A History of Israel, Fourth Edition

John Bright

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781611642094
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Unsurpassed for nearly half a century, and now with a new introduction and appendix by William P. Brown, John Bright's A History of Israel will continue to be a standard for a new generation of students of the Old Testament. This book remains a classic in the literature of theological education.

Part One

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ANTECEDENTS AND BEGINNINGS

The Age of the Patriarchs

Chapter 1

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THE WORLD OF ISRAEL’S ORIGINS

THE FIRST half of the second millennium B.C. (roughly 2000–1550) brings us to the age of Israel’s origins. It was probably during the course of these centuries that Father Abraham set out from Haran, with his family, his flocks, and his herds, to seek land and seed in the place his God would show him.¹ Or, to put it otherwise, there took place a migration to Palestine of seminomadic peoples, among whom were to be found the ancestors of Israel. With that, there began that chain of events so portentous for world history and so redemptive—the believing man would say so divinely guided—which we call the history of Israel.

One might, to be sure, object that to begin the history of Israel so early is very bold and a loose use of the word “history.” Such an objection, if raised, has a certain validity. The history of Israel cannot, indeed, begin so soon, for there was not as yet a people Israel. Not, in fact, until the thirteenth century and after—when we find settled in Palestine, its presence attested by archaeological data and contemporary records, a people called Israel—can the history of Israel, properly speaking, be said to begin. Before that, we have only seminomadic wanderers elusively roaming the map of the years, unattested by contemporary record and leaving behind them no tangible trace of their passing. These wanderers, Israel’s ancestors, do not belong to the history, but to the prehistory, of Israel.

Nevertheless, since the prehistory of a people, so far as it can be known, is also a part of that people’s history, we must begin here. Furthermore, Israel was not in fact of a stock indigenous to Palestine; she had come from elsewhere and was well aware of that fact. Through a body of sacred tradition quite without parallel in the ancient world, she remembered her conquest of her land, the long desert march that had brought her thither and the marvelous experiences that had attended it, and, before that, years of hard bondage in Egypt. She also remembered how, centuries earlier still, her ancestors had come from faraway Mesopotamia to wander in the land she now called her own. Granted that to attempt to use these traditions as historical sources presents severe problems that cannot be shirked, the traditions are by all means to be taken seriously. We must begin with the age to which they refer, evaluate them in the light of such data as are available, and then say what we can of Israel’s origins.

Our first task is to describe the world of the day in order to provide for ourselves the proper perspective. This is not easy to do, for it was a most confused world—its stage, in fact, so crowded with players that the action is difficult to follow. Nevertheless, attempt it we must—with what brevity and clarity can be managed.

A. THE ANCIENT ORIENT CA. 2000–1750 B.C.

1. Mesopotamia ca. 2000–1750.² The second millennium began with the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III: ca. 2060–1950) holding sway over most of the Mesopotamian plain and a last, glorious revival of Sumerian culture in progress. But this happy state of affairs was not long to endure. Within fifty years the power of Ur had ended, and no successor emerged to take its place. With rival dynasts snatching at one another, a period of weakness and instability ensued.³

a. The Fall of Ur III: The Amorites. The power of Ur had never been tightly centralized. Local dynasts had, in the old Sumerian city-state tradition, enjoyed a considerable degree of independence. As central authority weakened, these one by one broke free, until the last king of Ur III, Ibbi-sin, was left scarcely more than a local ruler. First to gain their freedom were states on the periphery: Elam to the east, Asshur (Assyria) on the upper Tigris, and Mari on the middle Euphrates. The collapse of Ur began when Ishbi-irra, a military officer from Mari, established himself as ruler in Isin, and gradually extended his control over much of northern Sumer. Ibbi-sin, faced with serious shortages of food in his capital either because of crop failure or because of the disruption of agriculture by nomadic raids, could do nothing to stop him. The end came a few years later (ca. 1950) when the Elamites invaded the land, took and ravaged Ur, and led Ibbi-sin away into captivity. Ur would never be a significant power again.

Of the greatest interest is the part played in these events by a people called the Amorites (a name known to the reader of the Bible, but with a narrower connotation). For some centuries the people of northwestern Mesopotamia and northern Syria had been referred to in cuneiform texts as Amurru, i.e., “Westerners.” This became, apparently, a general term applying to speakers of various Northwest-Semitic dialects found in the area including, in all probability, those strains from which later sprang both Hebrews and Arameans. Since late in the third millennium Northwest-Semitic seminomads had been pressing upon all parts of the Fertile Crescent, overruning Palestine and turning Upper Mesopotamia virtually into an “Amorite” land. Mari, which had once been a dependency of Ur, was ruled by an Amorite king and had a predominantly Amorite population. With the fall of Ur, Amorites flooded into all parts of Mesopotamia. State after state was taken over by them; by the eighteenth century virtually every state in Mesopotamia was ruled by Amorite dynasts. Though the Amorites adopted the culture of Sumer and Akkad, and to a good degree its religion, and though they wrote in Akkadian, their names and other linguistic evidence betray their presence everywhere.⁴

b. Dynastic Rivalries in Lower Mesopotamia to the Mid-Eighteenth Century. The heritage of Ur III was taken over by a number of smaller rival states. Chief among these in Lower Mesopotamia were Isin and Larsa, both ruled by Amorite dynasties, the one founded by Ishbi-irra of Mari, whom we have mentioned, the other by one Naplanum. These engaged in a long rivalry the details of which need not concern us. Though both dynasties were able to maintain themselves for some two hundred years, and though the rulers of Isin styled themselves “Kings of Sumer and Akkad” thus claiming to perpetuate the power of Ur III, neither was able to bring stability to the land.

The mutual weakness of these two states in time allowed still further rivals to entrench themselves. Notable among these was Babylon, a city before this little heard of. Taking advantage of the confused situation, an Amorite dynasty (I Babylon) established itself there ca. 1830 under one Sumu-abum, and soon found itself in intermittent conflict with its immediate neighbors, in particular Isin. But these rivalries were inconclusive, and apparently of little consequence, since none of these states was strong enough to indulge in full-scale wars of conquest. Indeed, the ruling house of Larsa was eventually overthrown when (ca. 1770) Kudur-mabuk, prince of Yamutbal (a district in the East-Tigris region on the frontier of Elam where an Amorite tribe of that name had settled), pressed in and seized control of that city and set up his son Warad-sin as ruler there. Although Kudur-mabuk had an Elamite name (as did his father), he may have been a chieftain of Northwest-Semitic stock whose family had been in Elamite service (he is called “father of Yamutbal, father of Amurru”); the names of his sons, Warad-sin and Rim-sin, are, however, both Akkadian.

One would expect such political instability to bring economic depression. So it did, as is witnessed by a marked decrease in the number of business documents. Yet the light of culture was by no means extinct. Scribal schools flourished at Nippur and elsewhere, busily copying ancient Sumerian texts and handing them down to posterity. From this period, too, come two law codes, both discovered in recent years: one, in Sumerian, promulgated by Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1870); the other, in Akkadian, from the kingdom of Eshnunna (date uncertain, but not later than the eighteenth century).⁵ Both of these antedate the famous Code of Hammurabi and prove beyond doubt that the latter rested on a widespread and ancient legal tradition reaching back to the Code of Ur-nammu of Ur—and before. Like the Code of Hammurabi, both exhibit remarkable likenesses to the Covenant Code of the Bible (Ex., chs.21 to 23) and indicate that Israel’s legal tradition developed from a similar background.

c. Rival States in Upper Mesopotamia. In Upper Mesopotamia, meanwhile, still other erstwhile dependencies of Ur had established themselves as states of some importance. Of these, Mari and Assyria are of especial interest. Mari, as we have noted, was the home of Ishbi-irra, who had assisted in the overthrow of Ur. Located on the middle Euphrates, it was an ancient town that had been a place of importance throughout the third millennium. In the second millennium its population was predominantly Northwest Semitic (Amorite), of the same stock as Israel’s own ancestors. We shall speak later of its golden age in the eighteenth century, under the dynasty of Yagid-lim, and also of the texts discovered there, which are of such capital importance for the understanding of Israel’s origins.

As for Assyria, so called after the city of Asshur on the upper Tigris (and also the national god), it was one of the few Mesopotamian states not yet ruled by Amorite dynasts. Although the Assyrians were Akkadian in language, culture, and religion, they appear to have been of mixed origin: a combination of old Akkadian stock with Hurrian, Northwest-Semitic, and other strains. The earliest Assyrian kings were “tent dwellers,” i.e., seminomads, and apparently Northwest Semites; but by the early second millennium they bore Akkadian names (including a Sargon and a Naramsin, after the great kings of Akkad) and regarded themselves as the true perpetuators of Sumero-Akkadian culture. When one of them (Ilu-shuma) briefly invaded Babylonia, he boasted that he had come to liberate the Akkadians (i.e., from Amorite and Elamite masters).

Beginning apparently even before the fall of Ur III, and continuing down through the nineteenth century, Assyria pursued a vigorous policy of commercial expansion to the north and northwest. We learn of this from the Cappadocian texts—thousands of tablets in old Assyrian found at Kanish (Kültepe) in Asia Minor. These show us colonies of Assyrian merchants living in their own settlements outside the towns and carrying on a trade with the local population, exchanging Assyrian wares for native products. This did not, to be sure, represent a military conquest; although the tradesmen enjoyed certain extraterritorial rights, they also paid imposts of various sorts to the native rulers. The probability is that when, in the disturbed days attendant upon the fall of Ur III, the usual route from Babylonia to the northwest via the Euphrates valley had been rendered unsafe by rading nomadic bands, the Assyrians had seized the opportunity to develop a new one up the Tigris and thence across Mesopotamia into Hittite lands by a more northerly route. The venture came to an end early in the eighteenth century for reasons that are obscure, to be revived for a brief period after the middle of the century and again abandoned.⁶ The Cappadocian texts, like those of Mari somewhat later, cast useful light on the patriarchal age.

It was inevitable that the ambitions of these various states, Assyria, Mari, Babylon, and the rest, should come into collision. A power struggle was in the making that would soon come to the boil.

2. Egypt and Palestine ca. 2000–1750 B.C. In sharp contrast to the political confusion that obtained in Mesopotamia, Egypt in the early patriarchal age presented a picture of remarkable stability. We have seen how, late in the third millennium, the power of the Old Kingdom had ended in that period of confusion and depression called the First Intermediate. But as the second millennium began, Egypt had gathered herself together and was preparing to enter a new period of prosperity—perhaps the most prosperous of her history—under the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom.

a. The Twelfth Dynasty (1991–1786).⁷ The chaos of the First Intermediate was ended and the land reunited in the mid-twenty-first century with the victory of one Mentuhotep, prince of a Theban house (Eleventh Dynasty). Here the Middle Kingdom begins. Although the rule of the Eleventh Dynasty over the whole of Egypt was brief (ca. 2040–1991)⁸ and ended in a period of disturbance, the power was taken over by the vizier, Amenemhet, who inaugurated the Twelfth Dynasty.

It is not our task to trace the history of this dynasty, in many respects the ablest that Egypt ever had.⁹ Moving its capital from Thebes to Memphis, it maintained itself in power for over two hundred years. Under it Egypt enjoyed one of the most remarkable periods of stability in all of history. Six kings, all named Amenemmes (Amenemhet) or Sesostris (Senusret), had average reigns of some thirty years apiece. Stability was further secured by a system of coregency, practiced by most o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword to the Third Edition
• Foreword to the First Edition
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Prologue: The Ancient Orient Before CA. 2000 B.C.
• Part One: Antecedents and Beginnings:
• Part Two: The Formative Period
• Part Three: Israel Under the Monarchy:
• Part Four: The Monarchy (Continued):
• Part Five: Tragedy and Beyond
• Part Six: The Formative Period of Judaism
• Appendix: An Update in the Search of Israel’s History
• Chronological Charts
• Indexes to Text
• Historical Maps