Stone incense altars have been interpreted (see Gitin forthcoming) based on Syrian-Middle Euphrates affinities (see Miiller 1997; Muller-Pierre 1992; Margueron 1976). It is suggested here that additional insights into the significance of stone horns and horned altars might be obtained by looking at horned forms and horned altars found in the neighboring Minoan and Cypriot civilizations. The specific focus of this paper is on the monumental horned altars from Tel Dan and Tel Beersheba, and just 3 of the 17 horned incense altars from the Philistine site at Tel Miqne-Ekron. The tradition of looking beyond the Bible for the significance of horned altars extends back to W.F. Albright, who associated incense altars with the cult of Ba'alim (cited in Gitin 1989: 58*; Haran 1994: 245 n. 4). The purpose of this paper is to extend the

* The writing of this article was supported by an Educational and Cultural Affairs Fellowship for research at the W.F. Albright Institute in Jerusalem in 2001. Research on additional material included here was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship for study at the Cyprus American Archaeological Institute in Nicosia in 1999-2000.1 want to thank Susan Cohen and Bob Mullins for their comments and suggestions. I especially want to thank Sy Gitin for making available a preprint of his most recent research on altars, as well as his patience and assistance in discussing horned altars with me. I, alone, assume responsibility for any errors of fact and interpretation.

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chronological and geographic significance of horned altars even further and to locate their use within a wider historical tradition. In extending the boundaries of study of this feature, I employ a critical and interdisciplinary approach that opens the past to multiple perspectives as characterized and encouraged by the work of James Flanagan.1 The horns found on altars in Israel, Judah, and Philistia2 call to mind similar Minoan features termed 'horns of consecration'. 'Horns of consecration' are carved, stylized bovine horns that are frequently associated with the Minoan 'palaces' as architectural decoration and with altars in iconographic representations at least as early as the Neopalatial Period on Crete (seventeenth-mid-fifteenth centuries BCE) (cf. Diamant and Rutter 1979: 171-72). 'Horns of consecration' begin to appear on altars and as separate elements in Cyprus in the thirteenth century BCE (cf. Loulloupis 1973) and are interpreted by Karageorghis (1976: 69-72; 1982: 101) as emblematic of the arrival of Mycenaean Greeks on the island. 'Horns of consecration', however, were a Minoan feature rather than a Mycenaean one and rarely occurred on the Greek mainland (cf. Hagg 1991). In Minoan culture, 'horns of consecration' were frequently used to mark important entryways (Hitchcock 2000:98-101), whereas in Cyprus and in the 'southern Levant' they seem to have been primarily associated with altars. One of the most relevant Minoan representations for this inquiry is from a fragment of a steatite vase from Knossos (Evans 1928: 614, Fig. 386; Diamant and Rutter 1979:174). The fragment depicts 'horns of consecration' resting on a base composed often courses of isodomic masonry. This representation not only calls to mind Cypriot altars and the Beersheba altar (discussed below), but also may have characterized the altar foundations remaining in the west court at Knossos and in the central court at Kato Zakro. Other Aegean representations of horned altars also depict a sacred tree resting on top (cf. Diamant and Rutter 1979: 174, Figs. 41, 42,45). According to Gitin (1995: 72) horned incense altars made of stone first appear in the tenth century BCE forming one of the major components of Israelite religious practice. Gitin's (forthcoming) research focuses primarily

1. It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this article to James Flanagan who has been a constant source of support for my work from the very beginning of my doctoral studies. 2. These three regions are referred to collectively in the text hereafter as the 'southern Levant'.

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Figure 1. Knossos, representation of horned altar on steatite vase fragment (after Diamant and Rutter 1979: Fig. 40).

on stone incense altars and stresses Syrian affinities and a Syrian origin over Aegean affinities. By the seventh century BCE, the use of horned incense altars appears to have been limited to Ekron (Gitin 1995: 72) and only one of the seventh-century horned altars from Ekron shows actual evidence of burning (Gitin, in Gitin and Dothan 1987: 210). The absence of burning, however, might be attributed to the use of bowls to hold the incense (Gitin 1992: 47*; Holladay 1987: 265) or perhaps, in some instances, grain offerings (cf. Haran 1994 and comments in Gitin 1992:45*47*). While the smaller horned altars have been associated with incense offerings, the larger ones have been associated with burnt and blood sacrifice (cf. Shanks 1975: 8; Gitin 1989, 1992; Wiener 1927: 14-23). Gitin (forthcoming) has carried out a detailed literary, typological and chronological categorization, and site distribution analysis of horned and non-horned incense altars. Rather than attempt to reduplicate his study, this study focuses on the ashlar horned altars, the significance of the context with regard to three of the horned incense altars from Ekron and their Aegean affinities, areas not covered in detail by Gitin. In terms of their form, the horns on altars from the 'southern Levant' share some affinities with both Minoan and Cypriot horns. The Dan and Beersheba horns are split as are some of the earlier Cypriot horns. Horns from the 'southern Levant' are shorter than Cypriot or Aegean horns, however many are pointed and they slope in much the same way as

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Aegean horns, yet they are more widely spaced. The Cypriot horns are characterized by blunted tips as are some of the horns from the 'southern Levant'. It might be relevant that Marinatos (1986: 30-31) has interpreted blunted tips on some Aegean bull rhyta as symbolizing human dominance over the bull. In all three regions there is a great deal of variability in the way horned forms are represented. It has been suggested that the idea for Minoan 'horns of consecration' originated in the Near East, where bucrania had enjoyed a long history of use as architectural decoration (e.g. Hitchcock 1999:374, PI. IA). Diamant and Rutter (1979) have shown that early horned forms in Anatolia were frequently associated with hearths, where they might have served as pot stands, and that a similar use is also indicated in later Minoan seal representations.

Figure 2. Kusura, Late Bronze Age hearth with horn-shaped pot stand (after Diamant and Rutter 1979: Fig. 6).

It is worth speculating that the association of horned forms with the hearth and burning may also be linked to their association with altars, incense and animal sacrifice. As polyvalent signifiers, their form may have simultaneously taken on both symbolic and functional aspects. Indeed, the long history of horned forms in the Aegean and the Near East may be a case of a particular symbol continuously being recirculated in different regional styles and contexts, and being incorporated into a broad range of interrelated symbolic functions. In contrast to the early appearance of iconographic representations in the Minoan Aegean, horned altars occur relatively late in Syria, in the fourteenth to thirteenth centuries (as detailed in Gitin forthcoming). Although one might object that horned altars from the 'southern Levant' have four horns and those from Cyprus and the Aegean have two, the

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situation is not entirely clear. All of the Minoan examples of horned altars come from two-dimensional representations that might conceal a second set of horns located behind the first. In addition, one representation of a Minoan horned altar depicts two pairs of horns side-by-side (cf. Marinates 1986: 53, Fig. 42), while another appears to depict one set of horns inside the other atop a column capital (Crowley 1989: no. 171). It is uncertain whether this last is actually a representation of one pair inside the other or an attempt to render depth. In addition, some of the Cypriot horned altars are reconstructed from fragmentary evidence. For example, a single horn fragment was the only block preserved from the top course of the monumental ashlar horned altar reconstructed at Myrtou-Pighades (Cyprus) (cf. lonas 1985: esp. Figs. 3, 4), and the top course of the altar could have conceivably accommodated four horns. The horned altar at Kition (Cyprus) is very different in that it is largely constructed of unworked stones, and was most likely used for the display of a single, small pair of 'horns of consecration' (Karageorghis 1970; Webb 1977: 119). The difference in the two altars implies a great deal of regional diversity in their execution in Cyprus. A number of differences also exist between horned altars from Syria and those from the 'southern Levant'. The Syrian horned incense altars are made of clay instead of stone; their fenestrations suggest the windows of an architectural model, and their horns are suggestive of architectural decoration (cf. Miiller 1997; Margueron 1976), precisely the function associated with most Minoan 'horns of consecration'. Ezekiel 43.20 reads, 'And they shall take some of the blood thereof and put it on the four horns of the altar and on the four corners of the altar and on the base round about, and make atonement for it.' In citing this passage, Webb (1977: 119-20) compares Cypriot horned altars to later Israelite ones, suggesting that the horns were 'the holiest part of the structure' (also noted in Shanks 1975: 1; Aharoni 1974a: 5). This and other biblical accounts of the blood of sacrifice in which blood was sprinkled on the horns (e.g. Exod. 29.12; Num. 9.9 [cited in Aharoni 1974a: 5]) strengthens the Aegean connection. Such imagery calls to mind the image of blood spilling down a horned altar as depicted on a Late Bronze Age I fresco from Akrotiri (Thera) (cf. Marinates 1984: 74-75, Fig. 53), and chronologically linked through their Late Bronze Age II through Iron Age occurrence on Cyprus (cf. Loulloupis 1973). With regard to blood sacrifice on an altar in biblical times, Fried (1999) suggests that the sinner brings the animal, not to pay a debt (there is no language of paying a debt), not to cover the altar, but to purge the altar. There is no recompense of life for

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Figure 3. Emar, horned incense burner (after Mtiller 1997: Fig. 2a).

life here. It is just to make atonement for the altar (cf. Exod. 29.35-37; Lev. 8.14-15; Wiener 1927: 24). The purpose of the sin offering is to have some blood to daub the altar, and every sin offering involves daubing the altar with the blood. It is possible to speculate on a similar need to propitiate divine powers in the Aegean, particularly in a context where the population looked to the divine to ensure agricultural and maritime prosperity, and to prevent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Ashlar masonry was a common feature of Late Bronze Age Cypriot and Aegean prestige or elite architecture, and is characteristic of both Cypriot and Minoan horned altars and 'horns of consecration'. The horned altar from Beersheba is particularly notable for its use of ashlar masonry, as such construction techniques for altars are seen as being in contradiction with biblical law (e.g. Exod. 20.25; Josh. 8.30-31; Deut. 27.5-6). Some see this prohibition as connected with the use of iron tools (Aharoni 1975: 156), while others see it as connected with any working of the block (cf.

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Figure 4. Beersheba, horned altar.

Shanks 1975: 9; see also Zevit 2001: 302). This ambiguity is based on the specific mention of iron tools in Joshua and Deuteronomy, while only tool working is mentioned in Exodus. The assumption being made in these later biblical passages is that iron tools were necessary to create ashlar masonry. If there is ambiguity in the interpretation of the law, certain types of altars or working techniques might be excluded. These later passages may be attempting to connect symbolically the working of stone with the Philistines, who were traditionally associated with iron production and metalworking (cf. 1 Sam. 13.19-22; Mazar 1994: 49). The reference to iron tools may have symbolized a taboo connected with impurity (cf. McNutt 1990: 218-19), and perhaps one established with the Philistines in mind, regardless of whether or not such a monopoly existed (cf. Muhly 1992; Brug 1985: 165-68). In fact, metal tools would not have been necessary to create ashlar blocks. Wright (2000: 402) has observed that elaborate tools were not necessary for a skilled mason to produce finely worked surfaces, so that simple stone tools, a straight edge, two pegs and a piece of string will suffice. He believes that stone tools, including hammers, axes, adzes and chisels, could have served the needs of masons (p. 402). Although Wright is speaking specifically with regard to Cypriot masonry of the Late Bronze Age, the same building principles would have applied elsewhere. Thus it is possible that the people of Israel and Judah were working stone (with or without iron tools), requiring a prohibition to be spelled out. And, as

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Fowler (1982: 9) suggests, the Beersheba altar could simply have been illegal and influenced by pagan practices. Shanks (1975: 9) also notes that horns might be placed on altars of unhewn stone with mud or lime plaster, although these would not be at one with the altar. Aharoni (1974a: 2) describes what may have been such an altar from Arad ( 2 . 5 x 2 . 5 m b y l . 5 m high) as being built of clay and undressed stones with a large flint slab on its surface surrounded by two plaster runnels. It was covered by plaster that was broken at the corners, and Aharoni (1974a: 2) speculates that these corners may have held clay and plaster horns that had been broken off. It was located in the court of the broad-hall temple with a holy-of-holies appointed with a massebeh and two incense altars (Aharoni 1968: 19-20). Although the use of horns on this altar is conjectural, at least one horned altar utilizing unhewn blocks is known from Late Bronze Age Cyprus. One is found at Kition and another can be suggested for Kouklia-Palaepaphos, where the base of the 'horns of consecration' is roughly hewn. In addition, 'horns of consecration' made of stucco and plaster have been recovered from the 'palace' at Knossos (cf. Evans 1928: 814; 1930: 525). Returning to the Beersheba altar, it was restored to a height of c. 157 cm based on the proximity of associated blocks of different sizes as well as biblical description (Aharoni 1973:255; 1974a: 3; 1975b: 156; Gitin 1989: 62*). Aharoni (1973: 255; 1974a: 4) speculates that additional stones may have been added giving it a size of 5 x 5 cubits like the altar at Tel Arad, but no evidence for this has been found. The fragments used in the reconstruction had been reused in an eighth-century BCE storehouse complex (Aharoni 1974a: 4) and others were found nearby (Aharoni 1975: 154; 1974a: 3; 1973: 255, PL 71b). They were easily distinguishable from the rubble and mud brick construction that dominated the existing constructions due to being hewn from calcareous sandstone (Aharoni 1973: 255, PL 71b; personal observation). Burned blocks associated with the altar have also been found, indicating it was used for burnt offerings as well as blood offerings. An unusual feature of the Beersheba altar is the engraved snake on one of its blocks. Aharoni (1974a: 4; 1975:156) recognized this engraving as a widespread symbol of fertility throughout the ancient Near East. Its regenerative aspects are emphasized, for example, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, while snake handling was depicted on an Early Bronze Age chlorite vase from Khafajeh. This symbolism extends to Crete, as is represented by snake handling in the famous 'Snake Goddess' figurine from Knossos and in the later, post-palatial use of snakes to decorate portable, cylindrical

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clay stands known as snake tubes (cf. Gesell 1985). Papadopoulos and Kontorli-Papadopoulos (1992: 347 n. 64) note that the presence of a snake tube from the 'house of the Ashtoreth' at the Philistine site of Beth-Shean and a stele carrying a representation of a 'Snake Goddess' at Tell-Beit Mirsim further strengthens the Aegean connection. Similar tubes, also known as cylindrical cult stands, occur in the Near East from the third millennium on, but increase in the Levant in Late Bronze Age Canaan, reaching a peak in the Early Iron Age (Gilmour 1995: 226-27). The decoration of such stands varies, and Gilmour (1995: 230) suggests that the decoration on the stand might be linked to the deity being worshiped. He (Gilmour 1995: 235) regards the decorative influences on Iron Age I and II cult stands as an amalgam of Syro-Hittite, Mesopotamian, Cretan and earlier Canaanite influences. The significance of the snakes is also seen in the Bible, whereby a bronze serpent made by Moses to cure his people became an object of veneration (as detailed in Shanks 1975: 9, 15). Bronze snakes have been excavated in ritual contexts at Tel Mevorakh, Timnah, Gezer and Hazor in the 'southern Levant' (Stern 1984:22-23; Gilmour 1995: 230) and in the Iron Age Aegean at Oropos (Mazarakis Ainan 2001). In addition to the Beersheba altar being reconstructed, its original context is also controversial. The excavator, Aharoni (1973: 255; 1974c: 271; 1975: 156), associates the altar with a temple, for which there are no remains (also Fowler 1982:7-8). He believes that the absence of evidence is due to the construction of a massive secular public building, termed the 'basement house', that obliterates any remains of a temple. The 'basement house' building dates to stratum II and was characterized by deep foundations and cellars (also Yadin 1976: esp. 7-8). Herzog (1981: 120; Herzog, Raimey and Moshkovitz 1977) believes that the horned altar is sufficient evidence of a royal sanctuary that he and others locate at the opposite, northwest end of the site from where the altar was actually found. However, this is not necessarily so because, while temples required altars, altars did not require an associated temple (Haran 1981: esp. 32). Aharoni (1974a: 8) dates the stratum II destruction to Sennacherib in 701 BCE based on similarities between stratum II pottery at Beersheba and Lachish III pottery. Yadin (1976:5) favored a seventh-century BCE destruction, but there are problems with this. There are no examples of pottery in Beersheba II, which were unique to the seventh century but absent in the eighth century BCE (as detailed in Herzog, Rainey and Moshkovitz 1977: 49-50; also Aharoni 1977). Yadin (1976) was also not satisfied with

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Aharoni's assumptions regarding the existence of a temple for which no evidence remains. In any case, the blocks of the altar were reused in a stratum II building, so that the original context of the altar had to be either earlier than stratum II or from an earlier period within stratum II, also rendering Yadin's reconstruction problematic (cf. Aharoni 1974a: 6; Herzog 1981). Yadin (1976) preferred to see the horned altar interpreted as a bamah or high place in accordance with Josianic narrative, which specifically calls for the destruction of the bamah at Beersheba (cf. 2 Kgs 23.8). Yadin's (1976: 8) interpretation of a bamah does not require a temple, rather it requires an altar and a building for dining or housing sacrificial paraphernalia. Yadin's (1976: 8) emphasis is on the altar, rather than on a particular type of associated religious building conforming to a rigid plan. Yadin (1976: 11) believed that builders ofbamot followed pagan traditions either ignoring or serving as the inspiration for biblical prohibitions. For Aharoni (1968: 19-20), the bamah is an open cult place that becomes a temple once it is situated within a building. Yet he (Aharoni 1974b: 38) does believe there was a bamah at the gate at Beersheba based on the discovery of a 23.5-cm-high round stone altar found in an open area near the threshold of the gate. Yadin (1976: 8-9) reconstructed the altar in the corner of a wrap-around staircase (c. 147 cm in height) that abuts the north wall of a court in the building to the southwest of the city gate. This area covers a drain that connects with the main drain leaving the gate. Yadin (1976: 11) associates the drain with ritual pouring of blood on and near the altar. This building assumes the plan of a four-roomed house, a trapezoidal space divided by a row of stone pillars into two unequal parts, a rectangular court (building 430) and a covered veranda (building 442). This is regarded as an unlikely location for such a fine altar, and its reconstruction was based on Yadin's (1976) anachronistic reading of 2 Kgs 23.8 and on his misdating of stratum II. Herzog, Rainey and Moshkovitz (1977: 56-58) dismiss Yadin's reconstruction on several grounds that extend beyond controversy with the chronology. These grounds include: the angle of the steps, which would make it difficult to bring a sacrificed animal to the top of the altar; that the altar would partially cover the drain, which they believe carried water from the city to a well outside the gate; that a small, plain court was not the proper place for a large and elaborate altar; that rites carried out there would not have been accessible to the public; and that the size of the altar would have

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prevented the movement of large animals in and out of the building. These objections are not necessarily well founded. A partial covering of the drain would not prevent the spilling of sacrificial liquids into it from either side of the altar. As the drain leaves the city, it passes beside rather than to the well (cf. Aharoni 1975: 148-49, Fig. 1), which may in fact be Hellenistic (Mullins, personal communication). Large animals need not have been housed in the building, which could have been for dining or for holding smaller animals, such as sheep and goats. Furthermore, only parts of animals and their blood rather than an entire animal need have been placed on the altar. The doorway of building 430 would have afforded an excellent view of the altar to anyone entering through the gate. Even if we dismiss the association of the altar with a building replicating the plan of a house, some kind of close relationship between the altar and the gate may have been of primary importance. Ritual installations associated with gates are known from elsewhere in Israel, such as the throne room and canopy arrangement found in association with the ninth-eighth-century gate at Tel Dan (Biran 1974a: 45-47; 1981; 1994: 238-41, Pis. 44, 197-99) and the high place at Bethsaida (cf. Arav 1999). Biran (1981: 142) and others associate bamot with gates, sacrifice and feasting. Similarities have been noted between the gates at Dan and Beersheba (Aharoni 1972: 169-170), suggesting other similarities as well.

Figure 5a. Beersheba, view ofdoonvay of building 430, from gate.

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Figure 5b. Beersheba, view of doorway of building 430, site of altar?

A location for the altar near the gate is also attractive from both an Aegean and from a Cypriot perspective. 'Horns of consecration' on Crete were typically associated with important doorways where they might have served as transitional markers. Interpreting the Beersheba altar as a high place makes it comparable to earlier high places, namely the Minoan Peak Sanctuary at Mt Juktas and the later horned altar at Myrtou-Pighades in Cyprus. A similar drainage installation is closely associated with the monumental ashlar horned altar at Myrtou-Pighades. This drain could have also been used for washing away sacrificial liquids, including blood (also du Plat Taylor 1957: 12). This interpretation is strengthened by the presence of tethering blocks and the pile of antlers, and goats' and rams' horns found nearby (du Plat Taylor 1957: 18). Like the horns at Beersheba, the horn(s) at Myrtou-Pighades were also of one piece with the altar as directed in the Bible (Exod. 27.2; 30.2, cited from Shanks 1975: 8). The sanctuary at Mt Juktas is characterized simply by monumental horns, a platform and storage facilities (Karetsou 1981; Watrous 1996). The large quantities of ash found near the altar at Mt Juktas, and common at other such sanctuaries, indicates the practice of burnt sacrifice. Later legends refer to Mt Juktas as the tomb of Zeus (Evans 1921 a: 151 -63), the later Greek version of the Near Eastern storm god. In fact, Mt Juktas is the only site on Crete other than Knossos where monumental stone 'horns of

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consecration' have been found (D'Agata 1992: 249). As one of 7 sets of 'horns' (and over 30 fragments) found on the site (p. 249), this would have served as a visual and thematic link to Knossos. Objects were found at Juktas dating down to the Late Geometric period, and a fifth-century BCE inscription that mentions a cult of Zeus and Poseidon there indicates that the importance of the sanctuary persisted in cultural memory (cf. Watrous 1996: 72). It is possible that another similar ashlar altar might be assumed for Tel Dan either as a separate feature as imaginatively reconstructed on the site or as part of the bamah. There, a colossal horn fragment (1. 36 x w. 36 x h. 51 cm) was found in a baulk near the eighth-century BCE staircase for the 'high place' (cf. Biran 1982a: 139; 1982b; 1994: 202-3; Gitin 1989: 54*, no. 7, 59*). Another possibility is that this horn could have served as architectural decoration.3 This was a well-known function of 'horns of consecration' on Crete and may have also been the purpose of one of the 'horns of consecration' known from Kition. An Iron I or II 'cubicular shrine' model in the Israel Museum4 (inv. no. 1996.396) from Tel Rekhesh is adorned with a horn at each of the two corners of the front fa?ade (Weinberg 1978: 43-44, Fig- 18).

Figure 6. Tel Rekhesh, 'cubicular shrine' model (after Weinberg 1978: Fig. 18). 3. I am grateful to Norma Franklin for this suggestion. 4. This tantalizing model is the subject of a forthcoming dissertation by Hava Katz, who will hopefully provide a detailed assessment of it.

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Weinberg (1978: 43) has likened the horns to 'horns of consecration' while noting an absence of Levantine parallels. A row of circular clay pellets beneath the horns resembles the Aegean convention for representing beam ends. A figure resembling a snake is depicted horizontally across the length of the entablature above the door and below the horns. The horns, round pellets and snake all call to mind features connected with Aegean culture and support the idea that horns also functioned as architectural decoration in the southern Levant. There are several phases for the use and construction of the bamot at Tel Dan (e.g. Biran 1974a: 40-43; 1994: 159-214) and the horn fragment has been stylistically compared to that of the earliest horns at Megiddo and to the eighth-century ashlar altar at Beersheba (Gitin 1989: 63*). Thus, the date of the horn is somewhat open. Other features connected with Cyprus and the Aegean have also turned up at Dan in an earlier tenth-ninth-century BCE context. These include a large clay bathtub (cf. Karageorghis 1998) and several large pithoi with applied snake motifs decorating their surfaces. One of these pithoi also bears a stamp seal impression with a 'master of animals' motif of a male grasping antithetically placed ibexes (cf. Biran 1982b: 252*, 27, Fig. 13; 1994: 165-68), a motif also common in the Aegean and earlier in Mesopotamia (cf. Crowley 1989: 28-32, 413-14). With regard to the horned incense altars studied by Gitin (1989, 1992, forthcoming), a Cypriot connection might also be suggested based on traditions associated with the cult of Paphian Aphrodite, which forbade animal sacrifice. Only offerings of incense and fire were permitted at the main altar for her cult (Maier 1975a: 69-70; also James 1888). As in cultic installations found in the 'southern Levant' (cf. Graesser 1972) and Crete (cf. Warren 1990), the cult of Paphian Aphrodite was also aniconic. Bronze Age architectural remains from the sanctuary of Aphrodite include an altar base and the fragmentary remains of two 'horns of consecration' (Maier 1974: 137; 1975b: 444-45; 1976: 95; also Webb 1999: 61). Stelae with 'horns of consecration' continued to be set up in the sanctuary of Aphrodite in the Iron Age (Loulloupis 1973:238-42), and 'horns of consecration' are depicted on the famous Roman coins depicting the shrine (cf. Maier 1975a; Hill 1904: Pis. 14-17, 26; Westholm 1933: 207-208). Thus, the earlier use of horned incense altars in Syria and the later use of horned altars as incense altars in the 'southern Levant' would also seem to correspond to their use at the sanctuary of Aphrodite in Cyprus. This may illustrate a case of Cyprus being influenced by both Minoan and southern Levantine traditions.

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In a number of instances horned altars occur in association with olive oil pressing installations in Israel and in Philistia, possibly at Tel Dan (cf. Borowski 1982; Stager and Wolff 1981) and in at least three instances at Tel Miqne-Ekron. A relationship between cult and industry is also well represented in the Bronze Age, especially in Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age (e.g. Knapp 1986), while Stager and Wolff (1981: 97-98) cite an earlier tradition for the Levant beginning with the sanctuary at Nahariya in MB II. At Tel Dan the oil-pressing installation took the form of a sunken basin flanked by basalt slabs and sunken jars, and was associated with perforated stone weights (Biran 1980; Stager and Wolff 1981: 95-96). Although Biran (1980: 91, 95-96) associates this installation with water libations, others (Borowski 1982; Stager and Wolff 1981) more correctly associate it with olive oil production for cultic use. It is not entirely clear if the tentative tenth-ninth-century date for the installation would also associate it with the colossal altar, assumed on the basis of a horn fragment found there, or only with the smaller, horned incense altar found at Dan (cf. Biran 1974b). Three of the Ekron horned altars were found in association with 105 olive oil installations located in a 'belt' of factory buildings in the industrial zone of the city, near the city wall (Gitin 1995: 63-69). They date to the seventh century BCE. Each factory building contained at least one four-horned altar placed by the east wall near the entrance to the building's third room, an anteroom (Gitin 1995: 67). Gitin (1992: 43*; 1989: 60*) has stressed that these altars were found near entrance-ways, rather than in 'traditional' cultic-type contexts. In addition to cooking pots and additional oil processing installations, the anteroom of the buildings at Ekron contained loom weights for the production of textiles (Gitin 1995: 67). Gitin (in Gitin and Dothan 1987: 218) has observed that olive oil production would have been a seasonal activity and suggests that a second industrial activity, such as textile manufacturing, would have ensured year-round use of the buildings, thus strengthening the relationship between cult and industry. I propose that the placement of these three horned altars in association with both entranceways and industrial activities was meaningful for the Philistine inhabitant of Ekron, based on their historical links with both Cyprus and the Aegean. This association does not hold true for the wider corpus of horned incense altars, but only for those discussed here. Placing stone 'horns of consecration' in association with an entranceway was a feature characteristic of Minoan palatial architecture (cf.

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Hitchcock 2000: 98-101), while placing horned altars and other religious installations in association with industrial areas was well known in Cyprus (e.g. Knapp 1986; Hitchcock n.d.). In Cyprus, this occurs specifically at Myrtou-Pighades, where an olive oil press is located in association with the colossal horned altar, and at Kition, where 'horns of consecration' and temples were found in association with metallurgical installations (Hitchcock n.d.; also Hadjisawas 1992: 21, 23; Carter 1987: esp. 371). Burdajewicz (1990: 58) has also noted the significance of the spatial proximity between cult and industrial areas at Ekron. He (pp. 61,67) further notes a close relationship between workshops, storerooms and cult areas in Crete, and has used the term 'sacred economy' to refer to such relationships. Gitin (1994: 250; Gitin and Dothan 1987: 218) suggests that the horned altars and the burning of incense in the industrial quarter at Ekron implied priestly organization or governmental supervision in the production of oil. Although the horned altars at Ekron date to the seventh century BCE, Gitin (1992: 43*) has stressed their typological similarity to Israelite horned altars of the tenth century BCE. Yet Gitin (1989: 59*-60*) also argues for ethnic continuity of the Philistine culture of the seventh century with that of the tenth century BCE. The Aegean character of the Philistines at Ekron in the seventh century is supported by the inscription from Temple Complex 650 in which the ruler, known as 'kys (the Achaean), dedicates the temple to an Aegean goddess, Ptgyh (Pytho-Gaia) (cf. Gitin, Dothan and Naveh 1997; Schafer-Lichtenberger 2000: esp. 89-91). The way that the horned incense altars in the industrial quarter of Ekron were both used and situated seems to be unique to Ekron in the seventh century BCE (Gitin 1989: 61*). Using these particular horned altars in a manner that adheres to their spatial and functional context in Minoan and Cypriot cultures, namely as markers of entrance-ways and in association with industrial activities, strengthens Gitin's argument for ethnic continuity. In conclusion, this paper argues that the significance of horned altars extends beyond traditional biblical and chronological boundaries. In doing so, it follows the comparative traditions of Near Eastern scholarship established by Albright (cf. Flanagan 1988: 58-62). This tradition is continued in present research on horned altars by Gitin (1989: 64*), who argues for expanding the parameters of biblical and archaeological research into Israelite and Philistine religious practices, to include a broader east Mediterranean culture. This broader east Mediterranean culture includes the Minoans of Crete and the Cypriots of the Late Bronze Age who employed horned forms as architectural decoration and as altars in connection with marking transi

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tional spaces as focal points for ritual activity, and for religious practices connected with industrial activities. Other features too formed part of this broader Mediterranean culture, and those also discussed here include cylindrical cult stands, aniconic traditions and snake symbolism. It is hoped that further research will continue to explore the significance of these relationships and interconnections.

BRONZE AGE AGRICULTURE IN THE DEAD SEA BASIN:

THE CASES OF BAB EDH-DHRAC, NUMEIRA AND TELL NIMRTN

David W. McCreery

In the latter part of the twentieth century, a great deal of research has been focused on the Bronze Age sites in the Southern Levant. Although our understanding of Bronze Age settlement patterns and material culture is becoming increasingly clear, many questions remain regarding the nature of Bronze Age agriculture and human diet. In this article, I will focus primarily on the paleobotanical assemblages from Bab edh-Dhra', Numeira and Tell Nimrin as examples of Bronze Age agricultural industries in the immediate vicinity of the Dead Sea and seek to demonstrate the potential for these data to broaden and enhance our understanding of the development of Levantine culture during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (c. 3200-1550 BCE). Such an article seems appropriate in a Festschrift honoring Professor James W. Flanagan, given his interest in the social history of the southeastern Levant and his participation in the above-mentioned excavations as a senior staff member and director. Site Descriptions Bab edh-Dhra Taken together, Bab edh-Dhrac, Numeira and Tell Nimrin present evidence of human occupation spanning 1650 years (c. 3200-1550 BCE). Located in the Ghor edh-Dhrac, adjacent to the southern bank of the Wadi Kerak and approximately 5 km southeast of the modern village of Mazra'a, the Bab edh-Dhra' city site overlooks the Ghor el-Mazra'a from an elevation of approximately -200 to -220 m Mean Sea Level (MSL). The earliest evidence of permanent occupation at Bab edh-Dhra1 dates to EBIB (c. 30502850 BCE). It is estimated that the size of the original village (in EBIBEBII) was approximately 2-3 ha. During the EBIII Period, the settlement grew to approximately 4 ha and the fortifications were extensively remodeled and strengthened (Schaub and Rast 1984:35-50, Fig. 4; 1980: Fig. 19).

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Following the destruction/abandonment of the settlement at the end of EBIII, continued occupation of the site is found outside the fortifications to the south (in Field IX) and east (in Field X). There is minimal evidence of EBIV occupation within the walled settlement (in Field XVI), and it appears that throughout the EBIV Period, the EBII-III fortifications lay in ruins. At the end of EBIV the site was abandoned and never reoccupied. The extensive cemetery at Bab edh-Dhrac, located east, south and southeast of the walled settlement, at an elevation from -220 to -280 m MSL, was used throughout the Early Bronze Age. The cemetery appears to have been used most extensively during the EBIA Period, when shaft tombs with multiple chambers (from two to five) and disarticulated burials dominate, and EBIB-EBIII when round (EBIB) followed by rectangular (EBHEBIII), semi-subterranean, mudbrick charnel houses became common. EBIV shaft tombs and cist burials are relatively rare. Bab edh-Dhrac's occupational history is often classified as Proto-Urban (EBIA), with evidence coming primarily from the cemetery, Urban (EBIB-EBIII), supported by abundant evidence from both from the 'city' site and cemetery, and Post-Urban (EBIV), attested by scattered dwellings south and east of the fortified EBIII site, some evidence of occupation within the walls of the defunct EBIII site, and a few shaft tombs. Numeira The site of Numeira is located 13 km south of Bab edh-Dhra'. It sits atop the remnants of an old Pleistocene alluvial fan that overlooks the modern fan of the Wadi Numeira. At an elevation of-280 to -285 m MSL, Numeira is lower than the Bab edh-Dhra' settlement but at roughly the same elevation as the lowest, western end, of the Bab edh-Dhrac cemetery. At approximately 1 ha, Numeira is significantly smaller than its sister city to the north, but geological studies suggest that much of the northern section of the village has eroded away over the last 4000 years as a result of frequent earthquakes and floods in the Wadi Numeira (Coogan 1984: 81; Donahue 1984). Unlike Bab edh-Dhra', Numeira had a relatively short-lived occupation, restricted to the latter part of the EBIII Period. At the end of EBIII, the city was destroyed by widespread burning and never reoccupied. The fact that the doorways of most houses had been blocked indicates that the inhabitants of Numeira were aware of impending danger and made a hasty retreat, leaving many household items, including large, intact storage jars (Coogan 1984: 80-81). Unlike Bab edh-Dhrac, there is no evidence of EBIV occupation on the site and a cemetery has not yet been located.

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Numeira's location appears to be much better suited than Bab edh-Dhrac for defensive purposes, but modern appearance can be deceptive. If Donahue (1984; 1985: 135) is correct in postulating that from EBI to EBIII there was a spring inside the walls of Bab edh-Dhrac, that the Wadi Numeira flowed outside the walls of Numeira to the south, and that post-occupational changes in the course of the Wadi Numeira have destroyed the northern sector of Numeira (Donahue 1984: 84-88), Bab edh-Dhrac may well have been a more defensible location in the Early Bronze Age. The natural resources of the Ghor en-Numeira (especially arable and water) are not nearly as extensive as those of the Ghor edh-Dhrac (cf, Harlan 1981: 15559), which may well explain Numeira's relatively short-lived existence. Tell Nimrin The occupational history of Tell Nimrin provides a striking contrast with both Bab edh-Dhrac and Numeira. There is no evidence of occupation before Late EBIV/Early MBI (c. 2000 BCE). It is probably not coincidental that the earliest occupation of Tell Nimrin coincides with the retreat of the Dead Sea, allowing direct east/west access with the area around Jericho for the first time in thousands of years (Flanagan et al. 1996: 289). Located 12 km east-northeast of Jericho at an elevation of-187 to -199 MSL, the occupational history of Tell Nimrin lacks Tell es-Sultan's early, EpipaleolithicEarly Bronze Age occupation, but has substantial (5.5 m of depostion) Middle Bronze Age deposits. Like Jericho, there is virtually no evidence of Late Bronze Age occupation at Nimrin, but the settlement is reestablished in the late Iron I Period (c. 1000 BCE) and continues essentially without interruption (but with definite 'burn'/possibly 'destruction' layers) until the present day, flourishing especially during the Iron II, Roman-Umayyad and Mamluk periods. A notable difference in this comparison is that Tell Nimrin appears to have expanded to the west from the Iron I period onwards, and all the successive periods are represented on or near the periphery of the tell. In the case of Jericho, the settlement was relocated to new sites in the Roman-Byzantine (Tell el-cAlayiq) and Early Islamic Periods (Khirbet elMafjar). Returning to the discussion of the Bronze Age, it would appear as if Tell Nimrin was established as a satellite settlement of Jericho in the early Middle Bronze Age, just as Numeira may have been a satellite village of Bab edh-Dhrac in EBIII. In the case of Nimrin, the earliest phase of occupation consists of a series of small stone and mudbrick walls with associated surfaces and accumulated occupational debris of just under 1.54 m.

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The ceramic, faunal and floral assemblages, along with the architectural evidence, suggests that a small, probably unfortified village was established on the gently sloping alluvial plain of the Wadi Nimrin late in the twenty-first or early twentieth century (supported by C-14 dating). The successive, superimposed living surfaces and reuse of walls attests to a continued domestic occupation of at least the north end of Tell Nimrin throughout the early and middle phases of the Middle Bronze Age (Flanagan, McCreery and Yassine 1994, 1996). In the latter part of the Middle Bronze Age the situation at Nimrin changed dramatically. Domestic structures at the north end of the site were abandoned and massive stone and mudbrick structures up to 3 m wide and 4 m high were built on top of them. Deep fill layers to the south and east of the walls (towards the interior of the site) and a glacis to the west indicate that these MBI1C walls were part of a fortification system that created a platform or 'artificial tell' (Flanagan et al. 1996:281 -87). Similar construction techniques have been noted by Bourke et al. (1994: 93-96) at Pella, and Ussishkin (1989) at Jericho and Shechem. Very little evidence remains of the MBIIC living surfaces, which were probably badly eroded during the site's abandonment during the Late Bronze Age and then virtually obliterated by the tenth-century people who built their stone walls immediately on top of the MBIIC platform walls. As the above summary indicates, the excavations at Bab edh-Dhrac, Numeira and Tell Nimrin have produced, at least in broad outline, the occupational history of the sites. The fortified settlement of Bab edh-Dhrac developed to the north and east of the previously used EBIA cemetery, flourished throughout EBII-EBIII and continued to host a few inhabitants for some 300 years following the demise of the fortifications. Numeira was a short-lived settlement that does not appear to have undergone the incremental rise and fall that occurred at Bab edh-Dhrac. Established in EBIII, quite possibly by the residents of Bab edh-Dhrac, it was violently destroyed at the same time Bab edh-Dhrac met its demise. Some 160 km to the north, a small unfortified settlement was established on the south bank of the Wadi Nimrin about the same time that the last remaining EBIV inhabitants of Bab edh-Dhrac were abandoning the site. Following what appears to be about 300 years of peaceful occupation at Tell Nimrin, massive fortifications were constructed. Although no clear signs of the destruction of the MBIIC settlement have yet been discovered, the site's abandonment throughout the Late Bronze Age suggests that Nimrin was probably destroyed, or perhaps simply abandoned, at roughly the same time that MBII Jericho fell.

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A study of the paleobotanical material retrieved from these sites is helpful for further clarifying the economic history of the Dead Sea region in general and the sites of Bab edh-Dhra', Numeira and Nimrin in particular. The Paleobotanical Samples The vast majority of the surviving plant remains from Bab edh-Dhrac, Numeira and Tell Nimrin are carbonized specimens that were retrieved by means of a simple water flotation system (McCreery 1980: 31-36). From the 1975 to 1983 seasons of excavation at Bab edh-Dhrac and Numeira, a total of 1072 soil samples were floated (658 from Bab edh-Dhrac and 418 from Numeira). At Tell Nimrin, 440 samples were processed from the 1989-95 excavation seasons, 43 of which came from Middle Bronze Age contexts. The following discussion is based on those samples that come from well-stratified, sealed loci (cf. McCreery 2001). Of the three paleobotanical assemblages, the one from Bab edh-Dhrac is the most instructive, not only because of the larger sample size, but also due to the fact that this assemblage spans 1000 years. The Numeira assemblage is unique both in terms of the relatively short time period it represents as well as the richness of the samples, due to the extensive burning at the site. The Tell Nimrin assemblage is somewhat problematic for a number of reasons. The first problem relates to the limited exposure of the Middle Bronze Age strata. Only four excavation squares (N45/W25, N45/W20, N40/W20 and N40/W25) have reached MB levels. Secondly, the modern road cut on the north flank of the tell has destroyed some of the MB deposits and exposed remaining strata to erosion and possible contamination. Finally, the construction of the massive fortifications in MBIIC, atop the earlier MB domestic structures, destroyed some of the evidence from the settlement's early years and left few associated contemporary domestic loci, such as surfaces, tabuns, pits, etc., intact. Although scattered botanical remains were found in the fill layers contemporary with the MBIIC fortifications, the best, undisturbed MB botanical samples from Nimrin come from the remnant intact strata from the early part of the Middle Bronze Age (found in squares N45/W20 and N45/W25). Remains from Bab edh-Dhrdc Since the more technical aspects of the Bab edh-Dhrac paleobotanical assemblage have been described elsewhere (see McCreery 1980, 2001), the following discussion will focus on the major trends that are observable

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over time. It is important to note that virtually all of the ancient plant remains from Bab edh-Dhrac have come from domestic contexts within the EBIB-III city or domestic contexts in the post-urban, EBIV Period. Although the EBIA Period is well attested in the cemetery, to date no well-dated botanical remains or evidence of permanent domestic occupation from this period have been discovered. A few isolated plant parts have been recovered from the EBII-III charnel houses that may indicate when certain burials took place (McCreery 1980: 301-302). The almost total lack of cultigens from the extensively excavated Bab edh-Dhrac cemetery suggests beyond doubt that food products did not normally constitute a part of the grave good assemblages throughout the Early Bronze Age at Bab edh-Dhrac. One has to turn, therefore, to the paleobotanical material from domestic contexts within and around the Bab edh-Dhrac settlement in order to reconstruct the agricultural practices and human diet in the region during the Early Bronze Age. The EBIB (Stratum IV) botanical assemblage is dominated by barley (mostly hulled, six-row Hordeum vulgare, 50 per cent) and emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum, 33 per cent). Flax (Linum usitatissimum) and grape (Vitus vinifera)each constitute 2 per cent of the cultigen assemblage, and fig (Ficus carica) 12 per cent. Lentils (Lens culinaris), vetch/bean (Veda), and date (Phoenix dactylifera) constitute the reamaining 1 per cent of the cultigen assemblage. Mallow (Malvd) and pistachio (Pistacia atlantica} are also found in Stratum IV context and probably represent wild plant species that constituted part of the human diet. Pistachio does not grow in the Jordan Valley today and it is likely that the nuts would have been imported from the highlands (cf. Zohary 1972: 297-98; McCreery 2001). The Stratum III EBII botanical assemblage suggests a slightly more diversified agricultural system than that of Stratum IV. Barley, wheat and fig continue to be the most abundantly represented cultigens, and flax and lentil continue to be represented in small numbers. Major changes are suggested by the first appearance of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and olive (Olea europaea) and the fact that grape becomes much more common. Barley and wheat continue to constitute 83 per cent of the cultigen assemblage, but the fact that barley jumps to 63 per cent of the assemblage and wheat drops to 20 per cent suggests increased barley and decreased wheat production. When the Bab edh-Dhra' city was at its height in EBIII (Stratum II), a number of interesting changes are apparent in the botanical assemblage. Barley maintains its position as the dominant cereal crop and wheat

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production appears to continue its decline. Both fig and flax are represented by large numbers of seeds, indicating a significant increase in their importance during EBIII. Pea, vetch, lentil and olive are represented by a small number of seeds as are wild food plants mallow and jujube(Zizyphus spina-christi) (McCreery 2001). In the post-urban EBIV (Stratum I) cultigen assemblage, barley continues to be well represented, comprising 23 per cent of the assemblage. Wheat, on the other hand, continues its decline, accounting now for only 3 per cent of the assemblage. Flax and vetch are attested by single seeds. Fruit crops dominate the EBIV crops with fig, olive and grape constituting 73 per cent of the assemblage. It is noteworthy that 79 per cent of all olive pits recovered from Bab edh-Dhrac come from the EBIV assemblage. The increasing importance of fruit production through time is further suggested by the fact that in Stratum IV-H (EBIB-EBII), olive, fig and grape account for 14 per cent of the assemblage, whereas in Stratum II (EBIII) the figure rises dramatically to 60 per cent and in Stratum I (EBIV) to 73 per cent (McCreery 2001). Based on seed counts, the percentages and trends noted above should be used with caution. Given the large number of seeds found in a single fruit, fig was probably not as dominant as the statistics suggest. Likewise, singleseeded fruits, such as olive, may well have been more important than their numbers indicate. Pulses, which are not as likely to be exposed to the conditions necessary for carbonization as other plants, such as wheat and barley, and are less likely to survive the process when they are exposed to extreme heat, were also most likely a more important part of the agricultural economy than one might expect from their relatively low numbers. With these cautionary notes, there do nevertheless appear to be discernible adjustments that occurred in the agricultural/horticultural industries at Bab edhDhrac from EBIB to EBIV. Remains from Numeira There is not an exact correspondence between the crops and their relative importance at Bab edh-Dhra' and Numeira during the EBIII Period, but the differences are minor (McCreery 1980: 60-62, 65-70). The major cultivars—barley, wheat, flax, pulses, olive grape and fig—are the same at both sites and appear to occupy roughly equivalent positions of importance at both urban centers. Like Bab edh-Dhra', most of the barley is hulled, six-row Hordeum vulgare, and the wheat is predominantly emmer, Triticum dicoccum. Barley, fig, chickpea, grape and wheat emerge as the

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five most important crops at Numeira. Two striking anomalous samples from Numeira produced 175 chickpeas (sample 2197) and over 700 whole grapes (sample 2064). Because these samples are so unusual, they were excluded from the 'representative' samples used to identify trends at the site. The large number of grapes and chickpeas testifies to the sudden destruction of the city rather than indicating that these crops were more important at Numeira than they were at Bab edh-Dhrac during the EBIII Period. As Dennell (1978: 9) has noted, 'legumes...are unlikely to have been preserved in large amounts except when part of a settlement burned down'. Given the proximity of the sites and the longer history of Bab edhDhrac, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that Numeira did not experience the gradual cultural and agricultural 'evolution' that Bab edh-Dhrac underwent in EBI-II, but was rather established as a satellite community of Bab edh-Dhrac during the EBIII Period, complete with a broad spectrum agricultural industry that included cereal, vegetable and fruit production. Although the similarities between the EBIII cultigen assemblages are probably best explained as a reflection of nearly identical agricultural systems, the unique characteristics of each industry are almost certainly obscured by the exchange of agricultural commodities that would have taken place between the contemporary cities. Remains from Tell Nimrin As already noted, the Bronze Age botanical assemblage from Tell Nimrin is much smaller than those from Bab edh-Dhrac and Numeira. Due to the small sample size, greater caution is warranted in the interpretation of this material. Nevertheless, some interesting comparisons can be drawn between the Bab edh-Dhra', Numeira and Nimrin assemblages. It is important to remember that the Nimrin Bronze Age cultivar assemblage is later than the Bab edh-Dhrac and Numeira assemblages, dating to the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000-1500 BCE). From the earliest phases of occupation at Tell Nimrin, barley, wheat, grape, field pea, bitter vetch, lentil and chickpea are attested. Both fig and olive are also present but they are rare. Grape is the most commonly attested fruit. As is the case with Bab edh-Dhrac and Numeira, the most common variety of barley is six-row, hulled Hordeum vulgare. Both emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) are present. Here one finds a point of contrast. Whereas only minimal

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evidence of bread wheat is found at Bab edh-Dhra' and Numeira, at Nimrin, bread wheat and emmer occur in roughly equal amounts. In the later Iron I and subsequent periods at Nimrin, bread wheat comes to dominate wheat production and emmer virtually disappears. Very little botanical material has been recovered from the MBIIC stratum. Among the sparse remains from the fill layers associated with the MBIIC fortifications, barley and wheat are the most common crops, but chickpea, lentil, flax and olive have also been found. This small assemblage is very similar to the assemblage in the earlier Middle Bronze Age phase and suggests that, although the village undertook a major building program in MBIIC, the agricultural regime remained much the same. When compared to the tenth-century BCE botanical assemblage that contains large quantities of grape, fig and to a lesser extent olive, it appears as if viticulture and horticulture were much more common or important at Tell Nimrin in the Iron Age than in the Middle Bronze Age. On the other hand, the fact that grape, fig and olive are present in the basal occupation layers indicates that, from the time it was first established, viticulture and horticulture were components of the agricultural industry at Nimrin. Environmental Considerations An understanding of the natural environment of the Dead Sea region is essential for clarifying the nature of the agricultural systems described above. Arable land and a reliable water supply are the two essential prerequisites for successful agriculture, and although the casual visitor in the middle of summer may get the impression that both are in short supply in the Dead Sea basin, this is not the case. The current average rainfall in the Southern Ghor is approximately 65 mm (= 2.56 in.) per year (McCreery 1980: 209-10; Harlan 1981: 155). Rainfall in the region around Tell Nimrin at the northern end of the Dead Sea is significantly higher at approximately 140 mm per year (van Zeist 1985: 203). It is widely assumed that a minimum of 250 mm of rainfall is required for successful dry farming (van Zeist and Heeres 1973: 27). There is evidence that suggests that rainfall in the Dead Sea basin was heavier in EBI-EBIII than it is today, but, as Harlan notes in his discussion of the Southern Ghor: We do not know how much more rainfall the region received at the onset of EB, but it could not possibly have been sufficient for dry-land farming in the Ghor. Agriculture there would have depended then as now on rains in the highland depositing water that either ran down the wadi beds or

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infiltrated the rocks and emerged as springs. The stream and spring flows were surely stronger and more stable and dependable than now (Harlan 1985: 127-28).

A comparison of the ancient and modern wild flora of the Southern Ghor supports the conclusion that wetter conditions during the Early Bronze Age were not sufficient to alter dramatically the natural flora of the area from what one observes today (McCreery 1980: 120-29, 143-50). Despite sparse rainfall in antiquity, the abundant springs of the Southern Ghor and approximately 3300 hectares of arable land would have enabled the Bronze Age farmers to sustain a population of at least 4500 individuals at any given time (McCreery 1980: 209-26). The paleobotanical samples themselves support the conclusion that the agricultural industries of Bab edh-Dhrac, Numeira and Tell Nimrin were irrigation regimes rather than dependent upon rainfall. Barley, wheat and flax can all be grown as dry-farming crops, but the particular varieties found at Bab edh-Dhrac, Numeira and Nimrin, that is, six-row barley, emmer and bread wheat and large-seeded flax, are all indicative of irrigation regimes (Helbaek 1959; 1966a: 613-20; 1970: 211-13, 222-23; van Zeist and Heeres 1973: 26-27,29). Cultivation of fig, grape and olive in the arid environment of the Dead Sea basin would also have necessitated the use of irrigation. The prolonged use of irrigation at Bab edhDhrac may have lead to a soil salinity problem that might partially explain the decrease in wheat production over time. The results of semi-quantitative spectrographic analysis and Neutron Activation Analysis, which show increasing levels of Strontium and Boron (indicative of saline soils) in the cultigens over time, further support the theory of long-term use of irrigation at Bab edh-Dhrac (McCreery 1980: 153-208). The Rise of Horticulture in EB111 The evidence from Bab edh-Dhrac suggests a dramatic shift in the importance of horticulture from EBII to EBIII. This shift, which has been observed elsewhere, is sometimes referred to as 'the secondary products revolution' (Fall, Lines and Falconer 2001; Sherratt 1983). Although the Neolithic Period is correctly identified as the era of initial agricultural innovation when plants and animals were domesticated for the first time on a large scale, an often overlooked agricultural revolution took place in the Levant corresponding to the rise of the EBII-EBIII urban culture. This secondary products revolution involved, among other things, the adoption of animal traction, increased production of rendered animal commodities,

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such as wool and dairy products, and increasing cultivation of orchard crops that produced marketable secondary products, such as olive oil, wine and dried fruits. The shift from a primarily subsistence agricultural base to a 'market economy' that promoted the export of surplus agricultural products makes sense in an era when urban centers were at the apex of their prosperity and regional trade was flourishing. Unfortunately, the development of horticulture also led to widespread deforestation (cf. Fall, Lines and Falconer 2001) and ultimately may have contributed to the collapse of urban culture at the end of EBIII. The evidence for horticulture in the Bronze Age at Tell Nimrin is not as well documented as it is for Bab edh-Dhrac and Numeira, but the presence of fig, grape and olive indicate that fruit production was part of the agricultural regime from the earliest times of the settlement. This, along with the fact that horticulture appears to have continued to be an important part of the agricultural industry at Bab edh-Dhra' throughout the post-urban, EBIV Period, raises some interesting questions. EBIVBdb edh-Dhra' and MB Nimrin The EBIV/Early MB Periods are often described as an era of non-urban, pastoral nomadism. The EBIV and Early MB settlements at Bab edhDhra' and Tell Nimrin are certainly non-urban in character, but it is doubtful that they were inhabited by pastoral nomads. Although such seasonal crops as wheat and barley might be exploited by non-sedentary pastoralists (Zohary and Hopf 1998: 207-14), orchard crops, such as grapes, fig and olive, involve a much longer-term investment as well as long-term maintenance (Borowski 1987: 110-26; Hopkins 1985: 227; Fall, Lines and Falconer 1988: 117-20), thus demanding sedentary care-takers. The fact that horticulture survives at Bab edh-Dhrac following the abandonment of the settlement's founding, and is attested in the earliest EBIV/MBI levels at Nimrin, suggests that both sites were inhabited by sedentary agriculturalists rather than semi-nomadic pastoralists at the end of the Early Bronze Age. Citing similar evidence, Fall, Lines and Falconer (1998: 116119) came to the same conclusion regarding the nature of the subsistence patterns at the EBIII Tell Abu en-Ni'aj and the EBIV-MBIIC Tell elHayyat settlements. A combination of factors probably led to the final abandonment of the EBIV settlement of Bab edh-Dhra'. Although local horticulture survived the demise of the city, the collapse of urban culture throughout the region

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would have had a devastating impact on intercity trade, depriving local farmers of the market for which their products were so well suited. If soil salinity was as serious a problem as it appears to have been, local farmers may have found it increasingly difficult to grow cereals, especially wheat, as well as flax and pulses, thus being forced to rely more heavily on orchard crops for subsistence. Widespread deforestation, which accompanied intensified horticulture in EBIII, would have also made it increasingly difficult to obtain wood needed for fuel and construction. Seismic activity that disrupted acquifers and a drying trend in the climate might also have contributed to the abandonment of the EBIV settlement. Whatever the causes for the retreat, the recent discovery of the MB settlement of Zahrat adh-Dhrac 1, some six km east of Bab edh-Dhrac, demonstrates that the region was still inhabitable at the conclusion of the Early Bronze Age. Just as the last person closed the door and turned out the lights at Bab edh-Dhrac, others were in the process of establishing a new settlement on the south bank of the Wadi Nimrin at the north end of the Dead Sea. There are probably a number of reasons why Tell Nimrin was established at the same time life in the Southern Ghor was becoming more difficult. Unlike the Southern Ghor, which had sustained a substantial population throughout the Early Bronze Age, and smaller groups in the previous Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods, at the north end of the Dead Sea Nimrin had been isolated from the major urban center of Jericho by the high waters of the Dead Sea. As the Dead Sea receded, it opened up a relatively fertile, previously inaccessible region in close proximity to Jericho. In light of Jericho's long agricultural history (some 6000 years at that point), it seems reasonable that the inhabitants of Jericho would take advantage of the opportunity to exploit the newly available farm land. The broad spectrum, diversified agricultural system of the new village, complete with vineyards and orchard crops, strongly supports the theory that Nimrin was established by experienced, local, sedentary agriculturalists rather than transhumant pastoralists who were in the process of settling down for the first time. Springs are not as abundant at Shunat Nimrin as they are in the Southern Ghor, but the flow of the Wadi Nimrin/Wadi Shuaib would have supplied an abundant source of water for irrigation, livestock and human consumption. The location of Tell Nimrin on the banks of the wadi attests to the importance of this resource. At this point there is no evidence of environmental degradation in the Middle Bronze Age that might have contributed to the abandonment of

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Nimrin at the end of MBIIC. Given the relatively short-lived MB occupation of the site, the massive building project in MBIIC, and the welldocumented destruction of Jericho at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, it seems most likely that human conquest, rather than environmental factors, were responsible for the demise of MB Nimrin. EBI Bab edh-Dhra Over the past century, a great deal of attention has been focused on the EBIA-EBIB (Proto-Urban-Urban) and EBIH-EBIV/MBI (Urban-PostUrban) transitional periods. As the discussion above demonstrates, an analysis of the agricultural industries of these critical periods brings a new perspective to the debate. Although EBIV was essentially non-urban in character, and transhumant pastoralists surely played an important role in the economy of this era, it is also clear that sedentary, agrarian settlements, such as Bab edh-Dhrac, AbuNi c aj, Hayyat and Tell Nimrin, were significant players. This conclusion suggests a closer look at commonly held views relating to the transition to urban culture in EBIA-EBIB is warranted. The lack of evidence for permanent settlements in EBIA (c. 3200-3000 BCE), along with the presence of secondary, disarticulated burial in shaft tombs at Bab edh-Dhrac and elsewhere, has led many researchers to conclude that the EBIA inhabitants of the Southern Ghor were seminomadic pastoralists. Given the evidence, or lack of it, this appears to be a reasonable conclusion. Nevertheless, in light of discoveries over the past 30 years, this interpretation deserves further scrutiny. It is true that virtually no evidence of EBIA sedentary occupation has yet been found in the Southern Ghor. On the other hand, the same could be said about Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlements until recently. We now know that there were several pre-Early Bronze Age settlements in the vicinity of Bab edh-Dhrac (McCreery 1979; Bennett 1980; Schaub and Rast 2001). Given the Neolithic and Chalcolithic presence in the Ghor it seems reasonable to assume that scattered EBIA dwellings or even small settlements might exist but have been simply overlooked in the past, as were their low-profile Neolithic and Chalcolithic predecessors for so many years. Secondary, disarticulated burials are often taken as evidence of nomadic populations, but studies have suggested (Child and Child 1993: 179-85; Bentley 1987; Huntington and Metcalf 1979) that secondary, disarticulated

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burials are more common among sedentary populations than among nonsedentary groups. Thus the practice of secondary burials would appear to require a cultural and/or religious explanation rather than a strictly functional one. It is highly unlikely that there are yet to be discovered large EBIA villages in the Southern Ghor; nevertheless, it does appear to be the case that the founders of the EBIB Bab edh-Dhrac settlement were well acquainted with sedentary agricultural technology, including irrigation and horticulture, rather than newly arrived nomads from the eastern desert. Lapp was probably correct in concluding that the Bab edh-Dhrac cemetery was 'a burial ground for communal groups dwelling in the vicinity' (Lapp 1968: 25). A plausible scenario is that the descendants of the indigenous EBIA inhabitants of the Ghor formed alliances during EBIB, perhaps out of security concerns, and established the first settlement at Bab edh-Dhrac. This model of gradual, local evolution towards the establishment of urban culture in the Southern Ghor seems more reasonable, in light of what we now know of Neolimic-EBIA settlement patterns and ecological, agricultural and political realities, than the older models of the incursion of nomads from the east or urban planners from the north. Conclusions It is not yet possible to formulate a definitive reconstruction of the agricultural economy of the Early and Middle Bronze Age for the Dead Sea Basin. Nevertheless substantial progress has been made along these lines in recent years and a clear picture is emerging. Not all the contributing variables are yet fully understood, but it is clear that the florescence of urban culture in the Southern Ghor was accompanied and fueled by a dramatic increase in viticulture and horticulture. It is also clear that small, sedentary agrarian villages survived the demise of EBII-EBIII urban centers and helped lead to the revival of urban culture in the MBII Period. Much more research is needed to clarify and correct the analysis presented in this paper, but it is heartening to note that archaeologists are increasingly taking note of the story that the often-maligned 'seeds and weeds' have to tell.

CHRONOLOGY AND ARCHIVES—

WHEN DOES THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH BEGIN?*

Niels Peter Lemche

Introduction Part of the present controversy about the history of 'ancient Israel' has to do with the appearance of the kingdom of Judah as a state including an administrative bureaucracy, record keeping, and so on. In short: When did the Judaean state have archives, if at all, including record keeping in the form of chronicles or even royal annals? It has often been maintained that such archives must have been present, considering the state and form of chronological information contained in the books of Kings in the Old Testament, among such archives being synchronistic royal chronicles relating Judaean kings to the northern colleagues in Samaria. Can it, however, be more reasonably determined when and how such archives appeared? The chronological information preserved in the Old Testament indicates a change of reckoning in Israel after the fall of the house of Omri. Judah is different. Until the death of Joash, all regnal numbers are artificial. After that date, the historiographer might have had at his disposal other information that influenced the chronology of the last centuries of the history of the kingdom of Judah. In two very different studies published in the first half of the 1990s, David Jamieson-Drake (1991) and Michael Niemann (1993) reached remarkably similar conclusions about the early history of the Judaean state. JamiesonDrake "s synthetic study of the archaeological artefacts and settlement patterns shows how unlikely is a proper state in the southern part of the central highlands of Israel/Palestine before the eighth century, when a sharp increase in settled areas becomes visible. Niemann, for his part, bases his This is a slightly revised version of my lecture at the 1st Meeting of the European Association of Biblical Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 2000. I have kept the 'tone' of the original lecture.

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study on an analysis of archaeological remains as well as information within the Bible itself. It is indeed a classical study according to the best principles of the historical-critical school of Old Testament studies, and should be acceptable for most scholars, although its results are controversial. But Niemann concludes that a state in the proper sense of the word did not exist in Judah in the tenth century and only gradually developed during the next 100 years or so.1 What Niemann points at is indeed a kind of patronage state, as this writer described it in a lecture delivered at the German Archaeological Institute in Jerusalem in 1995 (Lemche 1996). By 'patronage state' I mean a state that is organized around a ruling family as its personal possession. It does not include any extended kind of bureaucracy except for what is necessary to regulate the relations between the ruling family—the patrons—and its clients, the ordinary population. That kind of state dominated the area during the Late Bronze Age, and did as a matter of fact survive as a typical form of political organization well into the Iron Age. I have described certain aspects of the system in a series of articles already published or soon to be published.2 This includes a personalized type of relationship between ruler and the ruled, regulated by contracts— treaties or covenants—and the distribution of local law that was in no need of a written and codified collection of laws. Patrons do not like to be told how to rule their clients. It is characteristic of such a political formation that it does not need an extended bureaucracy. The few officers mentioned in the overviews of David's and Solomon's administration would be enough—a point that did not, of course, escape Niemann's attention (although I would be less ready than Niemann to accept these lists as reflecting information from the tenth century, but that is a minor matter). A proper state—ancient as well as modern—needs an administration that can record such mundane matters as tax lists and the salary to soldiers, bureaucrats, artisans, and so on employed by the state. Its administration

1. It has sometimes been argued that the modem concept of a state has little to do with circumstances in the ancient world. This is to a certain degree correct. Many ancient Near Eastern states were not states according to the modern concept. We will some day in the future have to describe in a more elaborate way the different types of statehood present in the ancient Near East. The present situation is, as far as definition goes, one of confusion. The old distinction between the territorial state and the national state proposed by Giorgio Buccellati (1967) is hardly workable as he does not present a relevant definition of 'nation'. 2. Apart from the article mentioned above, see Lemche (1995a, 1995b, in press [a]).

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plans and directs the business of the state in its many aspects. It also entertains relationships with similar administrations in other states. It writes documents and stores them in archives for considerable periods of time. (We do have some indications that records in archives in the ancient Near East were not kept as long as those in modern archives.) Some sort of recording seems a necessary prerequisite to administer a state properly. A side effect of the existence of state recording is the establishment of a kind of chronological framework for the state administration, and at least in major centres some kind of chronology was established, normally based on the regnal years of the ruling king. Other systems were known, such as the Assyrian /zmw-system, according to which a year would be named after the holder of the office of the limu. This solution to the problem of recording time was close to the Roman system of the consular year.3 Sometimes the time reckoning resulted in the establishment of a state chronicle, that is, short year lists that include one or two important events relating to the year in question. At other times this kind of chronicling developed into literary compositions known as annals. We should not, on the other hand, overemphasize the importance of chronology and annals. We have, as far as I know, no records of any kind of chronological reckoning from the states of Syria and Palestine in the Bronze Age. Thus Ugarit, in spite of its plethora of documents and inscriptions, has never yielded anything like a chronological list or royal annals. Neither were official documents normally dated in Ugarit, say to Niqmadu's second regnal year, or to Niqmepa's fourth regnal year. An incantation or ritual text mentions a series of deceased kings of Ugarit (KTU 1.161). These kings are reckoned to be the predecessors of the present king, which shows that people were able to keep a record of past events or major figures from the past. However, so far no official administrative document has turned up with exact information about time that may contribute directly to the establishment of the chronology of ancient Ugarit. The relevant question in this connection is, did the states normally named as Israel and Judah have archives that included chronicles? The question was addressed by Montgomery almost 70 years ago (1934), and still remains important. How can we know if such an archive existed? If it existed, it would be an indication of the existence of state administrations and consequently proper states.

3.

Cf. the very comprehensive article by Arthur Ungnad (1938).

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The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel andJudah The Old Testament of course includes a series of references to some kind of chronicling of ancient events. The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel 1 Kgs 14.19 A general reference to Jeroboam's wars and reign. No details but a record of regnal years, 22 years. 15.11 A general reference to Zechariah. 15.31 A general reference to Nadab' s reign. 16.5 A general reference to Baasha and his great exploits. 16.14 Likewise a general reference to Elah, including his number of regnal years, two years. 16.20 A reference to Zirnri and his conspiracy. 16.27 A general reference to Omri and his exploits. 22.39 A reference to Ahab, including a mention of his construction of the house of ivory and his fortifications. 2 Kgs 1.18 A general reference to Ahaziah. 10.34 A general reference to Jehu and his exploits. 13.8 A general reference to Jehoahaz and his exploits. 13.12 A reference to Jehoash and his exploits. His war with Amaziah of Judah is included in the reference. 14.15 The same reference as in 13.12. 14.28 A reference to Jeroboam II and his exploits, including his wars against Damascus and Haniath. 15.11 A general reference to Azariah. 15.15 A reference to Shallum and his conspiracy. 15.21 A general reference to Menahem. 15.26 A general reference to Pekahiah. 15.31 A general reference to Pekah.

Most of these references are very general with almost no relevant information. A few include regnal years, and a few more some additional information about wars. They are normally attached to other notes about the change of regency, regnal years, burial or succession, but it is not clear— although likely—that this additional information also comes from the chronicles. The same can be said about other information enclosed in the narrative next to references to the chronicles, like the note about Pul's attack on Israel in the days of Menahem, and Menahem's tribute (2 Kgs 15.19-20). If an old chronicle of the kingdom of Israel really existed, we know next to nothing about its content.

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Will we get more relevant information when we turn to 'the chronicles of the kings of Judah'? The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah 1 Kgs 14.29 15.7 15.23 22.46 2 Kgs 8.23 12.20 14.18 15.6 15.36 16.19 20.20 21.17 21.25 23.28 24.5

A general reference to Rehoboam. A general reference to Abijam. A general reference to Asa, his exploits and his fortifications. A general reference to Jehoshaphat and his exploits and wars (unspecified). A general reference to Jehoram. A general reference to Jehoash. A general reference to Amaziah. A general reference to Azariah. A general reference to Jotham. A general reference to Ahaz. A general reference to Hezekiah. A general reference to Manasseh and his sins. A general reference to Amon. A general reference to Josiah. A general reference to Jehoiachim.

Everything said about the content of the references to the chronicles of the kings of Israel is equally valid when it comes to the references to the kings of Judah, except that there are no indications of regnal years in any of these notes. Only once is a note included about fortifications, in the case of Rehoboam. We have no idea about the shape and content of this chronicle; as a matter of fact we do not even know if there really was a state chronicle in Judah. For that matter, both the chronicle of the kings of Israel and the chronicle of the kings of Judah might be no more than a stray collection of information, relevant or irrelevant, maybe a prototype for the history of these kingdoms in the Iron Age. But we cannot know. A couple of references are followed by the information that a continuous war raged between the king of either Israel or Judah and his colleague in the south or in the north, but that is all. In conclusion we have to say that these references produce very little of interest to the historians, except that the information included also relates to the chronicles. This is possible but cannot be proved. We cannot exclude the possibility that the references to the chronicles are nothing but a literary device employed by the composer of 1-2 Kings. This demands a more extensive argument.

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At this point I have to refer to the more extensive argument in an article I just wrote (2001) about the concept of time in the Hebrew Bible, which is so far only in Danish. In this article the argument has to do with the existence of two different notions about time in the Old Testament. On the one hand, there is a quantitative understanding that calculates hours, days, weeks, months and years very much like we count them today, while on the other hand, a different system is also present that seems to indicate an interest in the qualitative meaning of time. This system invests no interest in the exact measurement of time, but is interested in the interpretation of the importance of time. The second system makes use of so-called pregnant—that is, important—numbers like 7 and 40. Here the idea is not that, for example, 7 days are exactly 7 days but that the number 7 is a kind of round number having a meaning in itself. The Hebrew slave of Exodus 21 has to work for 6 years in order to be set free in the seventh year. Joshua's army has to circle the walls of Jericho for 6 days, only to see them tumble down on the seventh day, and so on. The number 40 has a similar quality, and includes periods of time like the period of rain in the flood story, or the 40 years of Israel's punishment in the desert. Even 70 can be used in this sense, as in the case of the reference in Jeremiah to the duration of the Exile (Jer. 25.11). Sometimes we find the two systems in conflict, which is the case in the story of the flood in Genesis. In this connection, I published an article 20 years ago about the chronology of the flood (1980). In this article I argued that there were not two systems of reckoning time present in that narrative, but actually three, the third representing an endeavour to harmonize the different types of information presented by two previous systems. One system works with intervals of 7 days and 40 days, the other with fixed dates like the first day of the first month in Noah's 601st year. The third system emerged because of calculations that incorporated the fixed dates of the second system in the system of pregnant dates belonging to the first system. This third system produced odd numbers like the date of the beginning of the flood, the 17th in the 2nd month in Noah's 600th year, or the end of the flood on the 27th of the 2nd month of Noah's 601st year. The Regnal Years of the Kings of Israel Now, what kind of system rules the information in 1 and 2 Kings about the regnal years of Israelite and Judaean kings? If we begin with Israel after

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the division of the kingdom of David and Solomon, Jeroboam is said to rule for 22 years, Nadab for 2 years, Baasha for 24 years and Elah for another 2. None of these numbers carries any special value, although it is interesting that they total fifty years—or one period of the jubilee. We may argue that the calculation might indicate that, from the death of Solomon to the ascension of Omri, a period elapsed that covered one jubilee (disregarding, of course, Zimri's '7' days—but I think that that is allowable). We may, however, also argue that the numbers are casual, reflecting the actual periods of the reign of these early kings of Israel. Omri ruled for '6' years, and in the seventh his son, Ahab, who, like Jeroboam, ruled for 22 years, substituted for him. His successor was Ahaziah who ruled for 2 years. All together the dynasty of Omri reigned for 30 years. Thirty years is not a pregnant number that carries a meaning of its own. We may of course speculate about the numbers of the regnal years of the kings of Israel from Jeroboam to the end of the house of Omri. Three kings rule for some 20 years (the exact numbers are 22 or 24 or 22) and are in each case followed by a son who only rules for 2 years. It is also interesting that 'Omri ruled for six years, but in the seventh...' It may also be important for the reconstruction of an exact chronology based on these numbers that the 30 years of the house of Omri follows the 50 years of the first four kings of Israel. All together, these early kings of Israel ruled for 80 years, or exactly the same period as covered by David and Solomon. It looks like a chronology that is not exact but is based on a speculation in numbers that paid attention to the importance of pregnant numbers, in this case 40. Some may, however, still argue that the round number 80 from the death of Solomon to the ascension of Jehu is just another coincidence, and that the information about the regnal years may indeed rely on real information, for example in state-sponsored chronicles.4 When we move on to the dynasty succeeding the House of Omri, the line of Jehu, Jehu himself ruled for 28 years, Jehoahaz 17 years, Jehoash 16 years and Jeroboam 41 years. That makes 102 years, and there seems to 4. It has to be stated at this point that although many scholars, from William F. Albright to Erwin R. Thiele to John. H. Hayes, have diligently tried to make sense of the chronological information in the Old Testament about the Israelite and Judaean kings, their approach has consequently disregarded the possibility of pregnant numbers and established detailed lists of regnal periods based on numbers never intended to be quantitatively precise in any way. Cf. among the more recent contributions, which also includes most of the relevant literature, Hayes and Hooker (1988).

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be no reason to look for the presence of round numbers in this case. We should, however, not forget that the last king of the line, Zechariah, ruled for six months, indicating a change of the situation in the pregnant seventh month. The final line of kings of Israel includes: Shallum—1 month, Menahem— 10 years, Pekaiah—2 years, Pekah—20 years and Hosea—9 years, altogether 41 years and 1 odd month. No pregnant numbers here, not even when we put together the regnal years from Jehu to Hosea—133 years and 7 months. In conclusion: altogether these figures lend support to the assumption that some information about regnal years of the kings of Israel was available to the author(s) of 1-2 Kings. This is, however, more likely after the ascension of the house of Jehu. Until that date we do not know if official information about regnal years existed in the kingdom of Israel. We may question the validity of the information about the four kings following Solomon. We might also follow in the footsteps of Thomas Thompson (1999: 11-14) and cast doubt on the historicity of Omri, the ruler of Israel for six years, who was to be substituted by his son in the seventh year. We should not be surprised if the kingdom of Israel/Samaria/ Beth Omri did not possess any kind of official chronicle and that the author of this section of 1-2 Kings constructed the regnal numbers even of that dynasty. We cannot of course prove our case, but it is highly likely. Why does the character of the numbers change after the ascension of Jehu? We can only guess, but I think that one possibility has to do with Jehu's and his successors' status of vassalage to the Assyrians. Maybe the Assyrian administration wanted to know exact numbers and dates in order to incorporate information from the West into their own system of calculation? Maybe the administration of Jehu's kingdom was simply influenced by the habits of the Assyrians and changed from a system without a fixed time reckoning, a system resembling the one seemingly in currency in these quarters in the Bronze Age, into a system with exact dates? The Regnal Years of the Kings ofJudah When we turn to the numbers of the kings of Judah, do they show a similar change of 'pattern' at a certain point in Judah's history? Of course the two great kings of Judah, David and Solomon, both ruled for 40 years. No less would do. Moreover, David's reign is divided into two periods, 7 years and 6 months in Hebron, and 33 years in Jerusalem.

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Here the indication of the Hebron period plays with variations of the pregnant number of 7, which allows for the use of the numbers 6,7 and 8 in this connection.5 Rehoboam follows Solomon and rules for 17 years, whereas his son and successor, Abija, was only allowed 3 years on the throne. The numbers seem unconnected, but when we put them together we have 20 years, that is, half the time of either David or Solomon. This may be an accident and so not very important. However, let us turn to the next king of Judah, Asa, who reigns for 41 years. It is of course very close to 40, but it is not a round number. The problem of the 'extra' year may, however, be solved if we calculate the period from David's ascension to the first Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem on the basis of the regnal years of the kings of Judah. This period lasts for 461 years. From the ascension of Solomon it makes 421 years—an impossible date. It looks like an unnecessary extension of one year to Asa's reign that disturbs the harmony. So why was this number added? I will return to the question shortly. After Asa follows Jehoshaphat, who is allowed 25 years on the throne, then Jehoram with 8 years, Ahaziah with 1 year and Athaliah with 6 years. When these numbers are put together, they amount to 40 years. It is worth noting that Athaliah ruled for 6 years, and was substituted for by Joash in her seventh regnal year. By now we have seen this pattern so many times that we should not be surprised. Joash follows Athaliah. He rules—believe it or not—for an additional 40 years. After Joash follows a series of kings until the first conquest of Jerusalem. Amaziah rules for 29 years, Azariah for 52 years, Jotham 16 years, Ahaz 16 years, Hezekiah 29 years, Manasseh 55 years, Amon 2 years, Josiah 31 years, Joahaz only 3 months, Jehoiachim 11 years, and finally Jehoiachin for 3 months. There is no evident trace of any system here, and no special reward resulting in a long rule. Unlike the Books of Chronicles that have problems because of the untidy length of Manasseh's rule (thereby indicating that the chroniclers considered the number they inherited from their source to be problematic; cf. 2 Chron. 33), there is no special reward for good behaviour in the shape of a long reign. Nothing seems to speak against an extra-biblical source for the regnal years of these kings of the eighth through seventh centuries. However, problems may be in store. If these numbers are put together, they make 241 years from the ascension of Amaziah to Nebuchadnezzar's first conquest of Jerusalem. Again we

5.

Cf. the observations by Mario Liverani (1967).

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have this superfluous extra year! Like in the calculations of the kings of Israel, the two regnal periods of three months for Joahaz and Jehoiachin have not been considered. If the system is artificial, why does it include this extra year? We are in exactly the same position as before. The only relevant solution to the extra year I can think of is the additional nine years from the first conquest of Jerusalem to the rebellion of Zedekiah. This makes it 250 years from the death of Joash to the rebellion of Hezekiah, if we include Zedekiah's reign until the moment when he starts his rebellion against the Babylonians. But then we may ask why it was not the second and final destruction of Jerusalem that formed the basis of the calculation? I have no answer to this question at this time and am still speculating about a solution that might also have historical implications. Summary Now for an evaluation: In the case of Israel there was a definite change of system after the ascension of Jehu. Numbers become casual—accidental— and may reflect the existence of an official chronicle patterned after Assyrian practice. In the case of Judah we have a series of round and pregnant numbers until the death of Joash. Then the character of the numbers changes, and we cannot be certain that this is not due to a change in time reckoning in Judah, or can be traced back to some complicated calculations by the historiographer. It would have been nice not to get so close to a pregnant number when the individual figures are put together. The system of the second part of the history of the kingdom of Judah may be based on a complicated system created by the author of 2 Kings. In that case the historiographer had to pay attention to other information. After all, the references to kings of Judah in Assyrian annals place them— after our calculations—in the correct centuries and in the right order. If the system of the kings of Judah in the second part of its history is also a construct, it probably had to concur with information like the Assyrian Chronicles and royal annals. I shall not dwell on this point but return to the beginning of Judah's history. Four kings of Judah rule for 40 years (disregarding Asa's additional year). The system begins with 2 times 40 years followed by an interlude of 20 years, which is again followed by another 40 (in fact 41) years, followed by an interlude of 40 years (divided between three kings and a queen), followed by another reign of 40 years. This is simply too good to be true. It seems certain that there are only two possibilities. Either the authors of 1-2 Kings had at their disposal a system

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of pregnant numbers indicating regnal years or they simply invented the system. We should not be disturbed by, for example, the sequence following Asa: 25 years plus 8 years plus 1 year plus 6 years. As already mentioned the numbers look accidental, but when put together they make 40 years. It seems that the author of 1-2 Kings had decided in advance for a period of 40 years. At the same time he divided it between four different characters. In this connection it is not unimportant that his account of this period ends with a pregnant period of 6 years, to be followed by a change in the seventh year (the ascension of Joash). This decision to split a pregnant round number into lesser units that individually are not important is not unique. As already indicated, we may have more examples in 1-2 Kings. There are, however, other more and less complicated examples of this technique. One can be found in the list of the so-called 'minor judges' in Judg. 10.1-5 and 11.8-15. The list includes five judges, reigning respectively for 23 years, 22 years, 7 years, 10 years and 8 years. Altogether, this makes up 70 years. Now the number 70 is of course another pregnant indication of time and not exact quantitative information. We can therefore say for sure that the list is either preserved in its entity or has been manipulated at a certain point in order to reach this round number. Maybe this manipulation has to do with the story of Jephthah, which is framed by the list of the minor judges. By now, nobody should be surprised to hear that Jephthah reigned for 6 years. Somehow I would very much have liked to know what happened in the seventh year! But let us return to the early history of Judah from David to Joash. Will it be possible to find any explanation that elucidates the principles behind the selection of kings who reign for 40 years and those who only reside on the throne for a short period of time? I guess so, and the central issue has to do with the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem. What puts David, Solomon, Asa and Joash in the same league? It seems to have to do with the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem. David introduced Yahweh to Jerusalem, brought his Holy Ark to this place and installed the worship of Yahweh here. Solomon built the Temple. What about Asa and Joash? Asa reformed the cult in Jerusalem. That is the reason why he obtains such high marks in the eyes of the historiographer who composed 1 Kings (1 Kgs 15.11). He is indeed likened to David his 'father'. Finally, Joash also acted in favour of the cult in Jerusalem, repaired the Temple and introduced a number of reforms. He consequently also carries high marks. This looks like an idee fixee, a fixed topos, according to which the righteous king always acts in favour of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and is rewarded with a reign of 40 years.

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Of course two more kings follow who act in favour of the cult, Hezekiah and especially Josiah, but they are not included in the system of 40 years. How is this change to be explained? I would suggest as my thesis that it is likely in the case of Judah that the historiographers were in possession of some sort of official information about regnal periods, but certainly not before the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the eighth century. Before 800 BCE we are talking about at the most traditional history writ ing like the chronicles from the early Middle Ages (my first choice will of course always be Saxo Grammaticus and his Gestae Danorum). In this case it is impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction. After 800 the historiographer was in possession of additional information that restrained his freedom of invention. In the case of Israel it might well be a state chronicle, or he might have had his information from Assyrian sources. In the case of Judah it doesn't really look like information from a state chronicle of Judah, but maybe the historiographer in this case was able to deduce his numbers from other sources, like Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles and annals? Returning to the starting point of this article, how does what we have discussed pertain to the question of the emergence of a state society in Judah and Israel? In the case of Israel there might have been a change in the way events were recorded after the fall of the house of Omri. The observations concerning Judah seem to confirm the thesis of JamiesonDrake and Niemann. Before the end of the ninth century BCE, or at the beginning of the eighth century, there was no Judaean state in the proper sense of the word with an administration that included the keeping of official documents or state chronicles; in short, there was no elaborate bureaucracy. Anything that goes before that date seems to be invented history. When they constructed the past, the historiographers created history according to some preconceived paradigm that placed the cult of Yahweh in his Temple in the focus of the construction. The regnal years produced of kings of Judah from David to Joash are not related to reality. They are round—pregnant—numbers and not indications of quantities that can be measured with modem concepts of time. Although there are other indications of the emergence of a state in the early eighth century in Judah, this assumption finds little support in the available information about the regnal years of the later kings of Judah. Of course these numbers are not totally devoid of historical interest—the kings in question still ruled the territory roughly when they are said to have done so, but the individual numbers cannot be controlled except in a general way.

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The next step is to see how much we can reconstruct of the history of the two states of Israel and Judah on the basis of chronicles, if they had been available. I do not think that we can find much of interest. All we may present will have to be in the form of a virtual history, something imaginable but certainly not facts. I shall return to this another time.

THE POETICS OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL: SHAPING PALESTINIAN HISTORY

Keith W. Whitelam

Introductiion One of the marks of New Historicist writing is the opening anecdote.1 The power of the anecdote to offer access to a world outside of texts provides a fitting opening to a study on the power of conventions to shape representations of the past. While preparing to depart from Palestine, Richard Coeur de Lion received a message from Saladin which said: Jerusalem is our heritage as much as it is yours. It was from Jerusalem that our Prophet ascended to heaven and it is in Jerusalem that the angels assemble. Do not imagine that we can ever abandon it. Nor can we possibly renounce our rights to it as a Muslim community. As for the land, your occupation of it was accidental and came about because the Muslims who lived in the land at that time were weak. God will not enable you to build a single stone in this land as long as the war lasts (Khalidi 1996: 15).

Khalidi (1996: 16) notes that Punch carried a cartoon entitled 'The Last Crusade', celebrating General Sir Edmund Allenby's capture of Jerusalem This is a revised version of a paper read to the New Historicism Section of the Annual SBL Meeting in Nashville in November 2000. It is a pleasure to offer this as a tribute to the friendship and scholarship of Jim Flanagan, who has had the vision and courage to push the intersections of interdisciplinary studies in Biblical Studies. 1. See Gallagher and Greenblatt (2000:20-74) for a detailed analysis of the use of anecdotes in New Historicism. Speaking of Auerbach's influence, Greenblatt says: 'The influence is most striking in the adaptation of Auerbach's characteristic opening gambit: the isolation of a resonant textual fragment that is revealed, under the pressure of analysis, to represent the work from which it is drawn and the particular culture in which that work was produced and consumed. That culture in turn renders the fragment explicable, both as something that could only have been written in a moment characterized by a particular set of circumstances, structures and assumptions, and as something that conveys the life-world of that moment.'

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in December 1917; an event Allenby described as 'a Christmas present' to the British people. The cartoon depicts Richard Coeur de Lion gazing at Jerusalem with the caption, 'At last my dream comes true'.2 When visiting Damascus recently, I was told that when Allenby entered the city in 1918, one of his first acts was to visit the tomb of Saladin near the Ummayyad Mosque. My guide claims that Allenby placed his boot on the tomb and remarked, 'Saladin, we came back.' I have been unable to verify the anecdote—some associate it with Napoleon or one of his generals—and the incident is not mentioned in Sir Archibald Wavell's biography Allenby: A Study in Greatness (1940). However, the Punch cartoon and the guide's claim highlight an important theme—the idea of returning to fulfil history—which has been a central feature in Western historiography, and particularly the historical representation of Palestine. It is time's arrow, not time's cycle, that governs such conceptions of history: the inevitable progression of history toward fulfilment. Wavell's (1940: 275) account of Allenby's campaign for Megiddo in September 1918, in describing the boldness of the plan, draws an interesting parallel: he mentions that Josiah, 'the best of the kings of Judah', had been killed at the Musmus Pass and that earlier Thotmes (Thutmosis) III had won a great victory by using the same narrow pass to surprise his enemies.3 Wavell's hagiography, himself a general in the British Army, is a history of great men par excellence in which the theme of return is embedded in the central notion of the progress of history towards its goal. For Wavell, as for so many of his contemporaries, the military power of Britain, and its self-claimed moral authority, represented this culmination of history embodied in the great men of the empire, such as Allenby. He says of Allenby's entry to Jerusalem on 11 December 1917: 'Israelite, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Jew, Arab, Crusader, Turk, had entered Jerusalem as conquerors before the British. None of these nations can have been represented by one more impressive or worthier of his race than was Allenby, physically or morally' (Wavell 1940: 230). 2. Khalidi (1996:16) also mentions the memorial at Sledmere in Yorkshire in celebration of Sir Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picof fame, the architect of the New Order in the Middle East after World War I who died in 1919. The memorial consists of a 'figure emblazoned in brass, armoured and bearing a sword; under his feet lies a Muslim, and above him is a scroll inscribed, "Laetare Jerusalem", (Rejoice, Jerusalem)'. 3. Wavell (1940: 222), interestingly, does report that Allenby studied the Bible and Sir George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land 'almost daily' during his campaign in Palestine.

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While the sense of superiority or imperial self-interest are now well studied and easy to critique in hindsight, the continuing influence of the central themes that sit at the heart of the Western historiographical impulse are less exposed and therefore less well understood. Just as the idea of superiority, moral and military, seemed natural to Wavell and his audience, appearing to confirm the idea of the progress and culmination of history in Europe, so the teleological nature of history has become so ingrained and influential in Western scholarship that its continuing influence in shaping the history of ancient Palestine is generally ignored, or, when it is raised, vigorously denounced as the politically motivated whim of the few. It might be thought that grand-scale teleological histories reached their zenith in the late nineteenth century and have gradually withered away with the triumph of modern so-called scientific historiography.4 Certainly, many of the responses to recent challenges to the central planks of Israelite history as traditionally conceived suggest that this is a widely held domain assumption. But since 'most history continues to be written within a national framework' (Hopkins 1999: 202-203), it remains teleological; for as Jordanova (2000: 7-8) notes, 'the nation-state takes centre stage and becomes the goal towards which earlier processes are seen as leading'.5 These very themes, often in different guises, continue as powerful shaping influences in the study of Israelite history. A close study of the rhetorical strategies and poetics of writing on Israelite history helps to expose their existence and influence, thus aiding our understanding of how the history of the region continues to be represented.6 What is revealed below the surface rhetoric of the detached, objective biblical historian is a teleology, usually implied rather than explicit, that stretches as a continuous thread at the heart of Western historiography since its inception in nineteenthcentury Europe. In 1918, shortly after Allenby's entry into Jerusalem and about the time 4. Note, for example, the comment by Berkhofer (1995: 121): 'Grand-scale teleology may be dead in professional historical practice, but narrative teleology remains alive and well in historical studies.' 5. Jordanova (2000: 124) emphasizes: 'Modem history usually carries the connotation of being closely related to the present and, as a result, it can be both Whiggish and teleological. It tends to be implicitly goat-directed in that it takes the present as that which is to be explained, as if this were the point toward which previous trends were leading, and it departs from the assumption that "the winner's" standpoint is z kind of baseline.' 6. On the study of poetics in history writing see Carrard (1992), Berkhofer (1995' and Hutcheon( 1998).

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of his Megiddo campaign, James Montgomery, in a remarkable presidential address to the SBL, attacked the professed detachment of biblical scholars, a theme that was taken up almost 70 years later in Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's (1998) well-known address in 1987. Montgomery pointed out: 'We academics flatter ourselves on what we call our pure science and think that we are heirs of an eternal possession abstracted from the vicissitudes of time' (Montgomery 1919: 2). But to judge from many of the pronouncements that surround continuing controversies over Israelite history, it appears as if biblical studies has proceeded in apolitical vacuum, seemingly cut adrift from world politics, global crises or 'abstracted from the vicissitudes of time' as Montgomery put it. This is in contrast, of course, to other areas of the discipline that have been confronting the issues of globalization, localization and political engagement. If, as we have come to learn, texts are not self-sufficient, but, as Said remarks in his The World, the Text, and the Critic (1991: 35), 'have ways of existing that even in their most rarified form are always enmeshed in circumstance, time, place, and society—in short, they are in the world, and hence worldly', then so are biblical studies, its practitioners and their scholarly output equally worldly. The methodologies, including our histories, along with the very language, syntax and vocabulary of the discourse of biblical studies are enmeshed in, and often reflect, a world of shifting power relations. Biblical studies, operating at the intersections between academy, church, synagogue and world, is not a neutral discourse, but is indelibly marked with worldly affiliations. While it is relatively easy to demonstrate the worldly affiliations of historical studies from earlier in the century, the myopia of our own contemporary situation, with its strong passions expressed in the surface rhetoric of debate, only serves to obscure those same affiliations. Robinson and the Fulfilment of History Theodore Robinson's first volume, subtitled From the Exodus to the Fall of Jerusalem, 586 B.C., in Oesterley and Robinson's two-volume history of Israel (1932), provides a useful starting point for a consideration of a number of these issues.7 It opens with the following remarkable claim: 7. Robinson (1932: ix) prefaces his volume by stressing the need for accuracy and objectivity in the writing of a history, but then claims another duty for the historian: 'The laws which govern the evolution and progress of human society are as rigid as those which obtain in the physical world, though they are far more complex and

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To-day, it seems, we stand on the verge of a wholly new order, in which the division of mankind is to be neither geographical nor racial, but industrial. And it may well be that the historians of our age, writing in millennia still far distant, will look back on the year 1918 as the landmark which parts the old world from the new, and will assign to the audacious swoop of Allenby's cavalry through the gorge above Megiddo an importance equal to that of Tutmose IIP s bold passage of the same ravine. The latter was the movement leading to the victory of the age; the former was the turning-point in the military action of a war which may well prove to be its close (Robinson 1932:4).

The worldly affiliations of Robinson's history can scarcely be denied: Israel's history is set in the context of imperial development, culminating in Britain's conquest of Palestine in the shape of Allenby. Wavell, in drawing the same parallel with Tutmose (Thutmosis) III in his biography eight years later makes no mention of Robinson's work. Yet this striking paragraph and its parallel clearly illustrate the worldliness of histories of Israel, as well as their subtle interconnections and the way in which they are necessarily implicated in the politics of their own day. Yet once we are into the body of the main text, detachment from such affairs is maintained through the inferred authorial voice, the implied historian who speaks in the third person. It is, as Berkhofer (1995: 160) notes, 'the textual norm for professional history... In historical texts personal production is suppressed in favor of seemingly neutral and distanced description; the use of impersonal linguistic conventions promotes a seeming transparency to the past.'8 This seeming transparency to the past and the poetics of 'impersonal linguistic conventions' by which it is achieved hides the connections of Robinson's history to its world. Robinson has constructed a narrative on the grand scale that moves from promising beginning, significant middle, to tragic end. Its opening section, 'Israel's Heritage', makes Israel the subject of Palestine and its history well before 'The Birth and Growth of the Nation' as described in the second section. The full significance of its history is revealed in section three with 'The Israelite Monarchy: Its Rise and Zenith', before the tragic denouement in the final section, 'The Israelite Monarchies: Their Decline elusive than the principles of material Nature. It is the duty of the historian to discover, propound, and illustrate those laws, in so far as they affect the people and the age which he has under review.' 8. Robinson occasionally departs from this pose with the use of the first person plural (e.g. 1932: 195). Here the first person plural implies the imperial 'we' of the community of professional historians (see Berkhofer 1995: 161), thereby adding further authority to the weight of the pronouncement.

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and Fall'.9 David is the hero of this narrative as the founder of the state— 'perhaps never again in her history, was Israel to produce another David' (Robinson 1932: 235)10—after his hero departs from the scene, the story is one of decline, a decline only briefly arrested by Josiah.11 The indigenous population are virtually invisible in Robinson's narrative, or removed through assimilation when he claims that many pre-Israelite groups contributed to 'the blood of later Israel' (Robinson 1932: 36).12 Yet then, in a most remarkable statement, he denies Israel's claim to the land by affirming that its legacy is democracy and its monotheism. Israel's role was spiritual not territorial: a claim not insignificant in 1932 from a British perspective.13 Israel, which he acknowledges continues to his own day, had forfeited its territorial legacy because it failed to maintain the nation-state of David: 'Israel,' he says, 'had no political instincts, and it fell to her to be governed by men who, in this respect, were typical of their race.' Here is a strongly teleological narrative in which the nation-state takes centre stage. But the sub-themes of lack and inadequacy leading to tragic decline and the loss of the state play an integral role in the way in which Robinson's narrative claims this past—the significant middle—for imperial 9. Enlisting the authority of the professional guild of biblical scholars, he says (1932: 176), 'It falls to us now to attempt to trace what were the steps by which Israel succeeded in establishing a unified state in Palestine, and so created a people who, alone of the ancient nations, have preserved their national identity to this day.' 10. Although he does not explicitly reveal the inner workings of David's mind, his intimacy implies that he understands and empathizes with David's character and the difficult decisions with which he is faced. The narrative is given added authority through his intimate portrait of David, 'in whose veins the red blood ran strongly' (1932: 202). Incidentally, a portrait strikingly similar to WavelPs assessment of Allenby in the final pages of his biography. 11. This is prefigured in the opening line of the next chapter: 'It was, perhaps, a calamity for Israel that David's successor was one of his younger sons' (Robinson 1932: 240). Notice, however, his description of David's kingdom (1932: 224): 'Here, then, at last, is a genuine Palestinian kingdom, established for the first and only time in the history of the land. Its limits may not have extended quite as far as those claimed for it, but they certainly included much more than has ever been under a single native Palestinian monarch, before or since.' 12. The indigenous population are subsumed in the opening section on Israel's heritage, which deals with 'the land of Palestine' and the 'races of Palestine', where he claims that' it may be doubted whether any people composed of such diverse elements has ever played so important a part upon the stage of history' (Robinson 1932: 44). 13. His final verdict is that 'more truly than any other nation in history, she existed in virtue of her faith' (Robinson 1932: 444).

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Britain in the shape of Allenby, who returns to fulfil history.14 In hindsight, Robinson's rhetorical strategy and linguistic conventions come as little surprise in the context of the Rankean paradigm that dominated Western historiography. For von Ranke, European states of his day were 'spiritual substances...thoughts of God', as he termed them, supreme examples of God's purposes working themselves out on earth (Evans 1997: 18).15 But this grand teleological narrative does not fade with Robinson and his contemporaries. Bright and the Triumph of Christianity Robinson's volume is set during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine, and, as we have seen, its opening words link the past to the present reality of British imperial control. The model used is that of the nation-state, the development of national consciousness, and what he terms the unity of 'Church and State'. Yet this major history within the English-speaking world was soon to be replaced by American scholarship, particularly by the work of Albright and his students, culminating in the publication of John Bright's classic A History of Israel (I960). Oesterley and Robinson's chief rival had been Bailey and Kent's textbook History of the Hebrew Commonwealth, published in the 1920s. Just as American imperial power gradually replaced that of the British in the region, so its vision of the Israelite past, enshrined in chapters on 'The Cradle of Democracy' (which deals with Israel in Egypt and the Exodus) or 'The Struggle for Independence' (on the period of the Judges), replaced the British vision. It is not just that models chosen to represent the Israelite past reflect the present, with German scholarship obsessed by the movement from tribal confederation to unified state or American scholarship emphasizing the concept of 'the Chosen People', the conquest and the manifestation of divine will in the historical realm (see Sasson 1981). The competition between these models reflects wider geopolitical shifts and imperial competition within the region.

14. As Berkhofer (1995: 121) notes,' endings give coherence to the overall story, just as beginnings are selected to make sense of that coherence'. The exceptionalism of Israel is claimed by first Oesterley and Robinson for Britain and then Bright for the USA. But it is the middle that is significant. 15. See von Ranke (1973:119). For the historical role of Christianity as central to von Ranke's work, see Krieger (1977: 151).

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The eventual triumph of Bright's history in the English-speaking world, with its antecedents in the work of Kent and Bailey's textbook, and particularly inspired by Albright's scholarship, reflects the movement of power in the region. The critical moment that Robinson focuses upon, Allenby's triumph in 1918, is the time when Albright first comes to Palestine to begin his pioneering work. It is also the period when American scholarship was beginning the definition of a distinctive biblical interpretation, and the critical point when American imperial power began to challenge and replace that of Britain. James Montgomery, in his SBL presidential address that year, stated that 'the opportunity has come for American scholarship to assert its independence and attempt to work out its equality with that of other nations of the earth'. The fortunes of the interpretative traditions of the Great Powers illustrate that internalist accounts alone, which concentrate on the great personalities of biblical studies divorced from their social and political context, are insufficient to explain the changing shape of biblical studies. In my final years at school in a small town on the east coast of England, I studied three A-level subjects, History, Economics and Divinity, as prerequisites for University entrance. Divinity consisted of three sections— Old Testament, New Testament and Church History. The Old Testament section was basically a historical survey, with the set text being John Bright's A History of Israel—a book I loved, and still love, and I retain my original school copy of the first edition. It was, of course, standard reading when I went to university and discovered Martin Noth's classic in translation. But it was to Bright that I owed allegiance, my faithful guide since my school days, and whose style I found easier to comprehend than the rather formal style of the translation of Noth's work. I was unable to offer any reasons that might look like informed judgment for my preference for Bright over Noth. Yet Bright shaped my perceptions, just as it developed my love of Israelite history. I have continually returned to Bright over the years, rereading sections of it on a regular basis. It is a rich and fascinating book. At first glance the shape of Bright's history and its rhetorical strategy appear to move beyond Robinson's tragedy towards restoration. It opens with a Prologue, 'The Ancient Orient before ca. 2000 BC', including a subsection 'A. Before History: The Foundations of Civilization in the Ancient Orient', then moves on to 'Antecedents and Beginnings: The Age of the Patriarchs', 'The Formative Period', 'Israel under the Monarchy: The Period of National Self-determination', 'The Monarchy (Continued): Crisis

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and Downfall', 'Tragedy and Beyond: The Exilic and Postexilic Periods', 'The Formative Period of Judaism', and concludes with an Epilogue entitled 'Toward the Fullness of Time'. Again it is a grand-scale teleological narrative, dominated by time's arrow, in which the plot moves from before history to the fullness of time. In re-examining the poetics of Bright's history, the most surprising feature, at least for me, is that he does not adopt the professional norm of the implied historian to give authority to his account. Instead, from the very first paragraph, he immediately reduces the distance between the reader and the implied historian through the use of the first person plural. This is not the imperial 'we' of the professional guild, but a direct engagement of the reader through 'verbal association' (Berkhofer 1995: 161). Berkhofer (1995: 161), in Beyond the Great Story, describes this 'we' as 'an attempt at author-reader complicity through the linguistic construction of the text, an acknowledgment of the social contract underlying the genre'. Packed as it is with information about world history, archaeology and biblical studies, the reader is not bombarded with facts in an impersonal manner, but is drawn into the narrative through gentle persuasion and engagement.16 It is now that I begin to understand the persuasive hold Bright had for me as a student. Critically, it is also a linguistic convention that unites historian and reader in the present: thus Bright (1960: 17) is able to say on the opening page, just as the Deuteronomist addressed his audience, 'To us who live in this late day, the second millennium BC seems very long ago indeed.' As Robinson placed the significance of Israelite history in his own time so Bright locates historian and reader in proximity to completion: the fullness of time.17 16. Like Robinson, Bright develops an empathy with his historical characters to the extent that he is able to understand their motivation or has access to privileged information: 'If, as Sanballat charged (Neh. 6.6f.), there were any in Jerusalem who were preaching rebellion, we may be sure that Nehemiah gave such talk short shrift' (Bright 1960: 368). Again the reader is drawn into the conclusion with the inclusive first person plural and reassured that Nehemiah is of unimpeachable character. 17. A consideration of counterfactuals in history highlights, as Ferguson (1997: 5290) argues, that many accounts of history are teleological. This has certainly been the case in biblical studies, where an exceptionalist view of Israel has dominated historical reconstruction for much of this century. It is expressed explicitly in Albright's (1957: 126) theology of history which has been so influential within the discipline: 'The sympathetic student of man's entire history can have but one reply: there is an Intelligence and a Will, expressed in both History and Nature—for History and Nature are one.' However, teleological assumptions are also implicit within more recent constructions of Israelite history.

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The answer to Bright's (1960:446) question, What is the destination of Israel's history? is surprisingly that Israel, apart from Judaism, has no further significant history (p. 447). The continuation of the Samaritan community is described as only 'a fossil of minimal historical importance' (p. 447). He refers to it as '& Heilsgeschichte that never in the pages of the Old Testament arrives at Heil (salvation); it is a Heilsgeschichte that is not yet a Heilsgeschichte—a story without theological terminus' (p. 448). Central to this textualization of time are the themes of lack, inadequacy and unfulnlment: Israel's is a 'history of rebellion, failure, frustration, and most bitter disappointment, in which hope is often dashed, ever deferred, and at best only partly realized' (p. 448). Just as Bahrani (1998: 162) notes that Western scholarship viewed civilization as 'an organic universal whole', in which Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilization represents human culture's infancy, but was an infant that never grew up, so, for Bright, first Canaan, then Israel, though crucial to the history of the West, ultimately fail to mature. The notion of prehistory—the stage on to which Israel stepped—plays a critical role in this textualization of time. Canaan's religion is dismissed as 'an extraordinary debasing form of paganism' (Bright 1960: 108),18 while Canaan was, he says, 'a patchwork of petty city states' incapable of creating unity (1955: 21).19 Though it is with David 'that a new and different Israel emerges' (1955: 350), later Israel is incapable of fulfilling the promise: it awaits fulfilment in the fullness of time. For Bright, Israel's direction might be described as 'a legitimate answer' from a historical perspective, but it offers no fulfilment, no telos. Judaism, in Bright's evolutionary scheme, represents little more than a side branch from the main trunk: it is the main trunk that points towards the true path of evolutionary development and its

18. 'It was the sort of religion with which Israel, however much she might borrow the culture of Canaan, could never with good conscience make peace' (Bright 1960: 109). This remark comes after he describes the religion as consisting of 'numerous debasing practices, including sacred prostitution, homosexuality, and various orgiastic rites' (1960: 109). The theme of inadequacy is, of course, central to this notion of what was lacking from Canaanite religion. 19. Bright elaborates on this in his The Kingdom of God in Bible and Church (1955:21): 'And when at last the power of the pharaoh slipped away, there remained a political vacuum. Left without a master were the Canaanite kinglets, each behind the ramparts of his pitiful walled town. Virtually every man's hand against his neighbour in a sordid tale of rivalries too petty for history to notice. No unity existed, and Canaan was incapable of creating any.'

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culmination.20 This is a strongly Rankean conception of history as 'the outworking of divine purpose', whose textualization of time places the nation-state, and so the (Protestant) West, as the subject and pinnacle of history. Bahrani (1998: 162) has argued that such a structuring of historical time is not only a teleological device but is also 'necessary for the operations of taxonomy which were so crucial for the colonialist project'. While it is generally accepted that, within the evolutionary process, civilization was passed from the Near East through Greece and Rome to the modern West, he points out that 'this unilinear time also acts as an organising device for a taxonomy of political systems which are then aligned racially to particular past cultures that are, in turn, seen as the developmental steps of the human cultural organism' (1998: 162). Although it is only with hindsight that such teleological schemes and their implications have become apparent, their influence on shaping the history of Palestine remains far-reaching. Peter Novick (1988) has documented how the pre- and post-World War II periods saw American culture turn toward affirmation and the search for certainty, resulting in the triumph of'objective science' and 'the objective fact'. The fear of the cacophony of interpretative voices in contemporary biblical studies is less a contrast with the critical juncture that emerged at the end of the last century, reflected in the works of Wellhausen and Robertson Smith, than with what Novick (1988:61) termed 'the extraordinary degree of ideological homogeneity' that characterized American scholarship in the postwar period. This is reflected in Bright's history, underpinned as it is by the Albrightian theology of history with its confident evolutionism, the pronouncements of the Biblical Theology movement, and confidence in the historicity of texts and their handling that characterized biblical studies at this time. The period of American exceptionalism is reflected in the presentation of the uniqueness of Israel, whether its material features (the four-roomed house or collared rim ware), its poli20. The most remarkable statement of all, however, is his claim that 'to the Jew therefore, Old Testament theology finds its fruition in the Talmud. The hope of the Old Testament is to him a thing yet unfulfilled, indefinitely deferred, to be eagerly awaited by some, given up by others (for Jews are probably no more of one mind where eschatology is concerned than are Christians), secularized or attenuated by still others. Thus the Jewish answer to the question: Whither Israel's history? It is a legitimate answer, and from a historical point of view, a correct one—for Israel's history does continue in Judaism' (Bright 1960: 452). But as he makes clear, there is no fulfilment, no telos. In a sense, this removes Israel from its history more thoroughly than Robinson, who removed it from the land but left it a spiritual mission.

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tical and social organization (for George Ernest Wright it was a unique mutation) and its theology and sacred literature. The works of this period are imbued with the language of 'manifest destiny', the frontier, and democracy. Recent attacks on ideology, and appeals to objectivity and facts, mark a return to the intellectual climate of the 1950s (Barr 2000). The insistence by postwar biblical specialists and others in the humanities that their work was free of ideological taint provides, as Novick (1988: 301) notes, a textbook illustration of the truth of Mannheim's assertion that the greatest strength of ideologies in the subordination of intellect to power is that they are common sense. The celebratory tone of scholarship in this period both reflected and reinforced the confidence in objectivity. To be part of the consensus was to be objective (Novick 1988: 321); to challenge this consensus runs the risk of being dismissed as subjective, cynical or an ideologue. The contemporary appeal in biblical studies to objective facts in the hope of a return to a postwar Utopian landscape simply continues the delusion and the denial of the interconnections between the academic and political realms. It is clear that Robinson and Bright, despite the different voices they adopt, do not let the facts speak for themselves: the shape of their histories is not inherent in the facts but part of their worldly affiliations. Many think that such schemes are only of interest as a distant and unconnected phenomenon in the study of the history of the discipline. Yet this is a failure to comprehend the continuing force of the poetics of Israelite history, the intricately woven discourse of biblical studies. The unilinear scheme of time, the notion of return and fulfilment, or the themes of lack and inadequacy are not fossilized relics to be displayed as part of the history of our discipline. They are part of the 'buried network of assumptions', to borrow Gallagher's and Greenblatt's phrase (2000:40), which still inform the representation of ancient Israel and the history of ancient Palestine. This network of assumptions, often in different guises, continues to shape our histories of the region. Contemporary Scholarship: The Continuing Power of the Poetics of Israelite History Coogan and the Shape of the History of the Biblical World The crisis of confidence which overwhelmed the discipline in the 1970s and 1980s, highlighted by the disappearance of major single-authored

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volumes on the history of ancient Israel, following the publishing boom of the 1980s, has been replaced by a number of multi-authored volumes, reflecting the growing specialization and fragmentation of the study of the history of the region. Such volumes, alongside many specialist studies, suggest a renewed confidence in the historical enterprise. One of the most recent, The Oxford History of the Biblical World, edited by Michael Coogan, differs little in its shape and inherent assumptions from the traditional pattern witnessed already in Robinson and Bright. Despite the fierce methodological debates and their surface rhetoric that have drawn so much attention in recent years, the 'buried network of assumptions' that informs the discourse of biblical studies continue to shape the history of ancient Palestine. The emplotment of Coogan's volume follows a familiar pattern: it opens with 'In the Beginning: the Earliest History', and then moves on to 'Before Israel: Syria-Palestine in the Bronze Age', 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt', 'Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel',' "There Was No King in Israel": The Era of the Judges', 'Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy', 'A Land Divided: Judah and Israel from the Death of Solomon to the Fall of Samaria', 'Into Exile: From the Assyrian Conquest of Israel to the Fall of Babylon', and then continues on through the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods. The shaping of the history again presupposes a notion of progression, even though the evolutionary scheme of Robinson and Bright is not nearly as explicit. Yet despite the multiple authors, it remains a strongly teleological narrative. Coogan's introduction (1998: ix) suggests that the Bible 'requires a knowledge of the contexts in which it was produced, and many cultures of the ancient Near East and the ancient Mediterranean—the biblical world', which he defines as spanning two thousand years and three continents. Yet this is a history, just like Robinson's and Bright's, dominated by the absence or presence of Israel as signalled in the title of the second chapter, 'Before Israel: Syria and Palestine in the Bronze Age'. The rhetorical strategy is no different in that vast periods of time, and vast geographical areas, are claimed for Israel before its appearance on the scene. Revealingly, although the chapter by Stager deals in large part with Philistine settlement and material culture, it is entitled 'Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel' .21 Coogan argues that 'it is appropriate to set

21. Notice Bahrani's (1998: 161) claim: 'In other words, I would like to open up the field of politicising inquiry in archaeology to consider Mesopotamia not as a factual historical and geographical entity waiting to be studied, excavated and interpreted

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the core of our history into a larger context, as biblical tradition itself does, for there are demonstrable continuities between the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East and ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity' (Coogan 1998: i-x), adding that 'the cultures of the ancient Near East are the direct ancestors of our own in many respects, especially as mediated through the Bible'.22 What he expresses here, of course, is the notion of an organic universal whole in which the teleological structuring of time culminates in Western culture. Israel and 'the biblical world', as he terms it, become part of 'the metanarrative of human culture' to use Bahrani's phrase (1998: 160). Once again, the central chapters are concerned with the movement to statehood as the defining essence of Israel.23 But as Chakrabarty (1994: 349) points out when discussing Indian history, 'to think this narrative was to think these institutions at the apex of which sat the modern state, and to think the modern or the nation state was to think a history whose theoretical subject was Europe'. Just as Bright's volume opened with 'Before History' and moved to the fullness of time, so Coogan's volume opens with 'In the Beginning: The Earliest History' and moves to 'Transitions and Trajectories: Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire'. Barbara Geller's final chapter, in considering these different trajectories, offers an altogether more inclusivist reading than Bright's Epilogue: 'Perhaps the visions of and yearnings for Jerusalem the holy,' she says, 'the ideal Jerusalem, embedded in centuries of Jewish, Christian and Muslim literature, can serve as a reminder of that which brings together the children of Abraham and all of humankind' (Geller 1998: 444). Yet once again the history of civilization is conceptualized as an organic whole, with religion as the organizing principle. But as Richard King (1999: 400) shows, following Talal Asad, 'the concept of "religion" is the product of the culturally specific discursive processes of Christian history in the West and has been forged in the crucible of interreligious conflict and interaction'. Like the terms 'mystical' and 'mysticism', he argues, '"religion" is a culturally specific social construction according to one set of conventions or another, but as a product of the poetics of a Western historical narrative.' 22. Coogan recognizes the Eurocentric nature of the claim that civilization proceeds from East to West and the way that the terminology of the region is culturally determined. 23. Surprisingly, the opening chapter retrojects the nation-state back into the discussion on the Early Bronze Age and the continuity from the growing urbanism of the Chalcolithic in a section entitled 'The Rise of Cities and Nation-States'.

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with a particular genealogy of its own'. A trajectory, of course, describes the path of a projectile moving under a given force and so implies linear movement. While the rhetorical shape of the volume makes Israel the subject of this history, in its absence or presence, despite the claim to cover 'the biblical world', the hidden subject is again the West and its inheritance of the region within the grand scheme of the universal history of culture. The precise voice adopted by the various contributors differs from chapter to chapter, but throughout it is the detachment of the professional historian that predominates, with the first person plural also appearing.24 Coogan, in particular, adopts the voice of the dispassionate third person. Similarly, Redmount's account is largely third person except for the surprising appearance of the imperial 'we' in the concluding sentences: 'Admittedly,' she says, 'we cannot prove that the Exodus took place; but we also cannot prove that it did not. As with so much else in the Bible, belief or disbelief in the historicity of the Exodus narrative becomes a matter of faith' (Redmount 1998: 88). Suddenly, the implied claim to dispassionate and detached judgment is fractured by profession in an engaged faith as the arbiter of understanding. Stager exhibits perhaps the most austere form of narrative in which the implied voice of the historian predominates. His text is accompanied by various charts of statistical data and maps which add to the aura of objectivity. There is no acknowledgment here that these are contested interpretations every bit as much as the textual commentary.25 The authoritative

24. The claim to authority is made much more explicitly in this multi-authored volume than in Robinson or Bright. The reader is informed that the contributors share a methodological conviction as well as a commitment to the historical enterprise—'the reconstruction of the past based on the critical assessment of all available evidence' (Coogan 1998: xi). This is reinforced with the statement that' each of the distinguished contributors to this book is a scholar of extraordinary breadth and depth'. Interestingly, the contrast is with those who have, in Coogan's words, 'adopted what has come to be called a minimalist approach to ancient Israel'. He adds that 'such radical skepticism recalls the view, which no responsible scholar would now accept, that the absence of contemporaneous evidence for Jesus of Nazareth means that he did not exist' (Coogan 1998: x-xi). There is a poetics of representation here that remains to be explored but which has become an integral part of the discourse of biblical studies. 25. See Carrard (1992: 173-74) for a discussion of numbers and charts. He points out that numbers and maps appear as 'objective' in so far as the information they convey is monosemic and is independent from the researcher as subject. They appear reliable because they are specific and because we equate specificity with accuracy. The

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voice does not admit of alternative interpretations; there are no discursive footnotes and no indication that such a history might have multiple view points. 'In the end, the job of a normal history,' says Berkhofer( 1995: 163), 'is to suppress or conceal the personal intrusive voice so that the facts seem to speak for themselves.'26 The authoritative voice of the historian and the recurrent shape of such histories from Robinson, through Bright, to Coogan implies that access to the past is transparent and that the shape of such a history is implicit in the facts. Proto-Israel and the Colonization of the Past Historians rarely discuss the nature of time or how it is textualized (see Berkhofer 1995:106). Yet as we have seen, the notion of organic time pervades Western historiography and is integral to the conception and representation of Israelite history from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The notion of prehistory plays a crucial role in this textualization of Israelite history from Robinson to Coogan, and is particularly prevalent in works on the archaeology of ancient Israel. Malamat, some years ago, drew a distinction between the 'pre-history' of Israel and its 'proto-history'. He defined (1983: 303) 'pre-history' as a time prior to Israel's existence, whereas 'proto-history' represented the time when 'embryonic Israel' took shape, from the Patriarchal Age to Settlement, culminating in its emergence as an ethnic/territorial entity in Canaan.27 In effect, the prehistory of Robinson, Bright and Coogan becomes Israel's proto-history. In more recent scholarship, this has taken on a slightly different guise through the term 'proto-Israelite', as popularized by William Dever in a series of articles.28 He uses the term, of course, in the rhetorical force of numbers confers the 'look' of 'scientificity' on the text. See also McCloskey's (1985) insightful study on The Rhetoric of Economics. 26. Berkhofer (1995: 167) adds: 'Thus it is difficult for historians to avoid, either explicitly or implicitly, appraising the past according to present-day viewpoints. Seemingly neutral judgements are normally viewpoints favoring one or another of the participants." 27. It is interesting to note that Malamat (1983: 306) says that 'it is doubtful whether research into the proto-history of Israel will ever exceed the bounds of speculation'. 28. I am grateful to Marvin Chaney, who pointed out the term is first used by Norman Gottwald (1979) in his magisterial The Tribes ofYahweh. Laughlin (2000:164 n. 4) adopts the term on the basis that 'it is reasonable to assume that these Iron I peoples, from wherever they might have come, were the direct ancestors of the people the Bible will identify as "Israel"'. For a critique of the term see Bolin (1997).

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context of the debate about the ethnic identity of the inhabitants of hill country settlements at the beginning of the Iron Age, defining 'protoIsraelites' as 'largely indigenous peoples of Palestine, perhaps displaced Canaanites, opening up and settling the hill country frontiers (even their language and culture were Canaanite)' (Dever 1989: 103). Similarly, he argues: Despite our uncertainty as to the full content of the term, these 12th-11th century, ethnic 'Israelites'—or better (as hereafter) 'Proto-Israelites'— possessed an overall material culture that led directly on into the true, fullblown Iron Age culture of the Israelite Monarchy of the 10th century BCE and later. That cultural continuity alone would entitle us to regard these Iron I villages as the authentic progenitors of later biblical 'Israel', i.e., as presumed 'Proto-Israelites' (Dever 1993: 24*).

The term has been so successful that proto-Israelites can be found colonizing the past well beyond Dever's intended formulation. Yet the choice of terminology is revealing of the network of buried assumptions that continues to shape our histories of the region. Dipesh Chakrabarty (1994: 26) discusses a similar situation in Marx's use of the categories 'bourgeois' and 'prebourgeios' or 'capital' and 'precapital': The prefix pre here signifies a relationship that is both chronological and theoretical. The coming of the bourgeois or capitalist society... gives rise for the first time to a history that can be apprehended through a philosophical and universal category, 'capital'. History becomes, for the first time, theoretically knowable. All past histories are now to be known (theoretically, that is) from the vantage point of this category, that is in terms of their differences from it. Things reveal their categorical essence only when they reach their fullest development.

In the same way, the term proto-Israelite is defined in relation to the Israelite state, which represents the pinnacle of political development and the vantage point from which the history of Palestine must be viewed. This taxonomic scheme is encapsulated in the view that pervades biblical studies that the inadequate city-states of Canaan are replaced by the nationstate of Israel. This is essentially a reiteration of the common principle in nineteenth-century debates that in order to be viable nation-states had to achieve a sufficient size. Hobsbawm (1990: 30) points out that 'if it fell below this threshold, it had no historic justification'. Such a view was too obvious to require argument. Smaller nationalities, such as the Sicilians, Bretons or Welsh, dismissed by Ma/zini as of little significance, were termed Kleinstaaterei, a deliberately derogatory term. The same taxonomy

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of political structures, embodying this threshold principle, still pervades biblical studies with its dismissal of the Canaanite city-states, captured nicely in Bright's reference to 'petty' city-states, and its emphasis on the critical role of the Israelite monarchy in shaping the history of Palestine. Dever's formulation of the term 'proto-Israelite', and his insistence that the true essence of Israel is revealed in the monarchic state, continues the chronological and taxonomic scheme that has been at the heart of Western and biblical historiography for a century or more.29 Such a conception of history is the direct heir of von Ranke's vision of history as the working out of the divine essence through the nation-state.30 Conclusion The temporal categories, the taxonomy, the teleological assumptions of Western narratives are not confined to the past, they are not curious relics

29. Notice that Dever adopts the magisterial 'we' of the professional guild: he makes frequent appeals to the necessary expertise of archaeologists who alone are able to pronounce on these matters. As expert, he is willing to share his expertise with the reader, denying others a voice in the debate, but unlike Bright does not draw the reader in by gentle persuasion. 30. See Thapar (2000) for an important study of time as a metaphor of history in the study of Indian history. He illustrates how conceptions of linear time, associated with the Judaeo-Christian tradition and Western society, have been used to illustrate the backwardness and otherness of Indian society, which is said to lack a notion of history and to be locked in cyclic time: 'The direction in linear time went from Adam and Eve, via the Jewish prophets to Christ and ultimately to Judgement day, when the souls of the dead would be awarded everlasting life, either in heaven or hell. This eschatology, relating to the beginning and end of time, was not paralleled in early Indian sources. Linear time therefore came to be viewed as characteristic of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. The secularization of linear time in Europe incorporated the notion of change in time and the belief that change was progress as defined in nineteenth-century terms. The challenge to Biblical chronology first posed by geology and biology and later by archaeology, and which was to introduce an infinitely longer time span, was yet to come' (Thapar 2000: 5). But the increase in time span, the discovery of 'deep time', has been incorporated into standard notions of time's arrow. It is significant therefore that the last essay in Coogan (1998) deals with 'trajectories'—notice the term—in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three faiths associated with linear time. The idea of cyclic time is important since the inherent assumption in these chronological/temporal schemes is that 'such societies live in another time, and this was the device to define the otherness of those societies' (Thapar 2000: 6).

WHITELAM The Poetics of the History of Israel

295

of nineteenth-century scholarship or the tell-tale signs of an immediate post-war scholarship that has faded into the history of the discipline. They are alive and well as part of the poetics of biblical discourse that continue to shape the history and representation of ancient Israel and so ancient Palestine. As Bahrani (1998: 169) notes, 'in this way, current scholarship repeats and diffuses the prototypes of imperialism. Through the power of writing, abstractions that are colonial in principle are left intact.'31 The preservation of chronological and taxonomic schemes that characterized histories of Israel from the early twentieth century continue the network of hidden assumptions that shape the history of Palestine. It is this web of language that continues deep within the discourse of biblical studies as an inherent part of the poetics of Israelite history. Since such histories continue to be written in the context of the nation-state, it is the nation-state and the West that remains their theoretical subject. As such, these histories are 'deeply ethnocentric', as the fierce debate on ethnic labels in the Iron Age illustrates (see Berkhofer 1995: 72; see also Potter 1962). In trying to reconceptualize the history of ancient Palestine, we have to beware of reading the modern nation-state and its ethnic identities back into the past and trying to replace one form of exclusivist history with another. Instead, we have to look for multiple or layered identities that are not necessarily equivalent to modern national identities and reconceive of the ancient past of Palestine without these nationalist frameworks and the taxonomic and chronological schemes that accompany them. It ought to be seen as a part of a wider regional history that is not constructed on nationalistic grounds or panders to the exclusivity of nationalism. Thus, for example, the development of political structures in the Iron Age ought to be understood as part of the rhythms and patterns of Palestinian history which echo the structures of the Middle Bronze II period and later, rather than as some definitive innovation from which all previous history must be judged.32 31. As Berkhofer (1995: 143) notes: 'Moral judgements and political biases pervade the history productions in subtle as well as obvious ways, however.' 32. As the Iron Age progressed (Iron II), the growth in settlement and population eventually led to the revival and the growth of the towns, many with fortifications. Again this is not something which is exceptional in the history of the region, but a natural response at different times as the economic and political situation begins to improve. The balance of power between town and countryside changed throughout the period, resulting eventually in the dramatic increase in the size of a number of sites, such as Samaria, Jerusalem, Ekron and Ashdod. Such demographic pressures inevitably increased and exaggerated social stratification, and this, alongside the increasing dominance of such highland settlements as Samaria and Jerusalem, resulted in the

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The adoption of a particular voice or voices by a historian, as well as the choice of viewpoint, shapes the history. No historian is immune from these choices, whichever label—minimalist, maximalist or whatever—we choose to give them.33 The adoption of the third person voice of the implied historian is an attempt to construct 'the object as ideologically natural'. The recurrent shape of the history of Israel, as evidenced in the narratives of Robinson, Bright and Coogan, is not something inherent in the facts of history, but a continuation of the chronological and taxonomic schemes, and the poetics of representation, of Western historiography.34 They are not 'abstracted from the vicissitudes of time' but are 'worldly', enmeshed in a world of shifting geopolitical power and competing scholarly traditions.

development of a series of small state-like structures throughout the region. The growing consensus is that state structures developed first in the north around Samaria in the ninth century and only later in the south around Jerusalem in the eighth century, as reflected in the revival of towns and the increasing growth of first Samaria and then Jerusalem as the Iron II period progressed. But once again this was similar to other periods, such as the earlier Middle Bronze period, where the larger towns, sometimes called city-states, took advantage of the reordering and revitalization of the countryside. An important area of investigation is to see how far the political organization of the Iron II period is similar to the so-called city-state system of the Late Bronze Age rather than some revolutionary development in the evolutionary scheme as it is so often presented. 33. As Berkhofer (1975: 91) notes: 'What scholars sought was a plain style that presented the truth of the text as its solely ostensible content, thus persuading the reader that it was transparent to reality. The referential side of Clio's craft as scientist concealed the representational side of Clio's charm as artist. Even those modern historical handbooks that stress the stylistic side pay scant attention to the nature of persuasion and argument in historical writing except for a few suggestions, often platitudes, on "plain words" and "clear sentences".' 34. This raises the question of whether or not history has meaning. Popper argued that 'history has no meaning' in the sense of some grand philosophy of history: 'Although history has no end, we can impose these ends of ours upon it; and although history has no meaning, we can give it meaning1 (cited in Berkhofer 1995: 115).

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INDEXES INDEX OF REFERENCES

BIBLE

Old Testament Genesis 101,103 1 1.2 93 1.8 101 1.9-10 102 1.9 101 102 1.10 3.5 231 4 47,49 4.12-13 48 49 4.12 4.14 49 48 4.15 48 4.16 48 4.17-22 48 4.17-20 49 4.19-23 48 4.20 116 15.19-21 15.19 45 46 25 46 25.2 25.3 46 46 25.6 52 35.22 36.2 49 36.12 49 36.22 49 49 36.40 37.28 46 37.36 46 48.17-20 58 49 58

49.3-4

52

Exodus 3.8 3.17 7.11 12.21 12.22 13.5 20 20.5 20.12 20.14 20.25 22.17 22.18 22.25-27 23.9 23.23 27.2 28.17-20 28.21 29.12 29.35-37 29.42 30.2 33.2 34.7 34.11 39.10-13

116 116 111 228 228 116 178 104, 105 106 107 238 110 110, 111 182 178 116 244 107, 108 108 237 238 131 244 116 104, 105 116 107

Leviticus 1-7 4.3-7

182 131

4.3 4.10 8.14-15 14 14.4 14.5-7 14.6 14.49 14.51-52 14.51 14.52 19.20-23

131 131 238 230 228 228 228 228 228 228 228 182

Numbers 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.21 10.29-32 13 14.18 16 19 19.6 19.9 19.17 19.18 19.19 20.12 20.24 21.21-35 24.17 24.21-22

229 229 237 229 229 46 52 104, 105 52 227, 229 228 227 227 228, 229 229 51 51 61 89 45

328

'Imagining'Biblical Worlds

Numbers (cont .) 24.22 49 25 47 78 25.6-18 25.6 47 27.14 51 31 46 32 51,53 32.30 54,58 34.1-15 52 Deuteronomy 1.37 2.26-3.17 2.26-3.7 3.8-22 3.26 4.21 5 5.9 5.16 6.20-25 7.1

51 61 51 51 51 51 178 104, 105 106

178 109, 115,

10.18 12.5 14.29 15.15 16.11-14 16.12 18.10 20.17 21.7-11 24.10-14 24.17-21 24.18 24.22 26.5-9 26.12-13 27.5-6 27.19 32.8-9 32.51 34.1-3

116 178 52 178 178 178 178 111 116 182 182 178 178 178 178, 183 178 238 178 72 51 51

Joshua 1.12-18 1.14

51 52,55

2 3.10 3.12 4 4.12 7.1 8.30-35 8.30-31 9.1 11.3 11.21 11.22 11.23 12.1-6 12.7 12.8 13.6-13 13.6 13.8-32 13.13 13.23 13.27 14.10 17.1-13 18.10 20-21 21 21.41 22 22.5 22.9-11 22.9 22.10-11 22.10 22.12 22.13-14 22.16 22.17-18 22.17 22.18 22.19 22.20 22.21-22 22.22-29 22.22 22.24 22.25

52 116 56 56 55 54,57 56,57 57,238 116 116 55 55 55 56,61 55 116 51 55 61 56 61 61 56 51 55 56 53 56 51-53, 55-63 53 56 56 53 57

56 56 54, 56, 75 56 54 56 57,58 54, 56, 57 56 62 54,57 56,57 58,61,62

22.27 22.28 22.29 22.30 22.31 22.32-33 23.1 24.11

54 57 57 56 54, 56, 57 57 59 116

Judges 1.16 3.5 4-5 4.11 4.17-22 4.17 5.24-27 7-9 10.1-5 11.8-15 11.34-40 12.1-6

46 116 198 46 45 45 45 46 274 274 52 52,58

1 Samuel 4 10-11 10 10.27 11 11.1 13.19-22 15.6

175 107 103 103 103 103 239 46

2 Samuel 9-20 17.29 19.31-39

2 47 47

/ Kings 1-2 4.33 7 7.15-26 8.65 9.20 9.25 14.19 14.29

2 228 105 105 105 116 105 267 268

Index of References 15.7 15.11 15.23 15.31 16.5 16.14 16.20 16.27 16.32-33 17.1 18 18.19 18.22 18.23 18.40 19.11-12 22.39 22.46

268 267, 274 268 267 267 267 267 267 113 175 111-13 112, 113 112,113, 115 113 177 177 267 268

2 Kings 1.18 2.11 8.23 10.15-23 10.30 10.34 12.20 13.8 13.12 14.15 14.18 14.28 15.6 15.11 15.12 15.15 15.19-20 15.21 15.26 15.31 15.36 16.10-16 16.19 20.20 21.7 21.17 21.25

267 175 268 47 105 267 268 267 267 267 268 267 268 267 105 267 267 267 267 267 268 105 268 268 113 268 268

23.4 23.8 23.28 24.5

113 242 268 268

1 Chronicles 1.51 2.55 4.3 5.1 5.25-26

49 47 49 52 52

2 Chronicles 3.15^1.25 4.1-2 4.2 4.12 8.7 33

105 105, 106 106 106 116 272

Ezra 2.61-63 9.1

47 116

Nehemiah 6.6 7.63-65 9.8

329 9.17 10.26 47.9 47.12

178 46 111 111

Jeremiah 6.10 7.6 9.25-26 22.3 25.11 27.9 31.31 31.38 35.8-10

179 178 179 178 269 111 102 102 47

Ezekinl 28.13 36.23 36.23-38 36.24-34 36.38 40-48 43.20

107 107 107 107 107 77 237

285 47 116

Daniel 2.2 9 10-12

111 89 208

2.11 42.16

49 104

Amos

Psalms 51.7 78 78.1-3 83.9 89 105 106 106.33 135 136

228,231 71 71 46 71 71 71 51 71 71

Job

Isaiah 1.17 1.18

178 231

5.18 5.21-24 5.23-24 5.26-27 9.11

178, 181 182 181 179,181 180, 181 89 89

Micah 5.11 7.11

111 87

Nahum 3.4

111

Malachi 3.5

111

2.6-8

330

'Imagining' Biblical Worlds

Apocrypha Wisdom of Solomon 7.15-22 228 Ecdesiasticus 24 24.10-11 24.13-14 24.30-31 24.33 34.11-12 39.4 43.27 44-50 44-49 44.10-15 44.21 44.23-24 44.26 45.17 45.20 45.22 45.25 47.9-11 47.13 47.14-17

(Sirach) 71,76 76 76 78 71 78 78 75 69 69,71 74 74 78 74 75 74 75 73 73 73 74

47.15 47.19-24 47.20 48.17 48.18-22 48.24 49.4-6 49.11-13 49.13 49.14-16 49.16

74 78 73 75 75 75 75 75 72 72 73

50 50.1-3

69,71

50.1 50.4 50.6-7 50.10 50.12-13 50.12 50.16 50.17-21 50.20-24 50.20 50.24 50.27-29 50.27-28

72, 73, 76

75 75 76 76 74 76 74 77 77 75 78 15,11

71

51.13-14 51.16 51.19-20 51.19 51.20

79 79 79 79 79

1 Maccabees 2.1 212 14.29 212 New Testament John 8.36 122 12.32 120 Acts 21 23.6-9

178 178

James 4.4

109

Revelation 5.1-4 6.9-17 10.8-10

184 130 184

OTHER ANCIENT REFERENCES

Pseudepigrapha Jubilees 10.3 87 15.26 87 Qumran IQH 2.21 1QM 1-2

7.3 1QS 1.8 2.20-23 3.24

4.5 8

87

94 97

94 97 94 94 94

8.5-9 8.12-13 9.4-6 9.16 10.19

4QMMT B.61-62 11QT 29.9 CD 1.5-6 1.12-15 1.13-15 2.1-13 2.7-10 2.17-21

94 93

94 87 87

85

90

90 93

88 87 90 88

4.12 4.19 6.15 7.6-9 7.6-8 7.6 7.12 8.18 11.2 11.14-15 11.22 12.1-2 12.8-10 12.11 12.19-23 12.23-13.19 13.14 13.19-14.2 14.1

87 87

87 91,92

85 85 88 87

87 87 90 88,91

87 91 85

85 87 85 88

Index of References 14.3-12 14.3 19.12 19.24-25 19.31 20.13-17

85 87 90 87 87 92

331 Josephus Ant.

Talmuds b. Sank. 67a 7.13

110 110

8.2.5 18.19

j. Sank. 7.13

110

2.124 2.160

228 88

War

86 86

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Abusch, T. I l l Aharoni, M. 241 Aharoni, Y. 233,237,238,240-43 Ahlstrom, G.W. 226 Albright, W.F. 32, 46, 59, 233, 270, 284, 285 Arav, R. 243 Argall, R.A. 71 Ashcroft, B. 24 Aycock, D.A. 48 Bachelard, G. 22 Bahrani, Z. 286, 287, 289, 290, 295 Bailey, A.E. 283,284 Bal, M. 198 Barnmer, A. 24, 27 Barnes, T.J. 24,26 Barr.J. 288 Barstad, H.M. 59 Baudrillard, J. 27 Baumgarten, A.I. 85 Baumgarten, J.M. 91 Seal, T.K. 183 Beck, J.H. 145,148, 159 Bedford, P.R. 206 Benko, G. 15 Bennett, C.M. 262 Bentley, G.R. 262 Berkhofer, R.F. 279, 281, 283, 285, 292, 295, 296 Berquist, J.L. 8, 21, 27, 28, 64, 65, 203 Betts, A. 43 Bhabha, H.K. 23,24 Bible and Culture Collective 172 Biran, A. 243,245-47 Blanchot, M. 28 Blenkinsopp, J. 204, 206 Boer, R.T. 19, 26, 64, 65, 129, 160, 161

Bohm-Duchen, M. 148,159 Bolin,T. 292 Borden, I 118,130 Borowski, O. 247,260 Bourke, S.J. 253 Bray, A. 159 Bright, J. 283-87, 289-92, 294, 296 Brown, M.P. 26 Brueggemann, W. 180 Brug,J.F. 239 Bucellati, G. 265 Burdajewicz, M. 248 Camp, C.V. 7, 74, 79 Cansdale, L. 83 Caputo, J.D. 171-74, 176, 178-81, 184-86 Carnes, M. 119 Carrard, P. 279,291 Carroll, R.P. 59,198,205 Carter, J.B. 248 Casey, E.S. 14 Chakrabarty, D. 290,293 Chaney, M. 292 Chase-Dunn, C. 26 Chen, D. 86 Child, A.B. 262 Child, I.L. 262 Clark, G. 14 Collins, J.J. 81 Conrad, D.E. 40 Coogan,M.D. 251,289-292,294,296 Cook, S.L. 202 Coon, C.S. 42 Coy, M.W. Jr. 41 Crang, M. 15 Cross, P.M. 84,103 Crowley, J.L. 237,246

Index of Authors D'Agata, A.L. 245 Davies, P.R. 2, 23, 62, 83, 85, 86, 91, 92, 96,202,204,205,213,214,218 Dennell, R.W. 257 Derrida,J. 171-80, 183-86 De Tolnay, C. 148 Dever.W.G. 226,292-94 DiLella,A.A. 71,72,74 Diamant, S. 234, 236 Dickson, H.R.P. 42-44 Dieterlen, G. 48 Dodgshon, R.A. 26 Doel, M. 29 Donahue, J. 251,252 Donaldson, L.E. 23 Doran,R. 209,210,218 Dostal, W. 43 Dothan, T. 235,247,248 Doughty, C.M. 42-44 Douglas, M.T. 37 Doyle, K.O. 24 Dube.M.W. 23 Duncan, J. 24,26 Dunn, R.G. 24 du Plat Taylor, J. 244 Eisenman, R. 83, 84 E1iade,M. 25 Eskenazi, T.C. 205 Evans, AJ. 234,240,244 Evans, R.J. 283 Fader, M.A.A. 142 Falconer, S.E. 259,260 Fall,P.L. 259,260 Ferguson, N. 285 Fewell,D.N. 161,177 Filson, F.V. 107 Fish, S. 27 Flanagan, J.W. 1-3, 5-9, 20, 21, 24, 2830, 32, 38, 39, 58, 59, 61, 63-66, 69, 77,78,81,97,99, 117, 163,186, 202-204, 234, 248, 250, 252, 253, 277 Foucault, M. 14, 18, 23, 68 Fowler, M.D. 233, 240, 241 Frank, B.E. 40 Franken, H.J. 46

333

Freedman, D.N. 108 Frick, F.S. 2, 5, 32, 47, 202, 204 Fried, L. 237 Frisinger, C. 153 Gallagher, C. 277,288 Garraty, J. 119 Geller.B. 290 Gesell, G.C. 241 Gill, S. 14,25 Gilmour, G. 241 Gitin, S. 233-36, 240, 245-48 Glubb, J.B. 43 Golb,N. 83 Goldberg.J. 159 Goodman, M.D. 86, 88 Goody, J. 2-4,220 Gottwald, N.K. 2, 4, 22, 23, 202, 292 Grabbe, L.L. 207,214,217 Graesser, C.F. 246 Greenberg, M. 107, 108 Greenblatt, S. 277, 288 Greenspahn, F.E. 58 Gregory, D. 20,24,28 Griaule, M. 48 Griffiths, G. 24 Gunn, D.M. 2, 4, 5, 7, 155, 161, 177 Hitchcock, L.A. 7, 236, 248 Hadjisawas, S. 248 Hagg,R. 234 Hall, T.D. 26 Halligan, J.M. 4, 202, 204, 206, 210, 218 Halpem, B. 32,45,46 Handelman, S.A. 172, 185 Haran, M. 233,235,241 Harlan, J.R. 252,258 Hart,K. 172 Hartt, F. 148, 149 Harvey, D. 8, 19 Hayes, J.H. 270 Hayward, C.T.R. 72, 73, 76 Heeres, J.A.H. 258,259 Helbaek,H. 259 Hempel, C. 85,89 Hendel, R.S. 101 Herzog, Z. 241,242 Hill, G.F. 246

334

'Imagining' Biblical Worlds

Hirschfield, Y. 83 Hitchcock, L.A. 234 Hjelm, I. 70 Hobsbawm, E.J. 293 Hoglund, K. 205,207,213 Holladay, J.S. Jr. 235 Hollis, A.C. 40 Hooker, P.K. 270 Hopf, M. 260 Hopkins, A.G. 279 Hopkins, D.C. 5,260 Horsley, R.A. 206, 208-11, 214, 215, 217,218 Huntingford, G.W.B. 40,41 Huntington, R. 262 Hutcheon, L. 279 lonas, I. 237 James, M.R. 246 Jamieson-Drake, D. 5, 264 Janson, H.W. 159 Jeansonne, G. 119 Jobling, D. 205 Jordanova, LJ. 279 Karageorghis, V. 234, 237, 246 Karetzou, A. 244 Kemp, M. 159 Kent, C.F. 283,284 Khalidi, W. 277,278 King,R. 290 Klein, R. 144, 145, 148, 149 Knapp, A.B. 247,248 Knight, D.A. 4,60.61 Kontorli-Papadopoulos, L. 241 Kort,W. 67,69 Krause, D. 183 Krieger, L. 283 Lapp.P.W. 263 Latour, B. 20 Laughlin, J. 292 Leach, E. 2,37,48,49 Lefebvre, H. 8, 19, 20, 22, 26, 28, 30, 33, 34, 37, 38, 50, 64, 65, 67, 68, 81, 84 Lemche, N.P. 2,265,269 Lenski, G. 209-11,217

Leslau, W. 42 Levey, M. 160 Levine, L.L. 219,220 Levine, S. 139, 144, 146, 148 Ley,D. 24,26 Liebert, R.S. 159 Linafelt,T. 172 Lines, L. 259,260 Liverani, M. 272 Lloyd, P.C. 40 Loulloupis, M. 234, 237, 246 Mack, B. 72 Maier.F. 246 Mairs,L.D. 253 Malamat, A. 292 Malina, B.J. 38,77,203 Margarido, A. 48 Margalit, S. 86 Margueron, J. 233, 237 Marinates, N. 236, 237 Mazar.A. 239 Mazarakis, A.A. 241 McCarter, P.K. 103 McCloskey, D.N. 292 McCreery, D.W. 3, 253-56, 258, 259, 262 McDowell, L. 17,24,28 McHam, S.B. 148 McKechnie, P. 70 McNaughton, P.R. 39, 40, 48 McNutt, P.M. 3-5, 7, 21, 32, 38, 39, 45, 48,64,65,203,204,239 Merrifield, R. 225,226 Metcalf.P. 262 Metso, S. 93 Metzger, B. 100 Meyers, C.L. 204,225 Milanesi, G. 139 Milgrom, J. 230 Millar, W.R. 29 Mohanram, R. 17,28 Montgomery, J.A. 280, 284 Moore, S.D. 172 Morley, D. 28 Moshkovitz, Sh. 241,242 Muhly, J.D. 239 Miiller, B. 233,237 Muller-Pierre, P. 233

Index of Authors Murphy-O'Connor, J. 87 Musil,A. 42-44 Nancy, J.-L. 20,27 Naveh, J. 248 Newsom, C.A. 95 Niemann, H.M. 264,265 Nihil,M. 221 Nissinen, M. 161 Noth, M. 200,284 Novick,P. 287,288 O'Connell, K.G. 109, 115 OTuathail, G. 20,23 Papadopoulos, T.J. 241 Parks, N.R. 142, 148 Pasto, J. 215,216,218 Patai, R. 42-44 Paulme, D. 40 Petersen, D.L. 206 Philby, H.StJ.B. 43 Phillips, G.A. 172 Pixner, B. 86 Poggi, G. 149 Poster, M. 20 Potter, D.M. 295 Qimron, E. 85 Quirin, J.A. 42 Rabin, C. 87 Rainey,A.F. 241,242 Rank, K. 118, 130 Ranke, L. van 283,294 Rappaport, R.A. 221-26,228,230-32 Rast,W.E. 226,250,262 Redmount, C.A. 291 Reid, S.B. 208,217 Reminick, R.A. 42 Ribuffo, L.P. 119 Richards, K.H. 205 Richardson, P. 216 Robertson, C.F. 119, 121 Robinson, T.H. 281-85, 288, 289, 291, 292, 296 Rocke,M. 158 Rothenberg, B. 46 Rowley, H.H. 45

335

Rutter,J. 234,236 Sack, R.D. 20,24 Said,E.W. 23,35,280 Sanders, E.P. 216 Saslow,J.M. 159, 161 Sasson, J. 283 Sawyer, J.F.A. 48,49 Schafer-Lichtenberger, C. 248 Schaub,R.T. 250,262 Schiffman, L.H. 83 Schneider, L. 155 Schroer, S. 161 Schussler Fiorenza, E. 280 Seidel,J. 110 Seymour, C. Jr. 145, 149 Shack, W.A. 40 Shanks, H. 233,235,237,239-41,244 Sherratt, A.G. 259 Sherwood, Y. 172 Shields, R. 19 Shiloh,Y. 226 Silberman, L.H. 183 Simkins, R.A. 202 Skehan,P.W. 71,72,74 Smith, A.K. 159 Smith, D.L. 205 Smith, E.M. 119, 121, 123 Smith, G.A. 278 Smith, J.Z. 25 Snyder,K.A. 221 Soja, E.W. 8, 20, 21, 27, 30-38, 40, 50, 64-66,68,70, 118, 138, 186 Solsbery,D. 127 Sowada,K.N. 253 Sparks, R.T. 253 Stager, L.E. 247,289,291 Staubli, T. 161 Stegemann, H. 83,89 Steinberg, L. 153 Stern, E. 241 Sternweiler, A. 159 Stevenson, K.R. 76,77 Strohmayer, U. 15 Strugnell, J. 85 Sugirtharajah, R.S. 23 Suleiman, S.R. 17, 24

336

'Imagining'Biblical Worlds

Taylor, M.C. 18,29, 172 Thapar, R. 294 Thiering, B.E. 83, 84 Thompson, J.A. 160 Thompson, T.L. 271 Thrift, N. 15 Tiffin, H. 24 Tiller, 208-11,217 Tov, E. 99, 100 Trible,P. 177 Trillin, C. 125 Tuan,Y.-F. 17,18,23-25,28 Turner, V. 2,37,38,49 Ungnad, A. 266 Ussishkin, D. 253 Van der Toorn, K. 220 van Nieuwenhuijze, C.A.O. 42, 44 vanZeist,W. 258,259 Vaux, R. de 46, 84, 229 Vermes, G. 86,88 Walters, M. 142, 148

Warren, P. 246 Wasserman, F.J. 48 Watrous, L.V. 244,245 Wavell,A.P. 278,281,282 Webb, J.M 237, 246 Wefmg, S. 229 Weinberg, J. 128 Weinberg, S.S. 245, 246 Weinfeld,M. 58 Werlen, B. 22 Westholm, A. 246 Whitelam, K.W. 4, 23, 24 Wiener, H.M. 235,238 Wolff, S. 247 Wright, G.R.H. 239 Wright,!. 207 Yadin,Y. 86,241,242 Yassine, K.N. 253 Zangenberg, J. 83 Zerner, H. 144, 145, 148, 149 Zevit,Z. 239 Zohary, D. 255, 260

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES 191 Magne Sasb0, On the Way to Canon: Creative Tradition History in the Old Testament 192 Henning Graf Reventlow and William Farmer (eds.), Biblical Studies and the Shifting of Paradigms, 1850-1914 193 Brooks Schramm, The Opponents of Third Isaiah: Reconstructing the Cultic History of the Restoration 194 Else Kragelund Holt, Prophesying the Past: The Use of Israel's History in the Book ofHosea 195 Jon Davies, Graham Harvey and Wilfred G.E. Watson (eds.), Words Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F.A. Sawyer 196 Joel S. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible 197 William M. Schniedewind, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second Temple Period 198 T.J. Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel: A Literary Comparison 199 J.H. Eaton, Psalms of the Way and the Kingdom: A Conference with the Commentators 200 M. Daniel Carroll R., David J.A. Clines and Philip R. Davies (eds.), The Bible in Human Society: Essays in Honour of John Rogerson 201 John W. Rogerson, The Bible and Criticism in Victorian Britain: Profiles ofF.D. Maurice and William Robertson Smith 202 Nanette Stahl, Law and Liminality in the Bible 203 Jill M. Munro, Spikenard and Saffron: The Imagery of the Song of Songs 204 Philip R. Davies, Whose Bible Is It Anyway? 205 David J.A. Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible 206 M0gens Miiller, The First Bible of the Church: A Plea for the Septuagint 207 John W. Rogerson, Margaret Davies and M. Daniel Carroll R. (eds.), The Bible in Ethics: The Second Sheffield Colloquium 208 Beverly J. Stratton, Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2-3 209 Patricia Dutcher-Walls, Narrative Art, Political Rhetoric: The Case ofAthaliah and Joash 210 Jacques Berlinerblau, The Vow and the 'Popular Religious Groups' of Ancient Israel: A Philological and Sociological Inquiry 211 Brian E. Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology in Chronicles 212 Yvonne Sherwood, The Prostitute and the Prophet: Hosea's Marriage in Literary-Theoretical Perspective 213 Yair Hoffman, A Blemished Perfection: The Book of Job in Context 214 Roy F. Melugin and Marvin A. Sweeney (eds.), New Visions of Isaiah 215 J. Cheryl Exum, Plotted, Shot and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women

216 Judith E. McKinlay, Gendering Wisdom the Host: Biblical Invitations to Eat and Drink 217 Jerome F.D. Creach, Yahweh as Refuge and the Editing of the Hebrew Psalter 218 Harry P. Nasuti, Defining the Sacred Songs: Genre, Tradition, and the PostCritical Interpretation of the Psalms 219 Gerald Morris, Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea 220 Raymond F. Person, Jr, In Conversation with Jonah: Conversation Analysis, Literary Criticism, and the Book of Jonah 221 Gillian Keys, The Wages of Sin: A Reappraisal of the 'Succession Narrative' 222 R.N. Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book 223 Scott B. Noegel, Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job 224 Paul J. Kissling, Reliable Characters in the Primary History: Profiles of Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha 225 Richard D. Weis and David M. Carr (eds.), A Gift of God in Due Season: Essays on Scripture and Community in Honor of James A. Sanders 226 Lori L. Rowlett, Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New Historicist Analysis 227 John F. A. Sawyer (ed.), Reading Leviticus: Responses to Mary Douglas 228 Volkmar Fritz and Philip R. Davies (eds.), The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States 229 Stephen Breck Reid (ed.), Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker 230 Kevin J. Cathcart and Michael Maher (eds.), Targumic and Cognate Studies: Essays in Honour of Martin McNamara 231 Weston W. Fields, Sodom and Gomorrah: History and Motif in Biblical Narrative 232 Tilde Binger, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament 233 Michael D. Goulder, The Psalms ofAsaph and the Pentateuch: Studies in the Psalter, III 234 Ken Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History 23 5 James W. Watts and Paul House (eds.), Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts 236 Thomas M. Bolin, Freedom beyond Forgiveness: The Book of Jonah Reexamined 237 Neil Asher Silberman and David B. Small (eds.), The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present 238 M. Patrick Graham, Kenneth G, Hoglund and Steven L. McKenzie (eds.), The Chronicler as Historian 239 Mark S. Smith, The Pilgrimage Pattern in Exodus 240 Eugene E. Carpenter (ed.), A Biblical Itinerary: In Search of Method, Form and Content. Essays in Honor of George W. Coats 241 Robert Karl Gnuse, No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel 242 K.L. Noll, The Faces of David 243 Henning Graf Reventlow (ed.), Eschatology in the Bible and in Jewish and Christian Tradition

244 Walter E. Aufrecht, Neil A. Mirau and Steven W. Gauley (eds.), Urbanism in Antiquity: From Mesopotamia to Crete 245 Lester L. Grabbe (ed.), Can a 'History of Israel' Be Written? 246 Gillian M. Bediako, Primal Religion and the Bible: William Robertson Smith and his Heritage 247 Nathan Klaus, Pivot Patterns in the Former Prophets 248 Etienne Nodet, A Search for the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to the Mishnah 249 William Paul Griffin, The God of the Prophets: An Analysis of Divine Action 250 Josette Elayi and Jean Sapin, Beyond the River: New Perspectives on Transeuphratene 251 Flemming A. J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History 252 David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms 253 William Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Volume 1:1 Chronicles 1-2 Chronicles 9: Israel's Place among the Nations 254 William Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Volume 2: 2 Chronicles 10-36: Guilt and Atonement 255 Larry L. Lyke, King David with the Wise Woman ofTekoa: The Resonance of Tradition in Parabolic Narrative 256 Roland Meynet, Rhetorical Analysis: An Introduction to Biblical Rhetoric 257 Philip R. Davies and David J.A. Clines (eds.), The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives 258 Michael D. Goulder, The Psalms of the Return (Book V, Psalms 107-150): Studies in the Psalter, IV 259 Allen Rosengren Petersen, The Royal God: Enthronement Festivals in Ancient Israel and Ugarit? 260 A.R. Pete Diamond, Kathleen M. O'Connor and Louis Stulman (eds.), Troubling Jeremiah 261 Othmar Keel, Goddesses and Trees, New Moon and Yahweh: Ancient Near Eastern Art and the Hebrew Bible 262 Victor H. Matthews, Bernard M. Levinson and Tikva Frymer-Kensky (eds.), Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East 263 M. Patrick Graham and Steven L. McKenzie, The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture 264 Donald F. Murray, Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension: Pragmatics, Poetics, and Polemics in a Narrative Sequence about David (2 Samuel 5.177.29) 265 John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan 266 J. Cheryl Exum and Stephen D. Moore (eds.), Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium 267 Patrick D. Miller, Jr, Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology: Collected Essays 268 Linda S. Schearing and Steven L. McKenzie (eds.), Those Elusive Deuteronomists: 'Pandeuteronomism' and Scholarship in the Nineties

269 David J. A. Clines and Stephen D. Moore (eds.), Auguries: The Jubilee Volume of the Sheffield Department of Biblical Studies 270 John Day (ed.), King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar 271 Wonsuk Ma, Until the Spirit Comes: The Spirit of God in the Book of Isaiah 272 James Richard Linville, Israel in the Book of Kings: The Past as a Project of Social Identity 273 Meir Lubetski, Claire Gottlieb and Sharon Keller (eds.), Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon 274 Martin J. Buss, Biblical Form Criticism in its Context 275 William Johnstone, Chronicles and Exodus: An Analogy and its Application 276 Raz Kletter, Economic Keystones: The Weight System of the Kingdom ofJudah 277 Augustine Pagolu, The Religion of the Patriarchs 278 Lester L. Grabbe (ed.), Leading Captivity Captive: 'The Exile' as History and Ideology 279 Kari Latvus, God, Anger and Ideology: The Anger of God in Joshua and Judges in Relation to Deuteronomy and the Priestly Writings 280 Eric S. Christiansen, A Time to Tell: Narrative Strategies in Ecclesiastes 281 Peter D. Miscall, Isaiah 34-35: A Nightmare/A Dream 282 Joan E. Cook, Hannah's Desire, God's Design: Early Interpretations in the Story of Hannah 283 Kelvin Friebel, Jeremiah's and Ezekiel's Sign-Acts: Rhetorical Nonverbal Communication 284 M. Patrick Graham, Rick R. Marrs and Steven L. McKenzie (eds.), Worship and the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honor of John T. Willis 285 Paolo Sacchi, The History of the Second Temple Period 286 Wesley J. Bergen, Elisha and the End ofProphetism 287 Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, The Transformation ofTorahfrom Scribal Advice to Law 288 Diana Lipton, Revisions of the Night: Politics and Promises in the Patriarchal Dreams of Genesis 289 Jose Krasovec (ed.), The Interpretation of the Bible: The International Symposium in Slovenia 290 Frederick H. Cryer and Thomas L. Thompson (eds.), Qumran between the Old and New Testaments 291 Christine Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period 292 David J.A. Clines, On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 19671998 Volume 1 293 David J.A. Clines, On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 19671998 Volume 2 294 Charles E. Carter, The Emergence ofYehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study 295 Jean-Marc Heimerdinger, Topic, Focus and Foreground in Ancient Hebrew Narratives

296 Mark Cameron Love, The Evasive Text: Zechariah 1-8 and the Frustrated Reader 297 Paul S. Ash, David, Solomon and Egypt: A Reassessment 298 John D. Baildam, Paradisal Love: Johann Gottfried Herder and the Song of Songs 299 M. Daniel Carroll R., Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts: Contributions from the Social Sciences to Biblical Interpretation 300 Edward Ball (ed.), In Search of True Wisdom: Essays in Old Testament Interpretation in Honour of Ronald E. Clements 301 Carolyn S. Leeb, Away from the Father's House: The Social Location ofna 'ar and na 'arah in Ancient Israel 302 Xuan Huong Thi Pham, Mourning in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible 303 Ingrid Hjelm, The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis 304 Wolter H. Rose, Zemah and Zerubabbel: Messianic Expectations in the Early Postexilic Period 305 Jo Bailey Wells, God's Holy People: A Theme in Biblical Theology 306 Albert de Pury, Thomas Romer and Jean-Daniel Macchi (eds.), Israel Constructs its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research 307 Robert L. Cole, The Shape and Message of Book III (Psalms 73-89) 308 Yiu-Wing Fung, Victim and Victimizer: Joseph's Interpretation of his Destiny 309 George Aichele (ed.), Culture, Entertainment and the Bible 310 Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman 311 Gregory Glazov, The Bridling of the Tongue and the Opening of the Mouth in Biblical Prophecy 312 Francis Landy, Beauty and the Enigma: And Other Essays on the Hebrew Bible 313 Martin O'Kane (ed.), Borders, Boundaries and the Bible 314 Bernard S. Jackson, Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law 315 Paul R. Williamson, Abraham, Israel and the Nations: The Patriarchal Promise and its Covenantal Development in Genesis 316 Dominic Rudman, Determinism in the Book of Ecclesiastes 317 Lester L. Grabbe (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period 318 David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX 56-66 319 Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman (eds.), Creation in Jewish and Christian Tradition 320 Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible 321 Varese Layzer, Signs of Weakness: Juxtaposing Irish Tales and the Bible 322 Mignon R. Jacobs, The Conceptual Coherence of the Book ofMicah 323 Martin Ravndal Hauge, The Descent from the Mountain: Narrative Patterns in Exodus 19-40 324 P.M. Michele Daviau, John W. Wevers and Michael Weigl (eds.), The World of the Aramaeans: Studies in Honour of Paul-Eugene Dion, Volume 1

325 P.M. Michele Daviau, John W. Wevers and Michael Weigl (eds.), The World of the Aramaeans: Studies in Honour of Paul-Eugene Dion, Volume 2 326 P.M. Michele Daviau, John W. Wevers and Michael Weigl (eds.), The World of the Aramaeans: Studies in Honour of Paul-Eugene Dion, Volume 3 327 Gary D. Salyer, Vain Rhetoric: Private Insight and Public Debate in Ecclesiastes 328 James M. Trotter, Reading Hosea in Achaemenid Yehud 329 Wolfgang Bluedom,Yahweh Verus Baalism: A Theological Reading of the Gideon-Abimelech Narrative 330 Lester L. Grabbe and Robert D. Haak (eds.), 'Every City shall he Forsaken ': Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East 331 Amihai Mazar (ed.), with the assistance of Ginny Mathias, Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan 332 Robert J.V. Hiebert, Claude E. Cox and Peter J. Gentry (eds.), The Old Greek Psalter: Studies in Honour of Albert Pietersma 333 Ada Rapoport-Albert and Gillian Greenberg (eds.), Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Texts: Essays in Memory of Michael P. Weitzman 334 Ken Stone (ed.), Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible 335 James K. Bruckner, Implied Law in the Abrahamic Narrative: A Literary and Theological Analysis 336 Stephen L. Cook, Conine L. Patton and James W. Watts (eds.), The Whirlwind: Essays on Job, Hertneneutics and Theology in Memory of Jane Morse 337 Joyce Rilett Wood, Amos in Song and Book Culture 338 Alice A. Keefe, Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea 7-2 339 Sarah Nicholson, Three Faces of Saul: An Intertextual Approach to Biblical Tragedy 341 Mark W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger Jr (eds.), Mesopotamia and the Bible 343 J. Andrew Dearman and M. Patrick Graham (eds.), The Land that I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor ofJ. Maxwell Miller 345 Jan-Wim Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus' Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible 346 Johanna Stiebert, The Construction of Shame in the Hebrew Bible: The Prophetic Contribution 347 Andrew G. Shead, The Open Book and the Sealed Book: Jeremiah 32 in its Hebrew and Greek Recensions 348 Alastair G. Hunter and Phillip R. Davies, Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll 350 David Janzen, Witch-hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9—10 352 William John Lyons, Canon and Exegesis: Canonical Praxis and the Sodom Narrative 356 Carole Fontaine, Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in Biblical Wisdom 359 David M. Gunn and Paula N. McNutt, 'Imagining'Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical Constructs in Honor of James W. Flanagan