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Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
ISSN: 0901-8328 (Print) 1502-7244 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sold20
Jerusalem 720-705 BCE. No Flood of Israelite
Refugees
Philippe Guillaume
To cite this article: Philippe Guillaume (2008) Jerusalem 720-705 BCE. No Flood of
Israelite Refugees, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, 22:2, 195-211, DOI:
10.1080/09018320802661184
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09018320802661184
Published online: 04 Mar 2011.
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Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
Vol. 22, No.2, 195-211, 2008
© Taylor & Francis’ 2008 10.1080/09018320802661184
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
No Flood of Israelite Refugees
*
Philippe Guillaume
Dorf 71; CH-9035 Grub (AR);Switzerland
Email: philippe.guillaume@gmail.com
A
BSTRACT
:
Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman have recently opposed
each other over the sudden growth of Jerusalem between the conquest of
Samaria by Sargon and Sennacherib’s campaign in 701
BCE
. Was the growth
so sudden that only the arrival of Israelite refugees explains it? Does a flood
of refugees explain the integration of Israelite traditions into Judean texts?
This article
challenges the validity of the notion of refugees in the ancient
world, evaluate the probability of the integration of Israelite culture during
the reign of Hezekiah and question the notion that propaganda was the pri-
mary cause of the formation of Biblical texts.
Archaeology and history show beyond doubt that the ancient Orient experi-
enced an unprecedented economic and cultural boom during the Neo-
Assyrian era (Finkelstein 1994; Knauf 2005). The euphoria came to a brutal
end with the wreckage of the Shefelah and the destruction of Jerusalem as a
consequence of Nebuchadnezzar’s failure to control Egypt. Bible readers
may get the impression that Jerusalem completely recovered under Persian
rule, but it is not before the Hasmonean era that the fortune of Jerusalem and
Palestine in general matched and exceeded the level reached during the As-
syrian hegemony. Economic prosperity being a pre-requisite for culture, it is
not surprising that the bulk of the Hebrew Bible was produced between the
Assyrian and the Hasmonean eras. Some traditions transmitted in the Hebrew
Scriptures are indeed older than the seventh century
BCE
, but the apogee of
the Neo-Assyrian Empire coincides with the first appearance of a body of
literature which became the core of the Bible.
The development of the Assyrian Empire reflected upon the growth of Je-
rusalem. Jerusalem remained in its modest Amarna phase until the Assyrian
era
when it grew to be the largest city in the entire country. Biblical scholars
* My thanks to Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na’aman and Diana Edelman for sending
drafts of their articles and for their helpful comments, and to Alison and Georges
Mills for improving my English.
196 Philippe Guillaume
are interested to pinpoint more precisely the transformation of the Kingdom
of Judah since the changes impacted the Biblical texts produced at the time.
Finkelstein and Silberman (2006:263) claim that the socio-economic charac-
ter of Judah was utterly revolutionized during the second half of the eighth
century
BCE
by the arrival of a large influx of refugees following the Assyr-
ian conquest of Samaria (Broshi 1974; Bright 1981:284; Soggin 1984:232;
Weinfeld 1991:50; Kaiser 1998:378; Barrick 2002:147; Schniedewind
2003:380-6; 2004:68-95). The following year, Nadav Na’aman publishes a
lengthy refutation of the Flood-of-refugees hypothesis (Na’aman 2007a). As
a historian, Na’aman argues that the growth of Jerusalem involved more than
one factor and was more gradual process than a sudden flood of refugees. On
the basis of international treaties from the second and first millennium
BCE
,
Na’aman shows that rulers monitored the transit of populations closely and
concludes that
The assumption that the Assyrians permitted thousands, possibly tens of thou-
sands, of people to flee from the new province and settle in Judah, a vassal
state that Assyria had not annexed and had no wish to strengthen, contradicts
everything known about the policy of the Assyrian Empire in the newly an-
nexed territories. Accepting thousands of refugees from Israel into the terri-
tory of Judah would have amounted to an open provocation against the king
of Assyria and a serious blow to the Assyrian efforts to establish and stabilize
their new province. Hezekiah was unlikely to take such a risk (Na’aman
2007: 35).
Na’aman accepts that a number of Israelite refugees came to Jerusalem
but considers that only a few of them settled there permanently. Na’aman
also notes that the notion that Israelites would have fled to Jerusalem relies
on the uncritical acceptance of the Biblical presentation of two sister king-
doms, Israel and Judah, which explains why Judeans would have welcomed
their Israelite brothers and integrated them almost overnight. In fact, not one
source, Biblical and other, mentions a migration of Israelites into Judah. That
the Assyrians and the Judeans would have let them settle in Judah is highly
unlikely. Na’aman dismisses Finkelstein’s interpretation of the archaeologi-
cal evidence as biased by the uncritical acceptance of the pro-Hezekian ide-
ology of the Books of Kings and its secondary interpretation in the Books of
Chronicles. Na’aman considers that Jerusalem had already reached its maxi-
mum extant in the days of Ahaz, before the Assyrian operations against
Samaria, and that Jerusalem’s population actually decreased during the sev-
enth century, thus rendering the flood of refugee redundant (Na’aman
2007:48).
In a reply to Na’aman’s article, Finkelstein (in press) defends the validity
of the flood-of-refugees hypothesis mainly on the basis of his interpretation
of the archaeological record, restating that the Western Hill was not settled in
the ninth century, that Jerusalem grew suddenly at the end of the end of the
eighth century and that its population did not decrease during the seventh
century
BCE
.
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
197
The following will not discuss the archaeological data which is open to
vastly different interpretations (Edelman 2008). However many walls, pottery
vessels, inscriptions and lmlk seals are presented as evidence, archaeological
tools are too imprecise to measure changes in Jerusalem in the very narrow
span of the last quarter of the eighth century
BCE
. In spite of his great mastery
of the archaeological data, Finkelstein cannot make archaeology do what it
cannot do (Na’aman 2007b). Hence I focus on the validity of the notion of
refugees in the ancient world, evaluate the probability of the integration of
Israelite culture during the reign of Hezekiah and suggest that propaganda
was probably not the primary cause of the formation of Biblical texts. I start
with a review of the broad economic trends between the ninth and the sev-
enth centuries
BCE
.
War and Trade
Against Na’aman’s assertion that Jerusalem and Judah started growing dur-
ing the ninth century, Finkelstein argues that Judah could not have enjoyed
economic growth before the 730s
BCE
, before it was directly incorporated as
a vassal state into the global economy of the Assyrian empire and began to
profit from the Assyrian-led Arabian trade and its demand for olive oil
(Finkelstein in press:5/12). Yet, since the Kingdom of Israel was more ad-
vanced than its southern neighbour, there is no reason to argue that Judah did
not benefit from the economic prosperity experienced by its immediate
northern neighbour before the 730s
BCE
. The Books of Kings make no secret
of Israelite superiority throughout the ninth and eighth century
BCE
and even
suggest that Judah was at times politically integrated within the Israelite po-
litical apparatus (Joram, Athaliah). It makes no sense to claim that Judah
benefited from Assyrian integration but not from Israelite integration. The
levels of prosperity were admittedly lower during the ninth century, but with
Damascus, Israel was a major regional power throughout the ninth and eighth
century
BCE
and there is no reason to postulate tight borders between Israel
and Judah which only became permeable thanks to the arrival of the Assyr-
ians.
From an economic point of view, the period between 735 and 701
BCE
are
more likely to be a low rather than a high point in the rate of expansion of
Judah and Jerusalem. The repeated western Assyrian campaigns that took
place at the time were not conducive to regional prosperity as Judah and its
immediate neighbours took the brunt of these campaigns. From a military and
economic point of view, Jerusalem’s population and prosperity ‘exploded’
after 701
BCE
, in particular when Asarhaddon and Ashurbanipal mounted all-
out operations against Egypt (671-667
BCE
). Then, the strategic position of
Palestine was the exact opposite of what it had been between 730 and 701
BCE
. From being the theatre of hostilities, the area became a vital supply base
of Assyrian troops. As every area on the periphery of a major theatre of war,
Syria-Palestine enjoyed a century-long prosperity boosted by the war efforts
in Egypt which stimulated its production rather than devastating its re-
198 Philippe Guillaume
sources
1
. Hence the growth that began before 730
BCE
greatly accelerated in
Jerusalem and the southern hill country after the devastation of the Judahite
Shefelah and the Beersheba Valley by Sennacherib (Finkelstein and Silber-
man 2006:266). The period into which Finkelstein squeezes the expansion of
Jerusalem in order to require a flood of refugees turns out to be the most un-
favourable one.
The Walls of Jerusalem
Beyond the link between economic prosperity and urbanization, the flood-of-
refugees hypothesis establishes a causal link between the northern refugees
and the growth of Jerusalem demonstrated by the subsequent inclusion of the
western hill within the perimeter of the city’s defence.
I will not venture into the insuperable problems of the archaeology of the
western hill of Jerusalem (compare Barkay 1985; Vaughn 1999:59-71;
Na’aman 2007ab; Finkelstein in press). Although they admit that the devel-
opment of Judah and Jerusalem should not all be understood in connection
with Sennacherib’s campaign, Finkelstein and Silberman (2006:264) mention
the ‘broad wall’ (2 Ch 32,5) found in the Western Hill of Jerusalem to sup-
port the sudden growth of Jerusalem in the last decades in the late eighth cen-
tury, arguing that the broad wall was constructed before 701
BCE
in
prepara-
tion for the revolt against Assyria. Hence, Hezekiah decided to erect the
broad wall around 705
BCE
when he joined the anti-Assyrian collision, a mere
fifteen years after Jerusalem was flooded by dangerous Israelite refugees,
which in the meantime had been converted into fervent members of the new
pan-Israelite Judean nation.
The notion that the flood is observable through the extension of the city
walls is dubious since there is no necessary correlation between the number
of inhabitants of a city and that of its fortified area. The inclusion of suburbs
within new lines of defence is a strategic decision, a response to military or
prestige requirements. Military threats lead to raze houses (Isa 22,10) more
readily than to lengthen the fortifications and render the city more vulnerable.
Archaeology is unable to decide whether the extension of the city-wall to the
western hill took place in 705
BCE
, twenty years before or twenty years after.
Hence Finkelstein and Silberman revert to a historical argument, claiming
that since Judah was a tame vassal of Assyria after 701
BCE
one can hardly
imagine it fortifying its capital with a huge city-wall (2006:265). The prob-
lem is that the Chronicler attributes the construction of defensive works at
Jerusalem to both Hezekiah and Manasseh (2 Chr 32,5; 33,14) (Japhet 2006;
Himbaza 2007)
2
. Between 701 and 670
BCE
, Assyria had every reason to in-
1. See the dramatic change in Koweit between 1990 and 2007, and the link between
the Muslim Conquest and the centuries of Byzantine-Sassanid hostilities (Crone
2007).
2. The Chronicler also mentions earlier fortifications (2 Chron. 26.9; 27.3), in par-
ticular by Uzziah who may have been responsible for the first extension of Jerusa-
lem’s wall on the Western Hill (Ben Dov 2002:58). In this case, Jerusalem was al-
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
199
vest in the development and fortification of Jerusalem because Sennacherib’s
encounter with the Cushites in Eltekeh resulted in a stalemate (Knauf 2003).
For this reason, a massive fortification of Jerusalem by the Assyrians after
701
BCE
is more plausible than before 701
BCE
. With a menacing Egypt so
close, Sennacherib counted on Jerusalem to protect the flank of his realm
(Knauf 2005:169). Sargon’s claim that he re-established Samaria and made it
greater than before reflects the same strategy. Although Jerusalem retained its
native dynasty, the Assyrians had good reasons to keep it out of Egyptian
reach. Jerusalem’s broad wall could thus belong to Assyrian defensive works
protecting the city against the Cushites rather than protecting Jerusalem and
its flood of Benjaminite refugees from an Assyrian offensive. The mere pos-
sibility that the broad wall was built around Jerusalem by the Assyrians in-
validates Finkelstein and Silberman’s claim that a flow of refugees from the
North into Judah is the only reasonable way to explain the unprecedented
demographic growth of Jerusalem (2006:266). In fact, an Assyrian broad wall
fits Finkelstein’s conclusion in his reply to Na’aman where he states that if
the refugees who arrived in Jerusalem did not settle there, the city-wall un-
earthed in the south-western hill was built in the days of Manasseh, with As-
syrian consent (Finkelstein in press:12/12). This is indeed the best interpreta-
tion of the evidence available.
Refugees, a Modern Phenomenon
Finkelstein downplays Na’aman’s argument regarding the issue of repatria-
tion of refugees, arguing that most of the evidence is irrelevant because it
relates to the second millennium
BCE
(Finkelstein in press:6/12). Ignoring the
bulk of the Aramaic and Assyrian evidence presented by Na’aman, Finkel-
stein sees the movement of refugees into mountains of Urartu and Shubria
when the Assyrian army approached as the exact reflection of what happened
in Judah, another mountainous region at the fringe of the Assyrian Empire.
The question then is whether or not the Israelite refugees in Judah stayed or
returned home. Whereas Na’aman considers that Judah would have been un-
able to cope with a flood of refugees, Finkelstein engages in a tight rope ex-
ercise, arguing that Judah had already experienced its early steps toward full
statehood but was not yet strong enough to prevent the refugees to settle in
Judah. Finkelstein needs a Judah too weak to prevent the flood but prosper-
ous enough to feed and integrate it successfully. In a matter of about fifteen
years, the flood of refugees operates a total reversal and Judah becomes a
vibrant new nation because it digested the threatening Israelite flood.
The evidence presented by Na’aman concerns political refugees, leaders
escaping retaliation because the king in power had reasons to consider them
as enemies. Jeroboam, Yamani, Nabu-bel-shumate belong to this category
(Na’aman 2007:34), characterized by a handful of individuals, never a flood.
The existence of economic refugees is attested by the examples of population
_________________________
ready growing in the first half of the eighth century
BCE
, which renders its growth
less sudden and disposes of the flood of refugees.
200 Philippe Guillaume
descending into Egypt, people driven away from their home by famine, not
by war. A questionable assumption behind the flood-of-refugees hypothesis
is that rural populations were mobile enough to abandon their land when As-
syrian armies appeared on the scene. Were deportations feared enough to
prompt farmers to abandon their land? The displacement of entire cities is
attested in Bronze Age treaties between Egypt and the Hittites, but the rea-
sons and the circumstances of these movements remain unknown (Malamat
2001:343-347). The well documented phenomenon of mass deportations
suggests that if people did hide during the passage of armies, they returned as
soon as the situation was reasonably safe (Jer. 40.12) or the Assyrians would
have found the lands they conquered empty with no one to exile. Farmers
buried stores (Jer. 41.8), hid their families and animals in nearby caves or on
out-of-reach pastures while marauding troops torched villages and devastated
orchards, gardens and fields. Ancient homes being relatively easier, quicker
and cheaper to rebuild than modern ones, villagers returned as soon as possi-
ble with their flocks to clear the mess. Hoards of metals found in excavations
indicate that their owners intended to come back and considered it safer to
bury their valuables in the floors of their homes than to carry them around
with them. Or else they would not have left such valuables behind (Seger
1976; Stern 1998; Bijovsky 1998; Kletter 1998; Sass 2002). When even the
elite grow their own food, it is suicide to abandon one’s garden and arable
land. People had to be uprooted by force and their successful settlement
elsewhere required all the skills of a complex administration (Cogan 1974).
Banned individuals could become refugees (Balogh 1972) but the phenome-
non never produced floods of refugees. However much people feared depor-
tation, hunger was more threatening than the Assyrians. It is hard today for
comfortable westerners to imagine a world where hunger stands at the top of
the list of enemies. Yet, even modern urban populations react to war by es-
caping cities and staying with relatives in the countryside where it is easier to
find food. Wars tend to depopulate cities. Wars do not send rural populations
away from their land into cities. Deportation was sometimes a desirable op-
tion since there is evidence that some Israelites deported by Sargon did very
well in Assyria (Dalley 1985). Deportations would have been counter-
productive had they not improved the situation of deportees who were an im-
portant factor of imperial cohesion since Empires are cemented by consensus
as much as by force (Lanfranchi 1997).
Peasant migrations, however, are attested in Hellenistic Egypt and in Ot-
toman sources (Singer 1992). Farmers abandoned their villages and crops to
escape oppressive officials rather than passing armies. Had they feared the
approaching Assyrian armies in 720
BCE
, farmers would have escaped to
Gilead rather than piling themselves in Jerusalem. In short, the storming of
Samaria by Assyrian troops led farmers to bury their valuables and hide in
inaccessible zones for a short while. It should be noted, however, that the
storming of the royal residence of Samaria was probably less traumatic than
is usually thought (Niemann 2007). Assyrians may have walked in and out of
Samaria several times causing little damage to the surrounding countryside
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
201
from which they planned to draw substantial revenues. If peasants did actu-
ally flee during these military operations, hunger prevented them from leav-
ing everything behind. In 1948
CE
, despite a far more prosperous economic
situation, despite tensions and social unrest in the previous decades, it took a
significant amount of force to induce a mass exodus of Palestinian refugees.
Propaganda reinforced by terror actions in specific villages was not enough.
It was necessary to physically transport thousands away from their homes
(Pappe 2007). Villages had to be razed and planted with forests, urban homes
had to be filled with other residents. Returnees had to be shot or imprisoned.
And yet, a significant number of Palestinians managed to remain. Flood of
refugees are the result of violent expulsion. Unless it is specially geared to
that effect, war does not produce floods of permanent refugees. If the Israelite
population south of Samaria did move into Judah permanently, it was neces-
sarily the result of an overall Assyrian plan.
The threat of hunger that prevents rural population from abandoning their
fields works on both sides of the spectrum. Not only force is required to up-
root population and to produce exiles, successful settlement of displaced
populations in a new place also presupposes military might to overcome the
resistance of the host population which always fears being flooded by for-
eigners (Jordan after 1948 and Lebanon after Black September). Force comes
either from the migrating group itself (Judges 18, whether historical or not,
the fedayin in Jordan), or it is provided by the exiling power which settles the
exiles in strategic positions as colonists. This is the case for populations de-
ported by the Assyrians (Cogan 1974) and for Israeli settlers in the Occupied
Territories.
In the unlikely event that Israelite farmers were sufficiently terrorised by
the prospect of an Assyrian invasion to leave their fields behind and seek ref-
uge behind the dubious safety of Jerusalem’s walls, it can be expected that
the arrival of Sennacherib in the Shefelah twenty years later would have in-
duced the same people to escape the same dreaded Assyrians once again
(Davies 2007b:148). Obviously, they did not and Finkelstein (in press:10/12)
insists that the size and importance of Jerusalem continued increasing after
701
BCE
.
Having rejected the notion of war refugees, there remains the question
which Finkelstein asks Na’aman: What brought about the dramatic popula-
tion growth in Jerusalem and Judah in the eighth century
BCE
? Finkelstein
argues that what we know about natural demographic growth in the ancient
world ‘cannot explain an increase from ca. 1,000 to 10,000 people in Jerusa-
lem’. Finkelstein concludes that ‘if we are not contemplating the arrival of
extra-terrestrials, we are dealing with refugees’ (in press:9/12). Why exclude
the arrival of extra-territorials? The Assyrians shuffled population around
(Younger 2000:296-7). Following Yamani’s rebellion in 711
BCE
, they had a
fresh supply of people from Ashdod, Gimtu and Ashdod-Yam to exile, why
not, in Judah. Hezekiah’s rebellion was dealt with similarly, leading to an-
other demographic shuffle, this time to weaken Jerusalem. Since Sargon set-
tled Arabs in Samerina and Iranians in Ashdod (Na’aman 2007:28), it is
202 Philippe Guillaume
hardly surprising to see the population of Jerusalem and Judah grow at the
same period and for similar reasons. Although we lack textual sources con-
cerning the transfer of exiles in and around Jerusalem, it is better to explain
the demographic growth in the kingdom through the arrival of exiles than by
postulating a flood of refugees. Major population transfers are all attributable
to Assyrian operations which produced exiles, not refugees. The flood-of-
refugees hypothesis does not square up with the historical evidence, nor with
the biblical evidence.
Immigrant and Host Cultures
Finkelstein and Silberman use the flood of Israelite refugees to explain what
prompted Hezekiah to integrate Benjaminite traditions in the lore of the Da-
vidic dynasty. Faced with the risk of major social unrest, Hezekiah’s scribes
would have produced a pan-Israelite ideology which meshed the Jacob cycle,
the Exodus story, the Book of Saviours in Judges, the Saul cycle, the Elijah-
Elishah cycle and northern prophetic works with Judean lore. Thus Israelite
traditions found their way into the biblical codex. Finkelstein and Silberman
imagine the Jerusalem elite forging a new Judahite nation (the term is not
innocent) through the production of a ‘Northernist’ body of texts which dis-
played a keen interest in Israelite traditions although these displayed Saul as a
heroic martyr betrayed by a despicable David. To defuse political unrest,
Finkelstein and Silberman date the initial composition of the story of David’s
Rise and of the Succession History in the late eighth century
BCE
, after the
fall of Samaria in response to the necessity to integrate the large number of
Israelite refugees that swelled the population of Judah dramatically. Heze-
kiah’s scribes organized the northern traditions in such a way that David was
cleared of any responsibility in the demise of Saul, Ishbaal and Abner, as
well as wrongdoing in the cases of Judean figures such as Absalom, Amasa
and Uriah (Finkelstein and Silberman 2006:276-8). This Pan-Israelite ideol-
ogy cemented the flood of refugees into the new Judean nation.
There are major difficulties here. It is highly unlikely that Hezekiah re-
acted to the mortal threat posed by the Israelite refugees who flooded his
kingdom with a ‘melting-pot’ approach. Cultural openness requires power
configurations that were not present in Hezekiah’s purported situation. Orien-
talism afforded limited amounts of integration of the colonized cultures into
the culture of the colonizers. Hezekiah, however, was not in the position of
British, French, or even Ptolemaic colonial administrations. Hezekiah’s posi-
tion, according to the flood-of-refugees hypothesis, was more akin to western
societies ‘flooded’ with Muslim immigrant workers. As far as I know, there
are not many examples of governments of recipient countries willingly adopt-
ing the laws, customs and stories of incoming refugees. The tendency is to
have them adopt indigenous practices. When ‘nation’ or land is perceived as
flooded by real or imagined waves of foreigners, the elite foster waves of
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
203
xenophobia
3
. Limited integration of immigrant cultures takes place when the
guest culture does not feel directly under threat, but this does not apply to
Hezekiah since the flood-of-refugees hypothesis requires that the Israelites
flood was a mortal danger to Hezekiah’s rule.
Cultural integration is greater from the opposite direction, from the colo-
nizer to the colonized. In this case, the impact of a culture upon other cultures
is proportional to its military and economic domination which promotes the
absorption of its traits by subservient groups. The numerous Egyptian and
Mesopotamian themes found in Biblical literature are a case in point since
Egyptian and Mesopotamian Empires controlled Palestine more or less direct
for centuries (Hendel 2005:23-26). In the same way, the influence of Israelite
themes upon Judean traditions reflects the well-attested Israelite military and
economic supremacy over its Judean satellite during the centuries before
Hezekiah (Finkelstein and Silberman 2006:161-162)
4
. Applying the principle
to Hezekiah’s Judah, when the aura of Israelite traditions in Jerusalem would
have been nil while Assyria’s would have been great, the Judean elite would
have integrated the traditions of the Assyrian winner rather than those of the
Israelite loser (Davies 2007b:150). Hence, the decades immediately before
701
BCE
are again the worse moment for the integration of Israelite traditions
in Judah due to the greater prestige of Assyrian culture at the time. Earlier
historical settings are more favourable, when the prestige of Israel was still
not overshadowed by Assyria. If Bethel came under Jerusalem’s jurisdiction
sometimes between the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah, it seems necessary to
wait until the Persian period, after Jerusalem supplanted Bethel, to date the
production of anti-Saulide and anti-Bethel traditions since it makes no sense
for Jerusalem to absorb Israelite traditions only so as to attack them (Davies
2007b:149). Another possibility is to consider that Jerusalem justified David
concerning his dealings with Saul at the very moment of the integration of
Bethel within Judah’s realm. Instead of having missionaries follow armies to
convert the new subjects to the religion of the conqueror, ancient conquerors
paid homage to the gods of the lands they conquered. Gods and heroes were
perceived as “holding the land” independent of which human group con-
trolled it. As the Argonauts poured libations “to Earth, to the gods of the land
and to the souls of its dead heroes” when they arrived on the banks of the
Phasis (Malkin 2005:247), Josiah is said to have left a particular tomb unde-
filed at Bethel (2 Kgs 23,18). The significance of the sparing of this tomb is
downplayed by reporting it within Josiah’s fury of desecration across Judah
as far as Samaria (Luciani 1996; Barrick 2002). The man of god in question
3. Huntingdon (2004) demands that non Anglo-Saxon Americans conform to the
Anglo-Protestant model.
4. The fact that Mesha of Moab celebrated his successful overthrow of Israel with a
stele inscribed in a language that looks very much Israelite reveals the natural ascen-
dancy of Israelite culture over its smaller neighbours. The same applies to Rome. The
Republic turned into a Hellenistic empire when Rome set foot in the Orient, marking
the end of a process that started during the Punic wars (Ball 2000).
204 Philippe Guillaume
is explicitly connected with a previous episode (1 Kgs 13,1-2) in order to
cover up the identity of the person buried in the tomb who was famous
enough to have been adorned with a monument (ןויצ). Since it is unlikely that
the Benjaminites built a monument for a Judean prophet who proclaimed
judgement on the Bethel cult, Josiah paid his respects to a Benjaminite hero
or king at the time of the annexation of Benjamin
5
. In line with the ideology
of the text, Josiah is presented as smashing an altar, which is bad enough in
itself, but desecrating such a tomb would have been disastrous diplomacy. A
liberating army may destroy the symbols of the regime it has just overthrown
but not those of long dead figures belonging to the local folklore. For all of
Josiah’s iconoclastic zeal, 2 Kgs 23,17-18 carefully state that this tomb was
spared because the dead were deemed much more powerful than Isa 57,6 is
willing to grant (Lewis 1989; Ackerman 1992:149; Bloch-Smith 1992; van
der Horst 2002). The Bethel episode militates in favour of a certain degree of
historicity for Josiah’s activity in Benjamin and provides a slot for the literary
integration of Saul and David into Judean traditions before the Persian era.
One way to salvage Finkelstein and Silberman’s suggestion that the inte-
gration of Saul in the Davidic traditions took place during Hezekiah’s reign is
to postulate that the transfer of Bethel and Benjamin was part of the Assyrian
reorganisation of Samerina after 720
BCE
(Davies 2007b:148). In that case, if
the transfer of administrative jurisdiction involved the displacement of popu-
lations, the Israelites settled in Judah were deportees entrusted to Hezekiah
by the Assyrians. The blending of Saul and David certainly make sense then,
but as a function of the overall Assyrian strategy in the region.
As always, the small kingdom of Judah bloomed as a consequence of ex-
ternal forces, for instance, campaigns in Palestine by Sheshonq, Hazael and
the Sargonides (Finkelstein and Silberman 2006a:116,157). Had it happened
during the reign of Hezekiah, the incorporation of Saul in the narrative of the
origins of the new Judean ‘nation’ was fostered by the Assyrians or it would
not have had the powerful integrative effect that the flood-of-refugees hy-
pothesis claims it had. Either the refugees were exiles or they did not consti-
tute a flood.
Biblical Texts as Mass Propaganda?
A further problem with a flood of Israelite refugees in Jerusalem after 720
BCE
is the necessity to postulate that the alien and even hostile cult and royal
traditions brought by the refugees threatened the stability of the Judean realm
and that the work of scribes in the recesses of the Jerusalem temple managed
to turn these refugees into proud Judahites.
First, it is hard to see why Bethel and its traditions posed a mortal danger
to Hezekiah. The notion of threat, essential to the entire theory, stands only if
a clear conflict of interest between Samaria and Jerusalem can be traced at
5. To the same effect, the detailed account of the whereabouts of Saul’s remains in 1
Sam. 31.9-13 can be read as precluding any suggestions that the Bethel monument
was connected with Saul.
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
205
the time. Whether Bethel was under direct Assyrian administration or already
part of the Judean realm is irrelevant. The notion of hostility between Jerusa-
lem and Bethel reflects a Jerusalem-centred ideology that did not develop
before the events of 701
BCE
were interpreted as a miraculous salvation
which proved Jerusalem’s election over Bethel’s (2 Kings 19; Isaiah 37). The
cultural and religious significance of the 17 km separating Bethel from Jeru-
salem is not easy to evaluate. Did they represent an ethnic barrier by which
people on both side fiercely maintained separate identities, or do they suggest
a proximity that facilitated the flow of traditions from Bethel to Jerusalem
and back without the need for a flood of refugees to transport them?
Second, the notion of a dangerous mass of Saulide partisans within Judah
is dubious since radicalism does not arise among disadvantaged groups who,
if they are at all aware of it, do not take the dominant ideology seriously
enough to threaten the ruling elite. Non-native groups such as the postulated
Israelites who flooded Jerusalem would not endanger Hezekiah to the point
of forcing him to integrate Saul in his dynastic traditions since non-native
groups are even less likely to take to radicalism than native ones. Radical
ideological attacks originate within the hegemony, where are found the only
individuals taking the values of the ruling elite seriously enough to accuse the
other members of the elite of not doing so (Scott 1990:106). The number of
elite members and of literati in eighth century Jerusalem remained extremely
small, however great the leap forward (Ben Zvi 1997). The flood of refugees
thus dwindles into a handful of Israelite scribes who ‘flooded’ their few Jeru-
salem colleagues. At least this handful would have been less taxing to the
Judean food stores than a torrent of destitute refugees.
Third, how did the first drafts of the ‘History of David’s Rise’ and of the
‘Succession History’ help Hezekiah quench the Benjaminite peril? Both sto-
ries retain too much information which is not complimentary to King David
(Finkelstein and Silberman 2006:276) to be useful as propaganda. The task of
the squads of qualified propagandists sent to indoctrinate the flood of refu-
gees would have been difficult if it was based on the Books of Samuel. Mod-
ern readers of the text remain unconvinced, in spite of having been exposed
to the later glorification of David in the Psalms. The discarding of incense
burners in Arad, Beer-sheba and Lachish which Finkelstein and Silberman
(2006:269) present as part of Hezekiah’s overall strategy to absorb the dan-
gerous refugees in the ‘new nation’ hardly renders the ambiguous presenta-
tion of David more convincing. The closure of peripheral temples would have
alienated the rural citizenry and shaken the people’s confidence in their king
and their God. It would have given the Judean population reasons to join
forces with the Benjaminite fifth column (Edelman 2008). At the stroke of a
pen, Finkelstein and Silberman need a hostile and even dangerous flood of
refugees to turn into gullible believers of what came out of the Jerusalem
scriptorium.
Such a ‘scriptural’ view of ancient Biblical texts is problematic. The com-
position of what eventually became the Hebrew Canons now appears as a
long process of reading and re-reading by a very small number of literati
206 Philippe Guillaume
(Ben Zvi 2006). This understanding clashes with the notion that the first draft
of the Books of Samuel was put together for mass propaganda as early as the
eighth century
BCE
and clashes even more with the idea that they were com-
posed to deal with a particular political problem. We cannot ascertain the ac-
tual use of the court stories when they were written, but it is becoming less
and less likely that they were produced for public consumption. The masses,
ancient and modern, remain oblivious of the work of the literati, except when
it comes to recording tax-payments. The integration of Saul within the David
traditions only concerned the immediate circle of the royal court (Knauf
2002). It is unlikely that it would have ever reached the populace and even
less likely that it would have convinced a flood of refugees to embrace a new
Judahite nationality. Besides the misleading anachronism of a nation forged
by a common past, the motivations of the Biblical Israel-Judah blend (Saul
and David, Bethel and Jerusalem, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea,
Jacob and Abraham) are better removed from the immediate political realm.
The process of blending is a cultural and religious phenomenon which only
acquired a political potential after its crystallization (from the time of the
Hasmonean dynasty onwards), not before it.
The separation of politics from culture and religion is indeed artificial and
at more than one occasion the political situation was favourable for a rap-
prochement of Israelite and Judean traditions. If historical, Hezekiah’s calen-
dar reform (2 Chron. 30) would have fitted the Assyrian agenda as it fostered
the integration of Judah into Samaria’s cultural and economic realm. After
720
BCE
, the Assyrian province of Samerina retained its leading position and
Jerusalem adopted Israelite traditions in emulation rather than in reaction to a
dangerous flood of refugees. The same process of integration certainly accel-
erated after 701
BCE
, since after this date Hezekiah had to make a show of
loyalty. Once he escaped unscathed in spite of having locked up King Padi in
his gaols, Hezekiah had every reason to be a fervent sponsor of Samarian-
Judean friendship and cooperation. Until 450
BCE
, a likely date for Jerusa-
lem’s supplanting of Mizpah and Bethel (Edelman 2005), many occasions
would have led scribes to compose an apology of David in his dealing with
Saul. This dissolves the ability to isolate a particular decade for the rise of
pan-Israelite ideas in Judah while it explains why the Chronicler dated Heze-
kiah’s reform at the onset of his reign. Far from ending at Hezekiah’s death,
the process of integration continued once Bethel and Benjamin were part of
the kingdom of Judah, during Manasseh or Josiah’s reign if not earlier (Da-
vies 2007b:151-5), and when the centre of Yehud moved to Mizpah after 586
BCE
(Edelman 2001; Davies 2006; 2007a). The reconciliation of Southern
and Northern traditions within a corpus of Judahite and Yehudite texts could
have started as early as the days of Jehoram and Athaliah (Knauf 2002). It
continued throughout the reign of Hezekiah and for several centuries after-
wards. Hezekiah’s reign is but one segment of a long literary process which
renders the flood-of-refugees hypothesis irrelevant.
To conclude, a flood of Israelite refugees is not the most reasonable ex-
planation for the demographic growth of Jerusalem and the integration of
Jerusalem 720-705
BCE
207
Saul within the Davidic saga. Archaeology and Biblical exegesis are unable
to date the growth of Jerusalem precisely enough to sustain the notion of a
sudden phenomenon in the few years between 720 and 701
BCE
. Accumulat-
ing redactions and strata, Finkelstein and Silberman try to turn the improb-
able possibility of the flood-of-refugees into an informative fact (Aaron
2001:94). Yet, the post-701
BCE
period remains more promising as the main
phase of the growth of Jerusalem’s population and of its literature. There is
no reason to exclude some expansion before 701
BCE
, but the rate of growth
must have been slower since political conditions at that time were far less
favourable than they were after 701
BCE
. If the urbanization of Jerusalem was
less than sudden, the flood of refugees is redundant. The notion of refugees is
faulty from the point of view of food logistics since neither Jerusalem nor
Judah could have fed large numbers of refugees over a period long enough to
allow their integration into the kingdom. Had refugees flooded Jerusalem,
they needed more bread than bible. Had refugees flooded Jerusalem, Heze-
kiah had every reason to force them back home, unless Sargon wanted them
to stay. That these refugees forced Jerusalem to integrate Israelite traditions is
faulty in light of the dynamics of literary production. Jerusalem and Bethel
were geographically so close that the integration of Saul and of other Israelite
traditions in Judahite lore took place at any one time and need not reflect a
particular political configuration (Davies 2007b:156). Although we still know
little concerning the relation between biblical texts and the historical realities
that played into the formation of these texts, the Torah and the Prophets are
clearly more annalistic than propagandistic. The Torah and the Prophets con-
stitute repositories of multilayered traditions that require careful sifting be-
fore some of themes can be turned into propaganda. The flood-of-refugees
hypothesis reverses the process and puts the nationalistic pamphlet as the
source of the collection. The hypothesis is also faulty from the point of view
of the diffusion of Biblical tradition. The printing press enabled the Bible to
reach the masses and serve nationalism (Sugirtharajah 2002:127-54), but
Hezekiah had neither a nation nor a printing press, and needed none. Estab-
lishing matrimonial ties with northern elite would have been a far more effi-
cient and time-honoured method. The growth of Jerusalem, the modification
of the demography in Samerina and in Ashdod, and the integration of Israel-
ite traditions in Judean lore is a direct consequence of Assyrian policies
rather than a reaction against the ‘dreaded’ Assyrians.
The flood-of-refugees hypothesis reflects modern anxieties more than an-
cient probabilities. The syndrome of the nation under the mortal danger of a
flood of refugees resonates in modern Jerusalem as all parties nurture the
refugee problem (Shikaki 2006). The flood hypothesis is also one component
of a broader academic myth that weighs up the position of Judah and Jerusa-
lem in the regional context by Biblical rather than by historical standards and
fails to recognize the natural ascendancy of Israel over Judah. Israelites are
depicted as mere refugees; the integration of Samaria into the Assyrian Em-
pire is a ‘fall’; Assyrian rule is deemed necessarily more cruel and oppressive
208 Philippe Guillaume
than ‘home rule’. The flood-of-refugees hypothesis creates more problems
than it solves.
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