It is high time that we totally discard the landpromise in the Bible that is Israels’ justification for the genocide in Gaza. Because the landpromise has been thrown into history’s scrapyard – by Israeli archeologists.
Highlights:
* The Jews did not flee from Egypt.
* So they couldn’t have conquered the land of Canaan.
* Then the united kingdom of David never came into existence
* Therefore his son Solomon could’t have built any temple
* This is good news, and creates a new foundation for the obvious right of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians
The title and first statements are not evil attacks on the Jewish Bible from antisemites. The «attack» comes from some of the worlds foremost archeologists. They are Israelis, and they are Jews.
Their claims are not new. Professor Zeev Herzog, the former head of the Archeological Department at the Tel Aviv University, says that they have been stating this for years. But the Israelis don’t want to hear it.
I had read an article of professor Herzog in Haaretz, with the title «Deconstructing the walls of Jericho», where he stated these facts. I sent him an email and asked for a meeting. And he replied that I was most welcome.
So I flew to Israel from Norway to meet him, because I needed to know more. I was working on writing a book intended for ordinary readers – while most of the acheologists write for their own. My subject: That most of the Jewish Old Testament is a fairytale - and the story of the landpromise is the most dangerous story of all.
I met professor Herzog in his office in the Tel Aviv University. He is a friendly man, not on a warpath against the religion or the Jews. He tells his facts in a modest way.
- In earlier days, the primary goal for archeologists in the biblical areas was to prove that the Bible-stories had really happened. Today we know that they didn’t - like the conquest of Jericho never happened. But that is a good thing. It’s much better that the Jews didn’t come here as a result of violent conquest, and by expelling the people who lived here from before, he says.
Professor Zeev Herzog, former director of the Department of Archeology in the Tel Aviv University. Along with their Egyptian collegues – undobtably the foremost archeologists in the world. (Photo: Marianne Bergvall)
An impossible conquest
One of Herzogs collegues at the faculty, Israel Finkelstein, published the same findings in 2001 in the book ’The Bible unearthed’, with Neil Silberman. They write that the exodus from Egypt never happened. This is regarded history for most people, not only the Jews. The Jews celebrate Passover in memory of the Exodus – religious and non-religious – they all believe the escape from Egypt happened. So it takes courage to tell the world that it didn’t. They do, nontheless, because there is no doubt anymore that it never happened. The proof is so right there for all to see, that it’s a mystery why we haven’t seen it before:
That 600.000 Jews cannot have escaped Egypt around 1250 before our time (hereafter b.o.t.), wandered in the Sinai-desert for 40 years and after that conquered the land of Canaan. Why not? Because the whole area was under Egypt. The exodus in the Bible coincides with the reign of Ramses II the Great. During his rule the Egyptian empire was at its’ most powerful.
We know this because the worlds’ most powerful kingdoms at the time, Egypt and Mesopotamia, had one thing in common: They left their footprints in writing, on victory monuments, in temples, borderstones, enormous burialplaces and palaces. And king Ramses II ruled over Palestine – sometimes also called Canaan. There is no way that a group of Jewish refugees can have overpowered the Egyptian army and taken a land from the ruling emperor.
Ill: King Ramses the IIs empire was at its height around 1250 b.o.t. – when the Israelite refugees were supposed to have wrestled Canaan away from him.
The merchant roads
5000 years ago the most powerful land in the region was Sumer, on the south-tip of today’s Iraq. Sumer was the cradle of civilisation, a horse’s length before Egypt in their development. They both had the prerequisite for the emergence of huge states: Endless access to drinking water. Egypt had the Nile, and Sumer had two rivers: Euphrates and Tigris. The water made foodproduction possible in overflow, and the two lands saw a huge growth in population numbers. Huge populations also made for well organised state administrations, in cities of several hundred thousand people.
The area between the two rivers is what later has been called Mesopotamia, where the kingdoms Assyria og Babylon appeared. Trade arose between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and huge roads were established.
The oldest of these trade-roads was The King’s road. It is unknown if it was established by Egyptian or Sumerian kings. It went from Egypt and east to todays Eilat, and from there north trough Jordan to Damascus, where it continued further north-east into Mesopotamia.
Horus’ way
The other main highway between the two was built by Egyptian kings. We know that from the name Horus’ way, after the Egyptian falcon god Horus. It went from the Nile-delta and along the cost into Gaza, and from there through Palestine up to Damascus.
The whole Canaan-area was a bufferzone between the two powers Egypt and Mesopotamia. The rule over the bufferzone changed several times through history. In the 15th century the Egyptian king Thutmose III made a successful raid into Southern Syria, and laid the whole bufferzone under Egypt. He later writes that he covered the distance of Horus’ way from Egypt to Gaza with his troups in only ten days.
Ill: New excavations match the Egyptian kings’ reliefs perfectly, and reveals more of the trade routes they described between Egypt and Mesopotamia – straight through the bufferzone that was Palestine.
Descriptions from the 13th century b.o.t. is clearly visible in the temple of Amun in Karnak. Here king Setis reliefs on the walls describe Horus’ road with eleven forts and water recervoirs. King Setis father was Ramses the first. King Setis son Ramses II was the one that ruled the bufferzone at the time when the Jews are supposed to have fled Egypt and conquered the whole of Canaan.
Finkelstein and Silberman writes:
«In the 13th century Egypt was at the heigth of its authority – the most dominating power in the world. The Egyptian control over Canaan was strong: Egyptian garrisons were built several places in the territories, which were led by Egyptian leaders. A sophisticated system of forts, granaries and wells were built along the whole road from Egypt to Gaza, which was called The Horus’ road».
They go on to write that these forts were excavated in the 19-seventies by Eliezer Oren from the Israeli Ben-Gurion University. And the excavations matched the descriptions from King Setis reliefs in Karnak to a tee: strong forts, provision deposits and wells. Today Egyptian authorities have taken over, and take credit for huge excavations of the road. They steadily reveal Egypts’ position of power at that time.
The walls of Jericho breaks
Professor Herzog doesn’t waste much time on the 600.000 Jews who supposedly should have escaped from Egypt and wandered in the Sinai desert for 40 years. There is no sign of them, because they were never there. The Egyptians were also in total control of the Sinai peninsula, and knew it as their own back pocket. Not even with some zeros less can it be possible. 600 Israelites couldn’t have stayed hidden from the empire – neither could 60.
Herzog will rather move on to the chapter he considers the most important: The Jews’ conquest of Jericho, and thereafter the whole of Canaan. It was the discovery that this could never have happended either that became the turning point for Herzog and a number of his contemporary collegues.
- The Bible’s story of how the walls of Jericho fell, and the Jews after that conquered the city, cannot be true. Jericho is one of the worlds’ oldest cities, and there have been numerous excavations in and around Jericho. But at the time when the conquest is supposed to have happened, in the years 1250 to 1210 b.o.t., there were hardly any people living there at all – with good margins both before and after, says Herzog and adds: - And there were definitely no walls.
He tells of a lot of attempts from the Bible defenders to explain away the missing walls and people: They have tried to move the conqest of Jericho back in time, but still run into Egyptian dominance. They have tried to move it forward, but then they are closer to the biblical time of king David, that leaves no time to build up a kingdom. Herzog concludes:
- In the end, there is no explanatian that can look away from the fact that the whole of Canaans land at this time was under Egypt, with strong administration centers in Gaza, Jaffa og Beit She’an. It would be impossible for a group of immigrants, large or small, to defeat the Egyptian power.
Bible and a spade
Herzog tells that Christian Bible-archeologists, in the early 1900s, found common interests with non-religious people who were working for a homeland for the Jews.
- The idea that Yahweh in the Old Testament had promised Canaans land to the Israelites, became part of the nation-building of the newly established Israel. And at the same time it enforced the Christian religion. But young Israelis today don’t need a biblical land-promise to feel that they belong in Israel. It’s rather the oposite: the idea that a people has come from outside and conquered a land by expelling the people who lived there from before, can never be a moral reason to possess a land. The Jews were a group of people who lived here, among all the other peoples who also lived here. And when we now know that, there is no reason to hang on to a fake history, says Herzog.
So what about king David
His findings are neither an attack on Jews or on the Israeli state with the UN-recognized borders. We can then proceed to the next Bible-shock: That king David and his famous son king Solomon never existed either. This is a shock, since most of us growing up in Christian countries - religious or not, have learned about the kings in school - like they were as real as the kings of Norway. Or of England. When I first realised that king David was a made up figure, I felt that I had been deceived. By the Norwegian school-system.
Finkelstein og Silberman writes:
«The archeological evidences for the famous buildings of David and Solomon are non-existent. Excavations on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has failed to produce as much as microscopical pieces of Solomons grand temple and palace complex».
The Bible defenders say that lack of evidence doesn’t prove lack of existence – in time, traces of Solomons temple will be found. But the Israeli archeologists have found plenty – just not anything that matches the biblical story.
Traces of king David or Solomon will never come to light, the reason being the habitation pattern in the century when they should have lived.
David in the Bible is king over Judea, and around year 1000 united with the land of Israel further north. His son Solomon impressed kings far and apart with his huge building projects in his ruling years from 960 til 930 b.o.t. - the most famous being the huge temple he built in Jerusalem.
The kingdom that disappeared
But there can not have been a mighty kingdom in Judea in the period of 1000 to 930 b.o.t., as Finkelstein and Silberman point out:
«The excavations show that Judea remained relatively void of permanent living, it was quite isolated up to and past the time of David and Solomon. There were no urban senters, no hierachy of villages». (Finkelstein & Silberman, p. 132).
They go on to inform that not only were there no trace of buildings in Jerusalem in those days, but not even simple potsherds were to be found. Which is a proof that people weren’t living there. In Jerusalem and other places in Palestine there are clear evidence of communities thousands of years back in time. Layer upon layer of real history is unveiled, from the iron-age, via bronse and all the way back to the stone-age – each with their own very specific pottery culture. But little and nothing has been found from the 11th century before us. In archeology – not to find anything in the layers is definitive proof that nothing was actually there.
«What we find is that Jerusalem in the 11th century was no more than a typical mountain village. This matches the rest of Judea in the same time, which consisted of around 20 little villages with a couple of thousand inhabitants combined. Most of these were wandering shepherds».
If that isn’t enough, this sparsely inhabited area was still under Egypt. King Sheshonq the first ruled in the real world from 943 to 922 - in the time of the Solomon story. In the Amun-temple in Karnak his victory monuments are on display. He names 150 cities he possesses in the area from Egypt to Syria. The country that David should have united a generation before doesn’t even have a name.
A continued mystery
An area without cities or villages doesn’t have a king. In Judea there were no armies that could defend a state, or attack neighbours - as they often did in those days. There were no state administration to govern a country, no craftsmen to build city halls and royal palaces. There were no monuments with the kings’ name on it – not even a single coin with his face or name. There were no monuments with the countrys’ name on it.
There were no common era, and no written culture, like there was in the surrounding, real kingdoms. It’s only in the 7th century cities of size appear in the area of Judea, and then under the Assyrians. And not until the 6th century Jerusalem grows to be a larger city – and then under the Persians. And it wasn’t until Alexander the Great took over in 332 and the hellenistic area started that writing schools were established in Judea, and the people living there developed a written culture.
The moment in time when the Jewish Bible can have appeared is now being pushed forwards. The «maximalists» time it to the 7th century, explaining that it can not have been written before that. Both Herzog and Finkelstein belong to these. The «minimalists», centered at the Copenhagen University, rejects that on the basis that there is no holding point for it being written as early as the 7th century. The scholars in Copenhagen states that one cannot call anything historic until there is extra-biblical evidence for a Jewish, monotary religion in the region. And that first appears in the 4th century. There may have been Jews there before that – but that was meaning «people living in Judea» - not that they were a people believing in a single god.
The minimalists explain that parts of the Old Testament may have been written as late as 200 years b.o.t., and the reason is this:
It was first around year 160 b.o.t. Judea got independence under the Hasmonean royal family – the Maccabees. It was the first time in history that the Jews had a king who had the ability to lay other territories under him – and the will to do it. The minimalists claim that this was the first time that the story of earlier kings’ conquests had any meaning. It was now a king could have ordered his writers to compose the Jewish people’s common «history», and thereby also the tales of former kings’ ruling over a larger, united area. The making of gods and histories around them is after all one of the characteristic activities of kings, through all earlier history.
The archeologists Finkelstein and Silberman sums up and poses this question:
«If there was no exodus from Egypt, no conquest of Canaans land, and no united kingdom under David and Solomon – can we then say that the biblical Israel, as described in the five books of Moses, ever existed at all?» (2001-p.124).
Positive consequences – for peace
When none of this happened, then of course the landpromise didn’t happen either – a thousand years earlier. Professor Herzog is aware that the evidence may hurt peoples’ religious feelings, but he still thinks it important to publish the findings - because he only sees positive consequences.
- We now get a new view of the values of the old people of Israel: when they were one of the groups originating in the area, they didn’t come there as conquerors. That is much better than the untrue story of a violent conquest.
He also say that the new facts must be embrased by the people, both in Israel and in the West, and that will take time.
- But it is inevitable that it will happen, sooner or later, says Herzog.
What does it mean - now
Finkelstein and Silberman quote the french archeologist Roland de Vaux (1903-1971) who was leading the excavations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. De Vaux wrote:
”If the historical faith of Israel is not founded in history, such faith is erroneous, and therefore, our faith is also”.
Roland de Vaux was a true believer, and didnt’t live to be forced to draw the conclusion of his own statement: that when the history is untrue, the faith is untrue also.
But even when we learn that the Old Testament is mostly a fairytale, it doesn’t mean the end of the Christian faith. More people can be drawn to Jesus, the Prince of Peace, when He can be separated from his war-ridden fatherly origin. Even the Jews can choose the more loving sides of their god – over the warring ones. This knowledge may turn out to be a new foundation for peace between Israelis and Palestinians: When the landpromise turns out to be untrue, the next to fall is the idea that the Israelis have a godgiven right to occupy the land of the Palestinians.
The strong support for the occupation of Palestinian land comes from the part of Christians who also believe in the landpromise – and a made up theory that Israel must possess all of the promised land for Jesus to come back. This particular part of Christian belief is held by a large number of Americans, and they are powerful. It is of the utmost importance for peace in the Middle East then, that the word of the untrue story of the landpromise may be spread – indeed to American Christians. President Jimmy Carter, who has always supported the Palestinians’ right to a sovereign state, has said:
«A large part of Christianity has been taken over by people who would kick Jesus in the butt if he ever came back».
Before 1948, the Jews who had been living in Palestine since the days of Jesus were living in peace with their neighbours; the muslims, who were the large majority, and also the Christians who had lived there since the start of our time. They were all Palestinians - from where they lived. If the Western, Christian support of the occupation will start to crumble with a new knowledge about the Bible, it may one day lead to Israel withdrawing all its occupation forces out of Palestine. It may be the start of a new respect for their Palestinian neighbours life, land and borders – especially since they are descendants from the same area – and maybe also from the same people. As Professor Herzog said: it will take time. Right now, the most urgent matter is that the United States - or rather the people of the United States - demand a stop to the genocide in Gaza.
Sources and suggested reading:
Zeev Herzogs article in Haaretz (Does not appear in the search section still, but is in the papers’ archives)
Thomas L. Thompson, University of Copenhagen: The Bible in history – How writers create a past, 1999
Thomas L. Thompson: The Messiah Myth – The near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David, 2005
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman: The Bible unearthed – Archeology’s new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its sacred texts, 2002
Shlomo Sand: The invention of the Jewish people, 2009
Shlomo Sand: The invention of the Land of Israel, 2012
Shlomo Sand: How I stopped being a Jew, 2014
Keith Whitelam: The invention of ancient Israel – The silencing of Palestinian history, 1996
Matthew Sturgis: It ain’t necessarily so – Investigating the truth of the biblical past, 2001
Philip R. Davies: In search of ‘Ancient Israel’, 1992
Samuel Sharpe: The history of Egypt – from the earliest times till the conquest by the arabs, AD 640, Vol I and II, 1870
Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq, 1966, 1980, 1992
Jean Bottéro: Religion in ancient Mesopotamia, 2001
Elias J. Bickerman: The Jews in the Greek age, 1988
Elias J. Bickerman: From Ezra to the last of the Maccabees, 1947, 1962
The bible is not an historic document; it was written over centuries by many writers. The fundamentalist Christians in the US who seem in the majority are not. They are only in the majority of Congress because AIPAC put them there and made it impossible for any rational person to get elected. Only 7-10% of people globally believe the idea that God gave "Israel" to the Jews. The vast majority do not believe that the bible can be a basis for the existence of a nation-state. This is actually a fringe belief that has been mainstreamed by powerful interest groups who profit off of the weapons of war. The problem is that the Israelis believe the stories they have based their identity on. What to do with a people who believe a myth so fervently that they are willing to commit genocide to maintain it? Many in my family were raised to believe we were part Native American. When I told my relatives that based on a DNA test I had literally no Native American DNA, they told me that was proof that DNA tests don't work. I was stunned and didn't know what more to say. This is the same kind of thing but on steroids.
This is so different from the mythology we grew up with that it will be hard convincing people it’s true ☹️
Even if Israel lays down arms now, the Palestinians will still want to have their homes & farms in what is now within Israeli borders restored. That won’t happen… 😢
I can’t see a way out of this mess.
A ceasefire is only the first (but important!) step.