“Atheist” History of Israel – Part 2/3

In the Kingdom of Israel, the end of the dynasty of Jeroboam was hastened to make way for that of the Omrides. Ahab (son of Omri) married Jezebel, the daughter of the Phoenician king Itoobaal and thus took a place on the regional scene. He built magnificent cities and organized a powerful army that allowed him to expand to the North and into present-day Transjordan and Samaria became his capital city. Ahab’s lack of piety explain that the scribes of the Bible did not give Israel the importance that this kingdom deserved and preferred to concentrate on the poor but supposedly pious Judea and its Davidic dynasty. The Bible created a romantic narrative of Ahab’s misfortunes and victories with anachronisms and inconsistencies (Unearthed Bible).

In 853 BC, the King of Israel Ahab, at the head of a Syro-Phoenician coalition, forced the Assyrians to give up their desire for conquest and this information was given by the Assyrians. The work undertaken by the Omrides in Israel can be compared to that of “Herod the Great”, a thousand years later and once again the Assyrian archives testify to the importance of the Kingdom of Israel.

The Mesha Stele discovered in 1868 bears a thirty-four-line inscription of the Moabite King Mesha written in Moabite (close to Hebrew) dated 850 BC. Mesha reported his revolt against his overlord the King of Israel Ahab (seventh king of Israel) and mentioned that the kingdom of Israel was not limited to the highlands of the central region but extended well beyond to the East and South. Mesha said he took back Moabite territories from Israel.

For purely theological and not historical reasons, the Bible has passed over in silence the supremacy of Israel on the architectural level by sometimes attributing certain achievements to Solomon e.g. the constructions of Megiddo, Jezreel or Samaria are dated of one century after Solomon.

The new dating methods have reduced the influence of the kings of Jerusalem to a few clans with a sparse population, especially after the destructions committed by Pharaoh Sheshonq I. In contrast, the kingdom of Israel was composed of fertile lands through which regional trade.

The population of Israel was in fact multi-ethnic, that is to say that among the Israelites there also lived populations venerating various deities and all amounted to 350,000 people. Israel must have been one of the most populated states in the Levant, far ahead of the kingdom of Judea and in a way prefigured the today State of Israel more than Judea. These calculations are based on the number of habitat sites.

It was in the 20th century that archaeology became aware of the complex evolution of the Kingdom of Israel (cycle: successes-disasters-adaptations) and began to free itself from biblical prejudices thanks to new dating systems. These revealed several levels of evolution in centers such as Megiddo, Yoqneam, Dor and Samaria and not just one as previously believed.

Assyria put an end to the domination of Aram-Damascus and Israel became its vassal. King Joash (Yeho’ash ben Yeho’ahaz, Melekh Israel of the house of Jehu) who reigned from 806 to 791 BC, recovered the territories ceded to Aram-Damascus. The expansion of Israel continued under Jeroboam II, who succeeded Joash and during his reign of 41 years (the longest reign in Israel). He pushed back the borders of Israel into the kingdom of Aram-Damascus. It was a golden age for Israel that even marked the memory of the kingdom of Judea. Israel benefited from the economic growth of Assyria. Hazor was rebuilt.

In the South of Samaria, olive oil production became substantial and was exported to Assyria and Egypt. Sixty-three potsherds used for storing wine and oil were found with Hebrew inscriptions. Joash and Jeroboam II undertook major construction works.

The royal seal of Jeroboam II was found at Megiddo depicting a roaring lion with a Hebrew inscription. Gezer was built as an outpost on the border between the kingdom of Judea and Philistia.

In 1920 American researchers attributed the construction of the stables of Megiddo to Salamon, then the famous Israeli archaeologist Dr. Yadin attributed them to Jeroboam II on the basis of a more precise dating.

The aristocracy of Israel lived in opulence under the reign of Jeroboam II: 200 ivory plaques with Phoenician and Egyptian decorations were found and must have adorned their palaces with a cosmopolitan taste. Many ostraca found in Samaria were delivery notes for wine and olive oil from the countryside.

This wealth and this cosmopolitan and commercial spirit must have displeased the Judean theologians like the prophets Amos and Hosea who criticized those who had houses made of big cut stones and drank wine from large cups.

In 745 BC JC the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III decided to exercise a reinforced power of suzerainty over his vassals including the kingdom of Israel. In 737 BC an Israelite officer fomented a “coup d’état” to try to free Israel from vassalage with the help of Damascus, Egypt and Philistia. The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III then launched a campaign of annexation of his vassal states including Israel of which only Samaria and its region were spared.

Tiglath-Pileser III deported approximately 13,500 inhabitants from Israel according to his annals. King Hoshea tried once again to free Samaria’s region with the help of the Egyptians which resulted in the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians. A second deportation of Israelites was decided by the Assyrian king Sargon II. The two waves of deportations amounted to 40,000 people, or a fifth of the population of Israel west of the Jordan. Many Israelites (about 160,000 people) were not deported in order to maintain the agricultural production of Israel and particularly that of olive oil.

Israel’s revolts and the appetite for its resources thus caused the absorption of the Kingdom of Israel by Assyria. Judea escaped the Assyrian appetite by a lack of interest for this poor and sparsely populated kingdom. Sargon II said that “Judea was very far away” to illustrate his lack of interest for it. The fall of Israel made Judea the only Israelite Kingdom; but it was a theocratic and marginal kingdom that tried to reawaken a wavering faith. The annexation of Israel by Assyria allowed Judea to develop demographically and to encourage the worship of Yahweh around the temple of Jerusalem. The need to make a Temple for God like the pagans is paradoxical with the infinite, intangible and universal aspect of Yahweh who thus should not need a favorite place to reign or to receive sacrifices. Much later, the cult of Yahweh gave rise to other religions that accentuated the idolatrous aspect of the cult for the sake of proselytism towards the pagans.

For two centuries the kings of the house of David reigned over Judea. Eleven Davidic kings are said to have reigned over Jerusalem and Judea from the 10th to the 8th centuries BC. The Bible makes a list of pious and impious kings, attributing a sad fate to the impious ones. The Bible did not take into account the historical context and the appetite of the other empires at the origin of this bad fate, as well as the fact that even the pious kings were not so in a rigorous and constant regarding their piety. This is why the biblical bias clashes with archaeological and historical discoveries. For a long time in Judea as in Israel, belief in Yahweh went hand in hand with idolatrous worship practices.

At the time of the Davidic kings, many cults were practiced outside Jerusalem in Judea as well as in Israel. Archaeologists have found in Judea many figurines similar to those of neighboring peoples whose cult aimed to attract the blessings of celestial forces. Outside the temple of Jerusalem, belief in Yahweh did not simultaneously prevent the worship of other deities. Inscriptions found in Kuntillet (Sinai) and Shefelah in Judea refer to the goddess “Asherah” considered to be the wife of Yahweh.

Even in Jerusalem, altars were dedicated to Baal, Asherah and other deities such as Amon (Egypt), Chemosh (Moab), Asarte (Sidonian goddess) and Tammuz (Mesopotamia)…

After the annexation of Israel, Judea experienced a strong demographic and geographical expansion (end of the 8th century BC). Judea had three hundred sites and 120,000 inhabitants; we may assume that Israelites were also coming from Israel. This expansion was due to cooperation with Assyria, which dominated Judea, and to the development of wine and olive oil production supported by the intensification of Arab trade.

A religious struggle resulted in the application of intransigent religious laws. According to Baruch Halpern (a biblical historian), Israelite monotheism was truly born in the 7th century BC, as well as a school of thought proclaiming that only Yahweh should be honored in the territory of Israel (Israel and Judea).

According to the Bible, the king of Judea, Hezekiah, imposed the cult of Yahweh, but there is no evidence to confirm this. King Hezekiah wanted to free himself from Assyrian domination and he prepared for it by carrying out major fortification works, particularly in Lachish and Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, traces of a fortification wall seven meters thick have been found; at the same time (8th century BC); in Jerusalem, a 512-metre tunnel designed to divert the water of Gihon into the city to a system of cisterns for water supply was recently discovered. Judea was not protected by Hezekiah’s faith because the Assyrian king Sennacherib carried out an intense destruction of the villages and cities of Judea and in particular Lachish; the fall of this city is reported on an Assyrian bas-relief in Sennacherib’s Palace, which is preserved in London since its discovery in 1930. In 1970 an excavation campaign was organized on this theme by Tel Aviv University. The number of settlements was reduced to a third of what it represented at the end of the 8th century BC. The territory of Judea was reduced but Jerusalem was spared thanks to the payment of a heavy tribute to Assyria.

Manasseh succeeded Hezekiah and reestablished the authorization of the various cults of Baal, Asherah goddess wife of Yahweh… because the Judeans might have thought that the sole belief in Yahweh had led to the catastrophe with Assyrians. Manasseh got on well with Sennacherib then with his successor Ashurbanipal during his reign of fifty-five years. Judea experienced a demographic growth and an influx of refugees from the Shefelah which was given to the Philistines by Assyria. From the 8th to the 7th century BC the population increased tenfold from Jericho to Beersheba and along the Dead Sea. For Tiglath-Pileser III, Gaza was the end point of the Arabian trails on which camel caravans carried incense and olive oil. Under Manasseh, Judea participated in trade with the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Philistines, Arabs and Edomites.

Josiah reigned over Judea from 639 to 609 BC. During his reign in 622 BC a document was supposedly discovered in the temple of Jerusalem which contained the text of Dvarim (Deuteronomy). Dvarim contains principles of the law which were supposedly conceived before the supposed entry into Canaan following the supposed exodus according to the Bible. Dvarim concerns the respect for monotheism, religious traditions and commemorations to be respected. This document was certainly written in 622 under the impetus of Josiah who wanted to return once again to strict respect for monotheism. Josiah would have destroyed the idols and their sanctuaries “in the temple then in the rest of Judea”. However, only one Judean temple has been found outside Jerusalem and the cult of Asherah continued as shown by the discovery of many of her statuettes.

Archaeological research has also noted a development of literacy in Judea during the reign of Josiah. This period was also that of the weakening of Assyria and the rebirth of Egyptian power which regained control of part of its former colony that was Canaan to the exclusion of the lands of Judea and the former kingdom of Israel. Judea was able to regain control of part of the lands of Israel, the Shefelah, and would have centralized from Jerusalem the application of the laws according to the principles of Dvarim. Josiah was killed in a battle while the Egyptians were moving north to fight against Babylonian expansion and the Egyptians regained control of the lands of Judea and Israel. Once again idolatrous customs dominated.