FENTON, Terry; ODED, B. - The Invention of Ancient Palestinians Silencing of the History of Ancient...
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Jewish History 17: 77–96, 2003. c 2003 Klu wer Ac ademic Publishers. Printe d in the Netherlands. 77 Review Essay The invention of “ancient Palestinians:” Silencing of the history of ancient Israel ∗ TERRY FENTON & BUSTENAY ODED University of Haifa, Israel As stated in its Introduction, the purpose of this book is: first, “to explain how it is that the Bible has been misunderstood as history” (p. 5); second, “to read the Bible in a new way” in order “to present a clear and accurate idea of the kind of historical knowledge we have about ancient Palestine” (p. 6); and, third, to understand “the histor- ical contexts in which the text was written and in which the tradition wa s forme d . . . and to seek a con text more appropriate ” (p. 6). The questions Thompson proposes to answer are: how should we replace “na ¨ ıve readings of the Bible as history” in order to recov er “the voice of our texts” (p. 21)? What is the reality to which the text implicitly refers: to what extent do the biblical stories deal with a historical past? Since “one needs evidence” (p. 144), do the biblical texts “give us evi- dence that we can use in our own reconstruction of the past” (p. 200)? These questions “should create a leitmotif of our discussion” (p. 21). The method of the book is to portray a “new history of Palestine’s people and their distant beginnings” on the basis of “archaeological and linguistic research undertaken over the past fifty years” (p. 103). Tho mps on is convinced that we need an alt ernative pers pect iv e for writing history and that coherence has to be achieved on the basis of reliable sources and inte rpret ation (p. 144). Thompson’s hypotheses are encapsulated in the following passage on p. 190: “In writi ng about the histor ical develop ments of Pal estine betw een 1250 and 586, all of the traditional answers given for the origins and dev elo pme nt of ‘Is rae l’ have had to be discar ded . . . No ethnic all y ∗ A critical review of Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past. Biblical Archae- ology and the Myth of Israel (Basic Books, London, 1999). The title of this review echoes that of K. W. Whitelam’s book, The Invention of Ancient Israel: Silencing of the Palestinian History (London/New York: Routledge, 1996).
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8/12/2019 FENTON, Terry; ODED, B. - The Invention of Ancient Palestinians Silencing of the History of Ancient Israel - 2003
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