Overcoming the Impasse: How to get beyond the usual discourse about biblical history Niels Peter Lemche

Every time a new archaeological discovery is made in modern Israel, it is hailed as the ultimate proof of the historical correctness of biblical historiography, and every time serious historians have to address this issue: Is the biblical story historical true? It is an ever repeating story and never producing any reasonable consensus. However, with the idea of cultural memory in mind, we may take this discussion in another direction. When at the end of the Enlightenment and as a consequence of the French revolution in 1789, the new "nation" states of Europe were looking for a new legitimization that could hold the old political (and religious) structures together although in a very different setting. As it turned out, the modern concept of history emerged around the same time - prepared of course by the Enlightenment, but also learning from the new worldview as a consequence of modern philosophers, standing on top of Hume, Locke, Descartes and definitely especially Kant. So a mission was formulated: Historians should following these new criteria in creating national histories. And so they did, incorporating as much as the traditional folklore and mythology as possible; for instance legends relating the stories of King Arthur, Nibelungenlied, Heimskringla, and others. In this way they created a national story with a definite political purpose in mind: the survival of the nation, by postulating an ancient connection that might have been, but just as easily was invented to suit the purpose of the national history. This was imposed on the populations of Europe through the school systemas some people in cultural memory studies say: History is a weapon of mass instruction. The Bible was one of the major building blocks, and its story about ancient Israel was translated into one of these modern histories; not a major task as almost everybody knew this story by heart. Soon historical studies emerged based on the biblical story, often correcting it but never in any fundamental way separating itself from its basis. Modern stories of Israel changed into what Mario Liverani has styled a "hyperstory,"1 meaning that every new "history" represented an overwriting of the former one, first of the biblical story itself, since , it was the key previous history, and then of course many other layers. Liverani only forgot to stress that there was not one but several hyperstories, from the most conservative and fundamentalistic ones to some considered more liberal and representing the academic discipline of history in the best way. But all of them were hyperstories which had no problem being accepted by the general public as they never strayed far away from the basic narrative of the Bible itself.
1

Cf. Mario Liverani, Nuovi sviluppi nello studio della storia dell'Israele biblico: Bibl 80 (1999) 488-505.

Minimalism may be the first serious endeavor to get beyond the hyperstory of the Bible because it simply denies the relevance of the biblical story (and subsequent hyperstories built upon its foundation) for a serious reconstruction of the history of Palestine in ancient times. However, because minimalism was not based on the biblical story but invented its own, the reaction was furious, and a debate arose that simply rejected the new history and supported the hyperstory of the ancestors, ancient as well as modern. Minimalism was never refuted with historical arguments and it has not been to the present; but it has been rejected, because it deviated from the hyperstory. Archaeology has been drawn into the discussion by both sides. Now the story is the same. When modern historical research arose, modern archaeology at the same time became a new and important academic discipline, and archaeologists were asked to provide the pictorial support for the national story, and so they did. Following archaeological activities, museums were created to support the narrative of the historians, a kind of archive in the sense of Aleida Assmann, and another part of the political impact of the historical narrative. In modern Israel, the biblical story turned into a modern Jewish/Israeli hyperstory and became supported by archaeology, having the same program as the ever rewritten history books to bolster Israeli supremacy in the former landscape of Palestine. Reactions when this hyperstory was rejected or rewritten in a way that changed it fundamentally were, and continue to be, quite fierce in their negativity. Understanding this is only possible from the angle of cultural memory, not in the somewhat diffuse sense which we find in recent books about the subject (making ancient Israel something that remembers, although ancient Israel is in itself something remembered, and mistaking cultural memory for being the same as collective memory which it is certainly not if you follow the program of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, himself belonging to the school of Durkheimthere is no way out, you have to read Halbwachs in French, and also the French discussion about Halbwachs: They do not in general anymore talk about collective memory but social memory). Cultural memory is the memory which an elite group asks other people to remember, a kind of imposed national memory, certainly with political overtones. The problem is that memory is much stronger than historical research; people do not like to part with their national mythology. So much stronger is the impact of the biblical story taught in schools and Sunday schools, and imprinted in the minds of young people in a way that makes it rather painful to many people to give up their biblically oriented hyperstory. Back in the 1980s I was talking about biblical scholarship as trench warfare. Every position was defended here to the last breath, and when given up substituted by another trench where the process started all over again.

It is time for academic scholarship to get past that futile discussion and to come to terms with biblical and later Christian and Jewish rewriting for what it is, hyperstories, variation over a fixed theme. Liverani's Oltra la Bibbia2 is a good place to begin.

(Bari: Laterza, 2003). ET published by Equinox.