Under God: The People of Ancient Israel- Episode 1: Setting the Scene

This series provides a story… about stories.

It summarizes the history of a history. Written history, mostly. The very earliest attempts to capture a historical record via prose writings, in fact.

I am talking about the Torah of Moses, or the “Pentateuch” for Christians.

You know, the first five books of the Bible. Can’t name them? Just listen to this handy rap guide and you’ll be good to go.

For this new series, I want to take a broad tour of the research about the earliest stories of the people of Israel, the ones preserved in the Hebrew Bible.

Admittedly, this “tour” will largely be me stowing away on the intellectual range rover of eminent biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman,

… i.e., based on the work he and his colleagues did as recounted in books such as Who Wrote the Bible? and The Exodus. 

I want to take what I’ve gleaned from his books as a launching point for some questions to ponder, and I’ll conclude the series with some possible lessons that could be relevant for us today, something for devout believers and skeptics alike.

Let There Be Evidence

I’ll start the series off with a bit of a mystery, one that emerges when trying to reconcile the Torah’s stories with evidence from archeology.

First off, we need a very brief summary of the Biblical origin story, at least as it’s generally understood by laypeople today. Here goes:

• God created the world and everything in it, including humans. He rewarded humans for obedience and punished them for their sins.

• God eventually made a covenant with one particularly pious man, Abraham. From there a line of descent established what would become the 12 tribes of Israel, the chosen people of God. The sons of Israel later moved to Egypt where they lived in peace and prosperity for many generations.

• 400 years later, the sitting Pharaoh forced the people of Israel into slavery. With the power of God, a man named Moses brought down the Pharaoh and his forces, and led his people to freedom out of Egypt.

• The refugees wandered through the deserts for 40 years, until they reached the land of Canaan, whose people worshipped pagan gods such as Baal and Asherah. A great battle ensued, and God ensured that his chosen people slaughtered all of the Canaanites. The victors then claimed their promised land: the land of Israel. All of the 12 tribes got a share of land (except for the tribe of Levi, who served as priests).

• Much later, the tribes of Israel were united by a succession of kings, who worked to expand the kingdom’s reach and power.

Given that there are some huge events described in these origin stories, scholars naturally began to ask: what is the archeological evidence for these biblical events?

No modern scholar really expected to stumble across the garden of Eden, or to uncover Noah’s ark.

But what about evidence for slavery of the Israelites in Egypt?

Or their mass exodus across the desert?

Or the great battle at Jericho, the principal city of Canaan?

Crazily enough, there is no archeological evidence to support any of those events.

No mention of Israel in the Egyptian records of the time. No records mentioning mass slavery of any kind (and in fact, the pyramids were constructed using paid laborers). No artifacts or other evidence to indicate a mass exodus of people through the desert. Nothing.

And perhaps the weirdest absence of all: no evidence of any disruptive activity in the Southern Levant region to indicate a battle, or even a dramatic shift in cultural practices.

According to the archeological evidence, the culture of the area was steady and consistent for centuries.

In fact, most scholars have concluded that the people of Israel were, in fact, the Canaanites that their stories named as the enemy.

They were the very people they purportedly slaughtered.

That’s absolutely crazy, right? 

But this mysterious finding is just the starting point of our journey. Let’s hop aboard and see where a fuller accounting of the evidence will take us…

… to be continued…

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