Video of the discussion:
https://youtu.be/VcDNHDfOWIE?si=SBEkINlXMr2GgOlm
The Antiquity
of the Jews
Our Torah
portion of this morning has a bizarre account in it of a rape committed by the
the Prince of Shechem and then a revenge war by the brothers of Dina on the
entire city. It is a highly problematic text involving punishing an entire city
by a ruse, something that is very common till today in the Middle East. This
kind of ruse, for revenge on the capture of one women, is the very theme of the
Trojan Wars, by Homer, a war that would have occurred a few centuries after the
rape of Dina, with the ruse of the
Trojan horse. The horror of rape is also
the basis for a war inside ancient Israel , for which the tribe of Benjamin is
almost eradicated.
One thing we
can understand after October 7 is how the rape of women is an outrage and we
can understand why such a mass horror maybe unforgivable. Women as victims of
rape in war continues till today and certainly the actions of ISIS against conquered
Yazidis is one example in recent times. And certainly, the actions of Imperial
Japan against China during what is called the Rape of Nanking, in which 20,000
women were raped, in addition to some 200,000 civilians, is another example.
However beside
the moral problems involved in this story there is an interesting aside here.
Namely that the city of ,Shechem, now Nablus ( Napoli, Naples) becomes Israelite territory before there is an
Israel in Israel. There is a hint of this in Jacob’s final blessing to Joseph,
when he says:
וַאֲנִ֞י נָתַ֧תִּֽי לְךָ֛ שְׁכֶ֥ם אַחַ֖ד עַל־אַחֶ֑יךָ
אֲשֶׁ֤ר לָקַ֙חְתִּי֙ מִיַּ֣ד הָֽאֱמֹרִ֔י בְּחַרְבִּ֖י וּבְקַשְׁתִּֽי׃ {פ}
And now, I assign to you one portion more than to your
brothers, which I wrested from the Amorites with my sword and bow.”
What “portion” is this? The word in Hebrew is a play on
the word “Shechem” which refers to the city, which Jacob claims, he took by
military might, from the Amorites, the people of Canaan!
Shechem becomes the site of the first ceremony held in
the land of Israel under Joshua. It becomes the central sanctuary for the
northern tribes. And it remains the sight of the sacred mount for the Samaritan,
descendants of the northern tribes.
1900 years ago,
a Jewish general who had gone over to the Roman side, needed to prove to the
Roman world how ancient and important the Jews were in history. Josephus
Flavius called his book The Antiquity of the Jews and it is a fitting
title for what we are facing today in attacks not only on the legitimacy of the
state of Israel but even on the role and position of Jews in world history.
Even back then, Josephus had to defend the idea that the Jewish people had the
right to their place in the land of Israel and he was fighting one of the
oldest battles against anti-Semitism in his day.
So nothing is
new in history, and as I view the social media debates back and forth on Israel
versus the Palestinians and who has legitimacy I recall that this goes far far
back. As I mentioned previously the great commentator Rashi, on the opening
lines of Genesis, emphasized that the whole purpose of the story of creation
was to prove that we Jews had legitimate right to the land of Israel and that
we were not thieves. As I understand it, he was writing just as Christians and
Muslims were fighting over who would own Palestina, Filastin, Eretz Ysrael.
Academic
history on the ancient Middle East, far from being fact-based, has become a veritable
volley-ball. At one time there was a major archaeological finding in Syria of a
Kingdom called Ebla which would match details from the period of the Patriarchs.
In the original excitement of the discoveries the archaeologists involved
claimed that they found Biblical Hebrew names, such as Ibrium-Ivri-Hebrew, and
references that would indicate that indeed ancient Hebrews were found in this
part of Syria at that time. You would think it would be easy to confirm. However
the Syrian government immediately interfered.
“It is now
clear that anti-Zionist political pressures in Syria are attempting to affect
the scholarly interpretation of the Ebla tablets. The Syrians are furious that
in the West the intense interest shown in this fantastic cache of tablets has
focused on their importance for understanding the Bible and Biblical history.https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/syria-tries-to-influence-ebla-scholarship/
We have the same fight
going on about the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, which Mohammed Abbas
claims never existed, even though historical Arab and Muslim documents agreed,
before the 20th century, Jerusalem was site of the Jewish Temple. Historical revisionism is
in its hey-day.
I came across a
debate that took place in writing between a well-respected historian of the
Arabs, Philip Hitti, and renowned physicist Albert Einstein and Jewish
historian, Eric Kahler. Neither of these were political hacks, like the Syrian
government or Mohammed Abbas, but they spoke from their own perspectives. This took place just as World War 2 and the
Holocaust were at its peak, and the United States Congress was looking for a
safe haven for Jews and was exploring the idea of a Jewish homeland in what was
then Palestine. Hitti rejected the rights of Jews to any part of the land as an
independent entity even though it would have perhaps saved millions of Jews.
He derided our
delusions:
FROM THE Arab point of view, political Zionism is an exotic
movement, internationally financed, artificially stimulated,and holds no hope of
ultimate or permanent success. Not only to the fifty million Arabs, many of
whom are descendants of the Canaanites who were in the land long before the Hebrews entered Palestine
under Joshua, but to the entire Moslem society, of whom the Arabs form the
spear head, a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine appears as an anachronism…
what chance of survival has such an
alien state amidst a camp of
a would-be hostile
Arabic and unsympathetic Islamic world?
This is the
response by Kahler and Einstein:
“Both Jews and Arabs are said to stem from a common ancestor, from
Abraham, who immigrated into Canaan (i.e., Palestine), and so neither of them
seem to have been earlier in the land than the other. Recent views assume that
only part of the Israelites migrated to Egypt-as reflected in the Joseph
story-and part of them remained in Palestine.
So part of the Canaanite population encountered by the Jews when they
entered the Promised Land under Joshua were Israelites, too. Therefore, the
Arabs have no priority on the land.
To the Arabs Jerusalem is only the third holy city; to the Jews it
is the first and only holy city, and Palestine is the place where their
original history, their sacred history took place. Besides, to the Arabs
Jerusalem is a holy city only insofar as they trace their tradition back to
Jewish origins, …
But by their holy war and their
conquest of Palestine the Arabs contributed their share to depriving the
Jews of their homeland and so to the making of the Jewish problem, even though
one must concede that their share is comparatively smaller than that of other
peoples. The stand the Arabs take, however, with regard to the
Jews, is exactly the one which all peoples of the world are taking. No people,
unfortunately, understands why it should contribute anything to. the solution
of the Jewish problem. (https://www.academia.edu/86053839/Hitti_Einstein_Dispute_Palestine)
As well known, in 1948,
the Jews established, in part of historic Israel, a State, and the Arabs, given
the opportunity, refused to establish an indendent state, on the theory that “
no cake” is better than “half a cake”. Israel survived 1948, Nasser’s
manipulations in 1956, the Six Day Way, and more. But the questions remained.
So, I went back to my notes and I found an essay I have written, when I was
still a college undergrad, and was published, in the letters column, by one of
the greatest literary journals of the period, the Saturday Review of Literature, April 26, 1969, edited at that time by Norman Cousins. By way of
reference, if today, your doctor is treating you, not only physically, but also on the basis of
improving your mood and attitude during severe illness, thank Norman Cousins,
who shifted medical attitudes by recording his own battle with severe illness.
So, here is my essay, written just a few years
after the 6 Day War, when Israel sat atop Golan, Sinai, and the West Bank, and
waited for the Arab nations to sit down and talk peace. There was, at that
time, the Khartoum Declaration, 3 Nos: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with
it,
I think, for a
college junior, I made a great case for the historicity of the Jewish presence
in ancient Israel. Keep in mind, that before Google, you had to actually read a
book to find information!
Disputed Palestine
DAVID SHOBE [Book Forum, Apr. 12] claims that from 638 to 1250 A.D.
Palestine was ruled by Arabs. I will grant that it was ruled by Arabic-speaking
peoples, but it was as Moslems that these people viewed themselves, not as Arabs. That is why Saladin, whom Mr. Shobe claims as an Arab,
could restore Moslem rule to
Palestine, even though he was
Kurdish, not Arabic ,
by birth.
Mr. Shobe plays down the Jewish occupancy, claiming Jewish rule
extended from 1020 to 721 B.C. This is ridiculous: 1020 is already halfway into
the reign of King Saul, centuries after
the conquest of Palestine by Joshua. I trust more in
the record of the Pharaoh Merneptah,
who in
1230 B.C., claimed to have conquered "the people of Israel."
Perhaps Mr. Shobe does not consider a people to rule over an area until they
are united under a monarchy, in which case one would insist that there never
was an ancient Greece , since it was divided into several city-states .
For your reference:
Merneptah Stele Inscription “Israel is laid waste—its seed is no more.”
This reference is to
the existence of Israelites in the land of Canaan even before the conquest by
the children of Israel- because we understand from Jacob’s own words, that he
had taken Shechem in his day:B’charbi u’bekashti-with my sword and my bow.
The other date
Mr. Shobe gives
is 721B.C. , but it is only the date
of the fall
of the Northern Kingdom ( Israel ) to Assyria. He ignores the
fact that the Southern Kingdom (Judah)
remained until 586
B.C., when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians.
How else do we
know that there were ancient Israelites and Judeans there, since the Bible is
considered a one-sided evidence?
An inscription
found in the 1880, in an underground water tunnel, at the Siloam spring(
Shiloach), verifying the Bible’s account of the digging of such a tunnel by
King Hezekiah.
The Moabite
Steel, by King Meesha, paralleling the Israelite version, around 840 BCE. Our
version says we won, his version says he won, but otherwise, the accounts
agree.
A calendar, in
ancient Biblical Hebrew, circa 925 BCE.
However, despite population deportations by the conquerors, a large
part of the population of both kingdoms
remained behind. With the rise of the Persian Empire, the deported Jews
were allowed to return and re-establish a homeland in
538 B.C. ; by 516, they had rebuilt the Temple. Palestine remained occupied by
Jews, but under Persian and Greek rule till 167 B.C., when , by revolution ,
the Jews won their independence; this lasted till 63 B.C.. when the Romans took
control. However, the Jews retained much
autonomy till 44 A.D.
Because of increasing Roman oppression there was a revolution that
lasted from 67 to the destruction
of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. with resistance continuing for three more years till
the fall of Masada. This is generally considered the end of Jewish rule; however,
from 115-117 A.D. in Egypt, Cyrene, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia And from 132-135
A.D. in Palestine under Bar Kochba, more wars for independence were fought. Although the deaths from these
revolts ran well into the hundreds of thousands , there remained a Jewish community
in Palestine, which was ruled by a patriarchate. This government lasted
till 425 A.D., when it was abolished by
a Christian emperor. The Jewish community itself remained in
Palestine until the Crusaders
wiped out a large part
of the population; however, Jews
soon returned and re-established
enclaves in Palestine that still exist.
Jewish rule, whether as a union of tribes , as a monarchy, or as a
patriarchate, lasted from at least 1230 B.C . to 425 A.D., at least 1,655
years, not 200 years as Mr. Shobe claims.
What did we
produce in those years the author claimed we had already vanished?
The final
consensus body of the Bible.
The Apocrypha,
books that were not incorporated into the Bible.
The Dead Sea
Scrolls.
Pharisaic
Judaism.
Early
Christianity ( till it split off).
After the Roman
destruction of Jerusalem and the rebranding of Judea as Palestina, we continued
to produce in the land of Israel:
The
pre-Mishnaic codes
The core
structure of Jewish prayer, shared by Jews everywhere as well as religious
poetry, the Piyutim still used today.
The Mishnah,
the foundation of Jewish Law.
The
Palestinian, or better, the Yerushalmi ( Jerusalem) version of Talmud.
The major
Midrashic compendia.
The
authoritative scroll of the Torah, used world wide.
The
authoritative punctuated and vocalized edition of the Bible, used world-wide,
and the basis for major Bible translations used by Christians today.
Even after the
Crusades, which damaged the extent Jewish community heavily, we continued to
produce:
The major
system of Kabbalah, of the Ari, Lurianic Kabbalah.
The foundation
code of Jewish law, the Shulkhan Arukh.
Major works of
Jewish liturgy-Lecha Dodi, Yah Ribbon.
Even our
Messianic rebellion, under Shabtai Zvi, had its base in, of all places, Gaza!
All of this was
done, when even by common belief, Jews were no longer present.
By the
way, you may have seen interviews of ordinary West Bank Palestinians, as to
what major leaders or figures the people of Palestine have produced ( besides
Yaser Arafat, born in Egypt), they will tell you—zilch! You can watch this on
your own: https://youtu.be/deiShtWReYE?si=K0t6GkRopHqv_Dxq
Palestinians: Name an important Palestinian in
history?
Michael Spear 's prattle about Aryan races [Book Forum, Apr. 12]
could only have been taken from the same experts
that taught Hitler. Mr. Spear knows nothing of either "races"
or language groups.
His first term is Hamitic--this is now used to refer to the ancient
Egyptians, and today's Coptics and Ethiopians, as a language group. Although
the Canaanites were called the "sons of Ham" in the Bible, they were Semites,
as were most of the other peoples Mr.
Spear mentioned.
The terms Semites, Aryans, and Hamites are not racial, but
linguistic. Semitic languages are spoken today only by the Israelis and the
Arabs , but in the past,
they were the languages of the Mesopotamian valley, the Fertile Crescent, and the Arabian
Penninsula. Aryan refers to the language group that originated in the Iranian
plateau and spread to Europe, where these
people formed the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages of today, and
to India, where they developed Sanskrit and modern
Hindi. Any linguist will affirm that the resemblance of Semitic
to Aryan languages is nil.
lt is true that in 3800 B.C. there were non-Semites in the
Mesopotamian Valley but they were not Aryans. The Sumerians, not the
Akkadians, were there, and they spoke a language of an unidentified group. The
Akkadians came to Mesopotamia some time afterwards, and
adopted the culture of the Sumerians , but retained their
Semitic tongue. Mr. Spear now confuses these Akkadians with the Amorites, who
did not appear till the twenty-first century B.C., when they left the desert
and overran the Sumero-Akkadians to the east ( Hammurabi, the law-maker of
Babylon , was an Amorite) and entered Palestine to the west, to form, with
other Semitic predecessors, the Canaanite peoples that greeted Abraham. The
Amorites were closely related to the Hebrews - common Amorite names were Abram,
Jacob, Benjamin, Zebulun.
The Arabs were merely the last wave of Semitic expansion out of the
desert.
Just an aside,
there is a Palestinian case that their DNA is that of the original Canaanites.
That’s their claim, a genetic claim. I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of DNA
genealogical research, but Jewish DNA, even the “Ashkenazic” white European
colonialists, is basically similar. Palestinians show more input from the
Arabian Peninsula, while Ashkenazim show more influence from Italy, La Dolce
Vita. However, basing on DNA can be a racist tool. The true question of
indigeneity is what culture does the claimant bear? The only peoples who
adhere, and have adhered consistently, to the indigenous culture of the land of
Israel, are the Samaritans, who bear what may be the traditions of northern
Israel, and the Jews, Judeans. We bear in the Hebrew Bible, the traditions of
both ancient Israelite kingdoms, the wars against the Canaanite and Phoenician
Baal, and the poetry of ancient Canaan. We bear the use of the ancient language
of the Land of Israel, Hebrew, as well as the variation of the old alef-bet
which we now use. We took the land of Israel with us wherever we went. We
refused to give in to the colonizers and conquerors, wherever we were. The
Palestinians no longer bear that indigenous heritage, but , to the most part,
if they are descendants of the original Israelites, then they betrayed that
heritage when they adopted either the Greek and Latin versions of Christianity,
or Islam and the Arabic language.
Mr. Spear mentions the Khibiri ( habiru, hapiru , abiru) of Tel el
Amarna fame. However, this does not
refer to an
ethnic or language group, but means a class of wandering
laborers, mercenaries, and semi-nomads; each one of the peoples mentioned had
their beginnings as Khibiru.
Norbert Weinberg,
New York, N.Y
I think I did a
decent job, at the age of 20, of stating the case for the antiquity of the
Jews.
