Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

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andrewcriddle
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by andrewcriddle »

I'm not sure if it is relevant, because I'm not sure what this thread is really about, but Israel is mentioned in both the Tell Dan Stele and the Mesha Stele

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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

Yeah but conquered and abused people have an obligation to plant time capsules so that when scholars thousands of years later write the history of the region they will be assumed to have continued to exist or we will be forced to accept the negative propaganda written about them by rivals. What you've mentioned has come up but the others say once these records no longer keep being produced the "sons of Israel" disappear. Sort of like what they do with Jesus, the gospels, the Torah and anything else they don't like. Got to keep planting time capsules OR ELSE.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by neilgodfrey »

ABuddhist wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:07 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:02 pm When we first encounter the term Israel as an identifier of certain people it is in religious literature and has a variety of connotations that are sometimes contradictory -- it clearly did not originate as a neat ethnic reality.
The Merneptah Stele identifies Israel as a people, but it is not religious literature, being rather propaganda for Pharaoh Merneptah.
It does refer to Israel, but as mentioned earlier, the Merneptah stele says Israel is no more. Dead. Gone, Kaput. 300 years before the supposed kingdom of Israel.

But especially important is the need to read what it says without reading the Bible into it:

The princes lie prostrate, saying ‘shalom’
None raises his head among the Nine Bows
Tehenu destroyed, Hatti pacified
Canaan is plundered with every misery
Ashkelon is taken, Gezer is captured
Yanoam has been made non-existent
Israel lies desolate; its seed (pr£) is no more
Hurru has become a widow for To-meri [Egypt]
All lands together have become peaceful
Everyone who was a nomad has been reined in by king... Memeptah

There seems no doubt that the location of Memeptah’s Israel lies some­ where in Palestine; the dispute over this text concerns whether the name indicates a land or a people. Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam are marked with a determinative sign identifying them as city-states, whereas Israel is marked with one which signifies peoples either not living in cities, or transhumants. The determinative is not unambiguous and could, it seems, be used of an area where there were no city-states. Much also depends on whether the word ‘seed’ denotes human offspring or crops (though the former is perhaps better supported).

It is possible that the Israel of this inscription is the name of a popula­tion living, presumably, in the highlands of Palestine. But the name given to this people may actually be derived from the name of the place. If so, we will need to start elsewhere. If not, however, might we begin the history of Israel here? Many scholars believe so. The importance of the Memeptah stele is to show that the name ‘Israel’ goes back at least to the 13th century BCE. But does it also give us the starting point for the history of a particular population or society?

. . . .

So what is entailed by the use or non-use of the term ‘Israel’ for the population referred to by Memeptah? Is the issue whether these people also called themselves ‘Israel ’? Or whether they are one day to become a state bearing the name ‘Israel’? Or is it enough that they are occupying the same space as the biblical ‘Israel’? For Shanks, and for many other laymen, and even some scholars, the name itself is what counts. But names and historical identities do not belong together in the simple way that such arguments suppose. For instance, Scotland takes its name from a people (the ancient Scots) who crossed the Irish Sea and settled in Ireland; to the extent that the Scots are descended from any ancient people, these ancestors are the Piets, while the Irish are the descendants of the ancient Scots. The modem ‘British’ are not the Britons of the Roman period, and mostly not descended from them, for those Britons were driven into what is now Wales and parts of Cornwall by Angles and Saxons, who originated in Germany (and were then invaded by Danes and the Scandinavian-French Normans). The Dutch are not Deutsch. Nor, to go further afield, is the modem country of Ghana on the same territory as the 18th century West African state of Ghana from which it is named. Modem Palestinians share a name with ancient Philistines, and modem Israelis with ancient Israelites, but in neither case is there a very strong connection. Many modem Palestinians might in theory be able to trace their ancestry back three thousand years to inhabitants of Palestine; but during their history these ancestors will have changed into Judaeans, Christians, and now (most of them) Muslims. On the other hand, many citizens of modem Israel do not have an ancestor who lived long ago in the territory occupied by the historical Israel (which is the West Bank, not the coastal plain where Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Netanya and Haifa are!). As will be observed later, populations change a lot in the ancient Near East and labels need to be used with caution: the inhabitants of the land known to the Assyrians as pilastu and to the Romans as Palestina are not to be equated simply with ‘the Philistines’.

In the case of this early Israel of the Memeptah stele such considera­tions are important. For the next attestation of an Israel in this region is much later, in an inscription of Shalmaneser III (c. 853) which refers to Ahab of sir-il-la-a-a (with the denominative for land [mat]). (The inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, follows shortly after, c. 840). Between these references and Memeptah lie over 350 years, a period much longer than the lifetime of the United States of America! During that time, what kind of continuity can we assume, which might enable us to speak, in an historical way, of the ‘Israel’ whose definition we take from the biblical literature? In terms of population, very little, as we shall now see.

(Davies, In Search for Ancient Israel, 58ff)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:32 am I'm not sure if it is relevant, because I'm not sure what this thread is really about, but Israel is mentioned in both the Tell Dan Stele and the Mesha Stele

Andrew Criddle
That the kingdom of Israel is a fact of history, attested by archaeological inscriptions, is not in question. I am attempting to address the notion that we have evidence that the people of that kingdom identified themselves as "Israelites" ethnically. The concept of Israel itself is varied and I have listed somewhere here about ten different meanings of the term in our sources. The people of that kingdom of Samaria were, after the demise of that kingdom, identified in the sources as Samarians or Samaritans after the name of the main administrative city of that region. The label of Israel is much later used to identify certain people but it it as much a religious term as an ethnic one when it does so.

SA has other ideas that I have since ceased to engage with because I find him wilfully refusing to even crack open a book or read anything that he thinks might contradict his assumptions, or to knee-jerk to any suggestion of mine that it must be "f...king idiotic" because it's only what is acknowledged by all scholars and texts that I am aware of and does not match what he himself assumes about things.

(If you think I am therefore not bothering to read his more recent comments here you are right.)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by neilgodfrey »

ABuddhist wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:16 pm But in general, my point is that regarding the Samaritans as sons and daughters of Israel in no way means accepting either Samaritan or Jewish accounts about their orgins and history as true - not when we have archaeological evidence (including writing) contradicting their narratives.

In the same way, I can accept that Koreans are descendants of Dangun even as I recognize that this is contradicted by evidence. Both claims of descent are myths - and myths need not be true.
Hi again ABuddhist ..... just to recap on a point I referenced earlier, the word "Israel" is what we might call an "irregular verb" ....

The Israel of the Bible has at least 10 different meanings. In the Bible Israel can mean:
  • the name of the ancestor Jacob
  • the name of the league of 12 tribes
  • the name of a united kingdom whose capital was Jerusalem
  • the name of the northern kingdom whose capital was Samaria (after the above kingdom broke up)
  • after 722 bce, another name for Judah
  • after the exile into Babylon, another name for the socio-religious community in left in the province of Yehud
  • the name of a group within this community, the laity (as distinct from 'Aaron')
  • the name for the descendants of Jacob/Israel
  • a pre-monarchic tribal grouping in Ephraim
  • adherants of various forms of Hebrew and Old Testament religion.
The interesting follow up is that whenever we find ourselves about to use the term "Israel" it might be useful to return to the above check-list and be sure we can justify how we are about to use that term, and have a clear idea of why we are using it and with what meaning.
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