Almost 120 years ago, Ahad Ha’am was filled with anxiety about the possible results of science’s attack on faith. The development of biblical criticism, especially in German universities, began to threaten the status of the Bible as history. In the eyes of its critics, the Hebrew Bible began to resemble the mythologies of Greece and Rome.
In 1904, Ahad Ha’am wrote his mass ‘Moshe’. In it he mocked the attempt of the “scholars” to discover the “true form” of the heroes of history. A historical hero, he wrote, “even if he is nothing but an imaginary picture, he is a real historical force and his reality is a historical truth.” And inasmuch as he gave us the sensational insight, which is not a miracle, and I think it will not be, “not every archaeological truth is also a historical truth”.
He didn’t really know how important this line of defense was. He would not have imagined, or perhaps he did, that within a hundred years or less, archaeologists would seriously and scholarly question the historical reality of David and Solomon and of the United Kingdom. A “minimalist” school of thought will fundamentally reject any use of the Bible to establish the understanding of the history of the people of Israel. It will reject the very assumption that there was a people of Israel in ancient times.
Is it important? What kind of question is this? In the absence of Moses and Joshua and the judges and kings, what kind of history do we have? If we didn’t start in the days of the ancestors, and we didn’t leave Egypt, and we didn’t tear down the walls of Jericho, and we didn’t prepare the Philistines, and we didn’t build Solomon’s temple, then where did we start?
The Hasmoneans and the Five Pentacles
A new book by an Israeli archaeologist was published this month in the US, and it offers an unsettling answer to the question “when”. Prof. Yonatan Adler sits on the chair at Ariel University, perhaps not a natural hotbed for daring as he claims. He called his book, published by the prestigious Yale University Press , ‘The Origins of Judaism’.
According to Prof. Adler, Judaism as a consolidated faith emerged into space only in the second century BC, during the Hasmonean state. Only then were the five pentacles of the Torah placed at the center of the political and spiritual being of those who return and call themselves ‘Judeans’. The Hasmoneans did not invent the Torah. It existed, for the most part, but was only known for a little while.
Prof. Adler is an archaeologist, and he is looking for archaeological evidence, just as Ahad Ha’am feared. His archeology and that of many of his predecessors did not reveal any evidence that the ‘Jews’ observed the religious mitzvot before the Hasmoneans. He rummages through all the archaeological digs, and finds no trace of the Shabbat commandment, or the word, or you shall not make a statue, or the kosher laws, or mikvahs, or the seven-caned menorah.
Of course, he repeats and misleads, both in the introduction and in the epilogue, “the absence of evidence is not evidence that there is no evidence”. But what can be done other than sharing a snapshot. He says that it is quite possible that Herod’s temple wiped out the remains of Solomon’s temple, who knows. He doesn’t say, but it’s easy to assume that he won’t object if we state the obvious, namely that a sensational archaeological discovery could still play havoc with the cards. The inscription “House of David” was discovered on a rock in Tel Dan 30 years ago, attributed to the eighth century BC, and somewhat cooled the certainty regarding the non-existence of David.
But Prof. Adler rejects the assumption that Judaism had an earlier starting line. He delves into the claims that Judaism began during the Persian rule in the country, in the sixth century BC, and shows how much the archaeological findings disprove it. He reminds us that the absence of pig bones in ancient archeological sites is not an expression of purity, but is consistent with a general abstinence from eating pork in the ancient Near East.
Sensation or no sensation
Judaism came into being and reached its peak “in the 200 years between the conquests of Alexander the Great, around 332 BC, and the establishment of the independent Hasmonean state in the middle of the second century BC,” he writes. Who were the keepers of the embers? In which vault was the original copy held? He does not bother to answer such a question, which has no answer anyway. But he claims something that turns our historical understanding on its head: the Hasmonean revolt did not save Judaism from the hands of Greece, because there was no Judaism; This rebellion made Judaism possible. Instead of talking about ‘Greeks’, maybe it’s better to talk about ‘Judaists’.
To the extent that I got to the bottom of Prof. Adler’s mind, he is not trying to create a sensation; But sensationalization of his work is inevitable. The press has not yet had time to comment on the book, but the very popular magazine of the Smithsonian, the government museum chain in Washington, reported it under the title “Is Judaism Younger Than We Thought?”, and described Adler’s book as “amazing.”
I suggest reading the book first, but I also suggest not panicking. Books such as Adler’s book should only redeem us from irresponsible language cruises about “4,000 years of history” or even 3,000. In his book I see one more wise warning against the urge to falsify history for the benefit of politics.
But recognizing that Judaism started later than we thought does not invalidate it. Later Judaism still began just in time, to offer its services to a people that was about to lose its land, and needed an extra-territorial spiritual asset. The birth of Judaism out of Greekization was not the status of Mount Sinai, but it was a miraculous revelation in itself.