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1177 BCE

1177 BCE and 1676 CE

November 16, 2024
by Peter Feinman
Margaret Ellen Newell

The two years 1177 BCE and 1676 CE would appear to have nothing in common. The impetus for their juxtaposition is the article “The Rising of the Indians”; or, The Native American Revolution of (16)’76” by Margaret Ellen Newell in William and Mary Quarterly 80 2023:287-324. While reading the article, I discovered that many of her observations also applied to Biblical studies even though the article is strictly about American history.

Here are some of the information that spurred me to see a connection.

On the subject of the “ill newes of the dayly Devastations made by the Indians,” Governor Jonathan Atkins of Barbados feared for the future of the empire. In April 1676, he penned a letter not just about events in New York and Virginia but New Spain and the Caribbean as well. He and others saw these Indian insurrections as a linked rather than as separate events. Collectively they threatened the empire. Even more so if Africans joined with the Indians. When the colonial leaders met, they expressed a real fear that they might be pushed out of the Americas.

Newell observes that European observers failed to perceive most of what went on in Indigenous societies and networks.

The conceptual failure was not theirs, then, but ours: scholars have not highlighted the simultaneity of Native American risings across the Western Hemisphere (288).

Instead of seeing the big picture the focus has been on Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Whereas the Haudenosaunee failed to expel the French, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was “the greatest and most successful rebellion of its sort in North American history” (289).

Newell observes:

…unspoken assumptions about the futility of Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism haunt the historiography of eastern North America and the Caribbean, distorting the contingency of colonialism that Atkins felt so viscerally (289).

Hence Newell’s reference to the concept of the Native American Revolution of 1676.

This model “challenges the current literature’s chronological and geographic boundaries” (290). So whereas a given conflict might be deemed a failure, a broad lens risks homogenizing individual events. The “’creeping genocide’” of colonization created a common set of challenges (291). Instead we should see the “conscious creation of multiethnic, multinational, and even multiracial coalitions and communities that became characteristic of many Native nations in this period” (292).

Paradigms have changed. Research on Spanish colonization challenges the concept of conquest. Instead there is failure outside Indigenous urban areas. There was constant resistance and containment (293). A “broader lens reveals that Native Americans responded to each other’s resistance movements in a dynamic fashion. The Pueblo uprising in 1680 and the1676 insurrections had an earlier history leading to those events. And, of course, there was always the possibility of slave revolts as well.

After surveying the interrelated actions of 1676, Ewell declares:

The concept of a Native Revolution of 1676 helps us reframe European-Native American relations and the colonization project in important ways (316).

She then describes these changes. Included are the longterm alliances among multiple groups and the creation of the more formal Wabanaki Confederacy in New England. Such group entities helped renegotiate the boundaries between the various Indian nations and the colonizers. These pan-Indian, multiethnic, and multiracial configurations encompassed huge swaths of land during the late 1600s and early 1700s. Ewell calls this development among the most ignored and thus most in need of further research (322). She challenges scholars to reframe, redevelop, and rewrite the histories based on the concept of the Native Revolution of 1676.

Something similar happened in the land of Canaan. Think of the coalition against Thutmose III. Or the multiple coalitions against Shalmaneser III. What about in-between? Did the Canaanite tribes organize against Egyptian imperialism the same way New England tribes organized against Europeans or the Haudenosaunee did in New York? In the past, I have referred to a NATO alliance led by Israel against Egyptian imperialism in 1177 BCE but the phrase Canaanite Confederacy works just as well. This is not an amphictyony (or conquest) but a coming together on multiple Canaanite tribes with a shared goal of freeing the land of Egyptian imperialism. The moment is remembered in the original Song of Deborah where Ramses III-se-se-Sisera is smited by a wilderness female, a complete reversal of Egyptian royal iconography and the era of Thutmose III is brought to an end. In the Song we have a primary source record that can be analyzed the same way the reliefs of Ramses III are.

SILOS

Some of these concerns expressed by Newell were echoed in a letter to Perspectives on History published by the American Historical Association.

With many important exceptions, we as a discipline have fallen in love with too many small, specialized topics. We write too much for each other, compounding this frequently with theoretical constructs that largely repel the uninitiated. With important exceptions, we hew too fiercely not only to single-region frameworks but to rather rigid periodization….

 And we need more efforts… too reach out to that elusive beast, the general reading or podcast-consuming public (Stearns 4).

A similar problem has been detected in African studies:

…historians have backed themselves into their respective cul-de-sacs…Given the nature of disciplinary specialization it is not always possible for scholars to cross the national and imperial boundaries that from historical studies…African history is defined by the presence or absence of Europeans (Child 326,328,329)

Leonard-Fleckman warns us:

We cannot advance methodologically if we do not break out of the siloed discussions that we so often have, discussions often organized around the geographical regions where we live and work, the spaces in which we are trained, and/or the narrowness of our interests and areas of specialization (309).

Louise Hitchcock writes about Eric Cline working across multiple regions.

Most Aegean scholars have not studied the history and archaeology of Egypt, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, or Cyrus and the Levant…The message sent to graduate students is that they need to absorb the vast amount of data in the classical world to get a job… (200).

She advocates more collaborative efforts such as a panel at an international conference followed by a handbook. Cline concludes his brief Rejoinder with:

But I am also helpful that there will indeed be additional collaborative research building within the scholarly community, perhaps along the lines of the solid and interesting recommendations made by Louise Hitchcock (204).

In his abstract for the 2024 ASOR conference, Garfinkle writes:

The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History was created in part to challenge the traditional cultural, geographical, and chronological barriers that divide the study of the ancient world into a series of regional specializations that often discourage broader, and more interdisciplinary conversations.

As it turns, there is an individual who defined Biblical Archaeology in such a way as to eliminate all geographical and chronological silos, William Foxwell Albright. In the Whidden Lectures for 1961 published in 1966, he said:

Biblical archaeology covers all the lands mentioned in the Bible, and is thus co-extensive with the cradle of civilization. This region extends from western Mediterranean to India, and from southern Russia to Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean. Excavations in every part of this extensive area throw some light, directly or indirectly, on the Bible (1966b: 1).

In the Rockwell Lectures in January 1962, also published in 1966, he said:

 The term “biblical archaeology” may be restricted to Palestine, or it may be extended to include anything that illustrates the Bible, however superficially. Accordingly, I shall use the term “biblical archaeology” to refer to all Bible Lands—from India to Spain, and from southern Russia to South Arabia—and to the whole history of those lands from about 10,000 B.C., or even earlier, to the present time (1966a: 13).

Today, it would be difficult for any individual to grasp the knowledge in all the chronological and geographical areas identified by Albright. Also there are new technologies for extracting information from the past. The sessions at ASOR and SBL reflect the narrowing of focus. One cannot attend all the sessions offered. One cannot read all the journals which are published. One cannot read all the books which are published. The challenge is much greater now and this excludes related organizations like AAA, AIA, and ARCE. I confess I don’t know what can be done to address these conditions or how to bring such understandings to teachers and the general public.

There will be an education outreach roundtable during lunch at ASOR. Stop by if you have something to contribute.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albright, William Foxwell, Archaeology, Historical Analogy, and Early Biblical Tradition (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1966a).

Albright, William Foxwell, New Horizons in Biblical Research (London: Oxford University Press, 1966b).

Child, Mott D., “The Roots and Routes of African Religious Beliefs in the Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 80 2023:325-351.

Cline, Eric, “Rejoinder: A Brief Response,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 10 2022:203-204.

Garfinkle, Steven, “So, What if the Ancient World Had No Boundaries? Thinking about and  Publishing for an Antiquity without Borders,” ASOR 2024 abstract.

Hitchcock, Louise, “There Really Are 50 Eskimo Words for ‘Snow’”: 1177, Big Data and the Perfect Storm of Collapse,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 10 2022:200-203.

Leonard-Fleckman, Mahri, “Histories of Ancient Israel: Present State and Future Potential – A Review of Recent Works by Christian Frevel and Bernd Schipper,” Vetus Testamentum 74 2024:303-310.

Newell, Margaret Ellen, “The Rising of the Indians”; or, The Native American Revolution of (16)’76,” William and Mary Quarterly 80 2023:287-324.

Stearns, Peter N., “To the Editor,” Perspectives on History 62:5 May 2024:4

 

Lessons from the ASOR Conference: Punctuated Equilibrium and the Writing of the Hebrew Bible

November 25, 2018
by Peter Feinman
Steady State versus Punctuated Equilibrium Evolution (http://thebrain.mcgill.ca)

At the just concluded American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) conference, two sessions in the last two time slots were:

Integrating Cultural Change – Punctuated Equilibria Models in Near Eastern Archaeology and Egyptology I and II.

Neither session specifically mentioned the Hebrew Bible nor do I recall any questions from the audience addressing that topic either. Nonetheless, these sessions may provide more insight into the writing of the Hebrew Bible than sessions directly addressing that topic including at the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference.

The term “punctuated equilibria” refers to when “long periods of stasis and apparently uneventful continuum are broken up by brief periods of rapid and profound changes. During such ‘punctures,’ the whole social –political system is exposed to a series of vital changes that influence essentially every component (subsystem) of the society, bringing it to a qualitatively new level of development and attained complexity and texture” (from the abstract of Mirolsav Bárta, the first presenter).

The genesis of the term arose in the field of evolution. Some scientists thought the more steady-state linear evolution approach proposed by Darwin did not fit the data. Instead, they developed a hypothesis that described a series of dramatic changes following a period of comparative stability. The changes “punctuated” the status quo. The most famous name associated with this hypothesis is Stephen Jay Gould. The most famous example of a punctuation probably is an asteroid hitting the earth leading to demise of the dinosaurs and the rise of the age of mammals.

The hypothesis is descriptive in nature and not explanatory. It is a way of organizing data but not explaining it. In the initial presentation by Bárta, he proposed that five such punctuations occurred during the Old Kingdom in Egypt. These leap periods led to the establishment of the first territorial state in human history, an elaborate bureaucratic apparatus, and massive stone-build monuments among other changes. During the Q&A, I asked about a causal factor for these five leaps. The model has no set trigger but simply states that such leaps periodically occur and are quick when they do.

Perhaps the most famous political example of such a change in the lifetime of many of the attendees at the sessions was the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is reasonable to say that during the 1980s, people did not anticipate such a collapse (excluding Ronald Reagan), that when it did occur it took people by surprise, and it happened very quickly. The Arab Spring may be considered a partially aborted punctuation.

In biblical times, a significant one occurred in 1177 BCE. That year also appears in the title of a book by Eric Cline, one of the presenters in the second session. He informed us that when he started to write the book, he envisioned the Sea Peoples as the causal agent for the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. The more he investigated the subject, the more he came to realize that a “perfect storm” involving multiple factors had led to its demise.  In the end, what the Iron Curtain, the Arab despots, and the Late Bronze Age have in common is a certain fragility despite the image of great enduring strength and stability.

I first sought to apply the concept of punctuated equilibrium to the writing of the Hebrew Bible in a paper entitled “The Mesha Stele: Underutilized Key to Understanding Israelite History and the Writing of the Bible” presented at the ASOR conference in 2010.  In my paper, I wrote and said:

Therefore I wish to propose the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory in contrast to the Big Bang Theory of Writing.  This theory of writing is based on the premises that

1. We are a story-telling species
2. We tell stories through the available media about the issues that concern us
3. Ancient Israel was not a people of silence with no stories to tell, songs to sing, holidays to celebrate, or places to assemble.

In this context, I propose that in Iron II Israel a series of separate and independent alphabet prose narrative scrolls were written over the centuries primarily by the prophets as the political situation warranted. They served as the basis for the integrated narrative which would be created post-721 BCE in the kingdom of Judah.

In that paper, I did not explain how I derived the term “punctuated equilibrium” so it was quite likely that many in the audience were not familiar with it.  I employed the term to refer to the aftermath of Mesha’s destruction of the Yahweh sanctuary at Mount Nebo, home of the traditional burial site of the founder of the Israelite people. In this sense, Mesha functioned as an asteroid disrupting the life of the Levites or prophets of Moses much as temple destructions would later do to temple priests. Although I did not use the word “trauma” at that time, I suggested that the trauma led to writing as a means of coping with the event.  In this suggestion I was guided by the work of Anthony Campbell in 1986 in his book Of Prophets and Kings (1986) and later with the assistance of Mark O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History: Origins, Upgrades, and Present Text (2000). In the latter, they elaborated on his hypothesis by identifying verse by verse the texts that belonged to this prophetic narrative. Mesha’s actions meant to those who believed that the sanctuary dedicated to the burial place of the founder that the Omrides had lost their legitimacy to rule.  In this regard both Jehu and Hazael could be understood as the rod of Yahweh’s anger, the staff of Yahweh’s fury, instruments of Yahweh delivering his message of wrath upon the underserving Omrides.

By coincidence, just prior to the ASOR conference, I read Self-Interest or Communal Interest: An Ideology of Leadership in the Gideon, Abimelech, and Jephthah Narratives by Eliyahu Assis (2005).  His analysis included Judges 6:8-10:

Judges 6:8 the LORD sent a prophet to the people of Israel; and he said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt, and brought you out of the house of bondage; 9 and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave you their land; 10 and I said to you, `I am the LORD your God; you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not given heed to my voice.”

He compared the words to the beginning of the covenant in Ex. 20:2-3:

Exodus 20:2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

Suddenly when reading this book, it occurred to me that this exchange in the story of Gideon was about something going on with Egypt at the time it was written. Frequently biblical scholars observe that the story of the golden calves (Ex. 32) relates to the time of Jeroboam I. In that story, the people say that (i) Moses brought them out of the land of Egypt (Ex. 32:1), (ii) the golden calf Aaron had fashioned brought them out of the land of Egypt, and (iii) according to Moses, Yahweh brought them out of the land of Egypt (Ex. 32:11). Evidently there was a discussion and disagreement about exactly how the people left the land of Egypt. There was no disagreement about having left Egypt, just who should be considered responsible.

The time of Jeroboam also was the time of Sheshonq’s invasion of the land of Canaan. So instead of the biblical texts simply being a tirade between the Aaronid and Levite priesthoods, was there also a debate about the very identity of Israel and responsibility for its existence?  How could Jeroboam be the new Moses if he was in cahoots with Pharaoh? Did Sheshonq’s invasion trigger a written response as the northern prophets (Ahijah) sought to cope with what it meant for Israelite identity based on having left the land of Egypt?

Consider the circumstances at the time of Sheshonq’s invasion which apparently brought him to Megiddo. It had been two hundred years since Ramses VI had left Megiddo ending Egyptian hegemony in the land after 350 years beginning with Thutmose III at Megiddo. It had been about 250 years since Ramses (Se-se-ra) III’s invasion in 1177 BCE also remembered in a song mentioning Megiddo. And it had been nearly 300 years since Merneptah had claimed to have destroyed the seed of Israel. Now Pharaoh was back campaigning in the land. For the northern prophets, this action was traumatic.

I do not claim to have the details worked out, but just as there was a prophet narrative following Mesha’s destruction of the sanctuary to Yahweh, so there might be a Sheshonq narrative in response to when he invaded the land.

As a result of these readings, musings, and sessions, I think it is reasonable to consider a punctuated equilibria approach to the writing of the Hebrew Bible. Israel wrote when it needed to in response to periodic traumas that punctuated their sense of identity. And they did so for centuries each time an “asteroid” fell.

Philistines/Creation the monarchy (10th century BCE)
Sheshonq (5th year of Rehoboam)
Mesha (around 843 BCE leading to Jehu’s deposing the Omrides)
Hazael (8th century BCE success of Jeroboam II against the Aramaeans).

Each of these threats engendered the composition of a separate scroll by the northern prophets to explain how the threat could have occurred and who was the savior (if any) who ended it. These scrolls were brought to Jerusalem and eventually combined into a single scroll that would include Judah as well. The “asteroids” for ancient Israel were the foreign kings who threated their existence and one response was an alphabet prose narrative that addressed the situation. The challenge now is to escape the Persian-fixation on the time at the end of this process and to identify the writings following each punctuation of the Israelite equilibrium.

Note: If on the Saturday overlap between the ASOR and SBL conferences I had attended the SBL conference instead of the ASOR conference as I sometimes do, this blog would not have been written.