More on fake Archeology

A good piece was featured on Counterpunch, written by Eric Walberg, as he stifles through many reputable scholars of theology. In it, he shows the damning failure of Israel's archeologists of "unearthing" new breakthroughs that an ancient empire of Israel existed and hence laying claim to today's Jews that Palestine is solely their's because of the roots to this remnant of a mythical history. This claim has so much resonance that it ignores the centuries that Jews chose another place for a home and vast heritage of "Mohammedans" and Arabs that called Palestine their home.

"Biblical archaeology has expanded rapidly in the past half-century as a new academic field in search of both justification and funding...But it is now clear to the most respected Christian, Jewish, Muslim and/or secular archaeologists that this supposedly scholarly, rigorous and objective discipline, with its methodology of taking biblical passages and digging and poking away in likely places, looking for proof of what they say, has been a big failure, if not a hoax. While the financial benefits of tying the Bible to archaeology have increased, historical and intellectual benefits have just as rapidly diminished.

Two egregious flaws lie behind this. Firstly, it is somehow overlooked that both the Old and New Testaments were first written down only in the fourth c BC (mostly from the third c BC) to the first c AD by Hellenised Jews, i.e., over a relatively short historical period of approximately four centuries, the culmination of Hellenism as it flourished in the Middle East up to and including its manifestation under the Roman empire. The references to "old Israel" of the distant past are directed at the enlightenment of people living at that time, and have much more to do with events at that time than some distant, mythical history which was never recorded in stone, so to speak, but was rather passed down from generation to generation much like other peoples have passed down the legends of their origins -- orally, embellished by talented composers and poets. Furthermore, the OT and NT are closely integrated in structure, themes, and underlying philosophy, and to reject one part as heretical (as the Jews do the NT) or another part as a mere harmless introduction to the real text (as do the Christians concerning the OT) is not only unprofessional, but foolish and even subversive.

Secondly, the worldview of those recording the Biblical legends, stories, poems, philosophical essays, etc differs radically from ours. It was a product of Hellenism, where true reality is a Platonic ideal, recognising the ineffable quality of life, our overwhelming ignorance, and the fractured, shadowy nature of daily life as experienced by our senses. Our Aristotelian, materialist outlook, sees reality in hard, cold facts which we directly perceive and duly record, where the only truths are what can be physically demonstrated and/or refuted. This is quite alien to the mindset of the Biblical composers, writers and scribes. Taking the Bible literally, as a materialist recounting of "history" is a classic example of misplaced concreteness. To its credit, there is no word for history in ancient Hebrew, reflecting its origins in the pre- Aristotelian worldview.

To go a step further and assume that this bogus history is the "real" history of mankind, with the history of the thousands of other peoples taking a back seat, is just not on. The reality of the Bible is transcendent, universal, traditional, intuitive and emotional. To profit from it, we must rediscover this worldview, where myth is the "reality" and very essence of our lives, and the dunya is a lame, pale version of the sacred myths guiding us. Karen Armstrong, who has written widely on the monotheisms and the loss of myth as a vital part of our worldview, argues in The Bible: a biography (2007) that fundamentalist religion, be it Islamic, Christian or Jewish, is a response to and product of modern materialist culture, which undermines the role of myth as a vital element in the social matrix. Myth is reduced to its literal meaning, i.e., Jerusalem is a physical location at a fixed point in time, not a metaphor for the City of God, transcending the limitations of the physical world...

Whatever the true origin of the Jews, the Bible talks of an "old Israel" -- a United Monarchy which supposedly flourished from 1000-600 BC in present-day Palestine, with Saul, David and Solomon as great kings of a magnificent empire, and a spectacular temple, built by Solomon, as the centre of worship of the Jewish god Yahweh. What do archaeologists tell us? A century of sifting, scrubbing, sorting and debate has produced no evidence of Jerusalem as a large city, let alone the centre of an empire. It was at most a minor trading and olive growing town. No doubt a small state existed in the ninth c BC, one of several -- Moab, Edom, Ammon, even one we could call Israel, with Samaria as a likely "capital", and with the revival of Phoenician shipping, Palestine indeed began to flourish for the first time, but on a modest scale, as an inter-empire outpost, the home of many Semitic and non-Semitic tribes...

The flourishing of Palestine supposedly ended with God's punishment of Israel and the destruction of Samaria. The goodness of the Judean kings, Hezekiah and Josiah, delayed Yahweh's anger and Jerusalem's destruction. But the day of wrath, so it goes, brought the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem, marking the end of old Israel in the sixth c BC. What do archaeologists tell us? Again, there is no historical evidence for this lovely story -- Palestine was all the time just a backwater, subject to division between Assyria, Mesopotamia and Egypt as their empires ebbed and flowed...

Never was there an ethnically coherent Israel, and according to Thomson, neither Jerusalem nor Judah ever shared an identity with Israel before the rule of the Hasmoneans in the Hellenistic period of the 3rd-1st cc BC, coincidentally, when the legends were first written down. Ironically, the Samaritans, scorned by Ezra's (and today's) Jews, are the most likely Semitic ancestors of the historical Israel."

"Debasing" Facts in the air

Despite the fact that Nadia Abu El-Haj has been granted tenure at Columbia University, the attacks still come in, even from the 'liberal' Ha'aretz. Bari Weiss has once again disputed El-Haj's ability to qualify for tenure because "the only book upon which she was granted tenure" was her groundbreaking study Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, which was a winner in the 2002 Albert Hourani Book Award, "which recognizes outstanding publishing in Middle East studies".

Weiss accuses El-Haj of totally discrediting science as a non-partisan study but subjected to the biases of the people who make it.

"To argue that people, rather than evidence, create archaeological fact, El-Haj is forced to abandon the methodology of science altogether."

And not content with El-Haj, Weiss brazenly applies her criticism to the late Edward Said.

"El-Haj is hardly the first to employ this approach. Perhaps its most powerful trailblazer was Edward Said, who argued in his landmark 1978 book "Orientalism," that when dealing with Asia, the West was necessarily politicized. Said alleged that even the most well-intentioned scholars, if they were Western, were Orientalists, actively constructing a mythical "Orient" out of their own political motivations as the exotic, feminized, other. For Said, there is no such thing as objectivity in scholarship, and those who claim to strive for it may well be the ones with the most to hide."

Is it not accepted that there are biases all around? People can profess to be absolutely non-partisan but we are a product of our society, whether negatively or positively. Israel is so polemic that nationalism permeates to the very last bum. How else can it be explained that such nationalist fervour is a pinnacle of the settlement structure and violence we forsee today and yesterday? Or how archeologists are in such a hurry to prove that ancient Israel does exist that it is justified to plow more Palestinian homes and heritage sites in order for evidence to be shown? Certainly El-Haj's book has been vilified and praised (but what book on the Holy Land ever is free of politicisation nowadays?) and it is up to the reader to conclude for themselves whether the book is sound or not. Weiss cannot accuse the usual anti-Semitic line since El-Haj has been free of any form of it.

Weiss does let it slip:

"Let's be clear: Is it in the interest of today's Zionists to find evidence of an ancient Israelite kingdom in the Land of Israel? Of course. But recognizing such interest does not preclude the possibility of the application of fair, professional standards, and the ability of archaeologists, regardless of their ethnic group, to uphold them in good faith."

But during the tenure controversy, El-Haj had plenty of support, "particularly in her field, who say her book is solid, even brilliant, and part of an innovative trend of looking at how disciplines function." Yes there are opponents, such as Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard, who was quoted as saying "her work is not good enough".

“She completely misunderstands what the biblical tradition is saying... She is not even close. She is so bizarrely off.”

And we all know how much claim biblical tradition has. Michael Dietler, an anthropology professor at University of Chicago said,

"She is a scholar of the highest quality and integrity who is being persecuted because she has the courage to focus an analytical lens on subjects that others wish to shield from scrutiny."

Basically El-Haj has done the unthinkable and that is to challenge Israel's sole claim to the land of Palestine. By attempting to showcase that their facts are more contrived that evidence would suggest, then it's best to derail her studies, however praised it really can be. Weiss concludes:

"El-Haj's work does not remind readers of the need to be skeptical of the influence nationalism can have on the interpretation of archaeological facts. Instead, she has written a book condemning the notion of facts themselves. It is for this reason that those who care about the future of the veracity of facts - and not just the future of Israel - should take serious notice of her promotion."

Or more to the notice that her promotion is a step backward for the academic police of Campus Watchers.