Today I want to review a book I have recently finished reading: The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. Let me introduce my subject with a quote from another recent book by Nachman Ben-Yehuda, the Israeli sociologist, who writes:
“How do we perceive our culture? How do we understand ourselves as beings in need of meaning? We are socialized into and live in complex cultures from which we extract the very essence of our identity, but at the same time, we also construct these cultures. How is this process accomplished? What is the nature of those cultural processes…?
“One interesting way of exploring cultures is to examine some of the myriad contrasts that characteristically make up cultures. These contrasts set boundaries, which in turn define the variety of the symbolic-moral universes of which complex cultures are made. In turn, these symbolic-moral universes give rise to and support both personal and collective identities. There are many such contrasts, some more profound than others. There are physical contrasts, such as black/white, day/night, sea/land, mountain/valley; and there are socially and morally constructed contrasts, such as good/bad, right/wrong, justice/injustice, trust/betrayal. The contrast we shall focus on in this book ( Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada) is a major and significant one: that between truth and falsehood. This contrast cuts across many symbolic-moral universes because it touches a quality to which we attach central importance – that between the genuine and the spurious. …
“[T]he demarcating line between that which is truth and that which is not did not leap into existence overnight, but developed gradually in Western philosophical thought over many years. …
“As scientists we must affirm that there are versions of reality which are inconsistent with, even contradictory to, “facts.” The realities which these false versions create are synthetic and misleading. …
“Adhering to social realities which are based on incorrect empirical facts and false information is – evidently – possible, but carries a heavy price tag in terms of a genuine understanding of the world in which we live. …
“…Nationalism requires the elaboration of a real or invented past…
“…Nationalist archaeology has no choice but to be political. …In cases of disputed pasts it has to become manipulative as well. Manipulating archaeology to legitimize specific pasts – real or invented – is a potent concoction to use when one wants to forge a national identity and create cohesion by fostering a strong sense of a shared past…”
This is exactly the problem that Thomas L. Thompson addresses in The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel : the creation of an invented past that was accomplished long ago, for purposes of forging a national identity among refugees. However, at the time it was originally done, the target audience understood that it was not a real “history,” but rather an ideological textbook for the future. The real problems began when another group, some time later, decided to use the same stories (handily already available), for their own imperial ambitions and presented this ideological literature as History. In short, as Thompson and others point out, the “History of Israel” was really created by European elitists seeking to colonize the world and knew a good thing when they saw it.