Introduction: 'Deep Space'

Mapping Jerusalem

The Sly Rhetoric of Neutrality

City of David as 'Capital'

Exploring 'the Zones of Silence'

Notes
 

Introduction: 'Deep Space'

The crisis in the study of the history of ancient Palestine/Israel shows little sign of abating./1/ The discovery of, what John McPhee termed, 'deep time' has been at the heart of Western historiographical perceptions of the evolutionary development of culture and history emphasizing both chronology and time's arrow, a notion which has often implied progress within history and which articulates well with Christian teleologies./2/ It allows for little appreciation of the importance of time's cycle in traditional conceptions of the past which are usually relegated to the 'prehistoric' or the 'mythic'. This emphasis on the inexorable progress of time's arrow has resulted in a perception of Israelite history, as the taproot of Western civilization, replacing all other aspects of historical reality in Palestine as part of the inevitable evolutionary process. For many in the late twentieth century the past is, to use the title of D. Lowenthal's (1985) well known work, 'a foreign country', remote and removed from contemporary experience. The past has been rendered understandable or manageable by separating the historian from his or her work, the producer from the product, and through the apparent elimination of subjectivity generated authentic, trustworthy, and verifiable accounts of the past neatly categorised in terms of chronology and periodization. Such a conception of 'the history of ancient Israel', one of the monumental achievements of nineteenth and twentieth century biblical studies, was invariably understood as 'exact knowledge', to use Elton's (1967: 82) expression. The separation of producer from product was meant to ensure, as Collingwood (1946: 268) believed, that the historian's decisions would 'follow inevitably from the evidence.'

The deepening crisis within the discipline has exposed the ideological foundations of all historical research revealing how such a 'master story' has created ancient Israel in its own image, the image of Western nation states, thereby confirming Césaire's dictum that Europe is the subject of all history./3/ The seeming objectivity of these accounts masks the subjectivity of biblical accounts and, in effect, encourages the failure to explore competing pasts or aspects of the past which were of little interest to the biblical writers. As the crisis has intensified, there has been a perceptible shift from debates confined to the historical veracity of the biblical narratives and their correlation with archaeological data from the region, to debates on objectivity, the location of the study of the history of the region within theological studies, and the realisation that time, in the words of Fabian (1983: 144), is an 'ideologically constructed instrument of power' which is often controlled, measured, and allotted by dominant powers./4/ One response to this has been to concede, however begrudgingly, that the history of the discipline is one which is implicated in the colonial enterprise but to claim that the situation has now changed and that historians of ancient Israel are able to establish Elton's 'exact knowledge', by factoring out personal opinions and political and religious affiliations, and realise Collingwood's enterprise./5/ Yet Mieke Bal exposes the weakness in such an attitude in that 'an unproblematic emphasis on the difference of the colonial past is a sure way to keep it alive in an unacknowledged present' (Bal 1991: 44)./6/

While the influence of 'deep time' on the history of the region has been revealed only slowly, as befits the concept, exposing the ideological construction of the past, the influence of 'deep space' in the production of this past has been largely ignored within the complex matrix of ideology, knowledge, and power./7/ The privileging of the factual, particularly chronology, has masked the extent to which concepts of spatiality have played a central role in the rhetoric of the discourse of biblical studies in its construction of the history of ancient Israel. Thus, in a critique of dominant methodologies within the study of Israelite history over a decade ago it was possible to say that 'The standard histories of Israel concentrate almost entirely on the leading figures of the artful narratives from the monarchy onwards. It becomes a procession of central characters from Saul, David, Solomon, Ahab, Jezebel, Omri, Josiah, through to Ezra and Nehemiah accompanied by a number of supporting players. It is not simply the periodization which is dictated by the traditions--Patriarchs, Exodus, Conquest, Settlement, etc.--but also the cast of characters who populate this rather shallow landscape. But what kind of history is it that devotes its attention to the precise chronological sequence of Ezra and Nehemiah, or how many Elyashibs and Sandballats may have figured in the history of Israel and is able to say little, if anything about the wider social reality?' (Whitelam 1986:53; emphasis added). The landscape is configured here as background, the stage on which the social actors perform; the problem of spatial representation in historical studies remains in the background. The dominant role of time, 'the summit view of history' focused on great (male) figures, helps to mask the problem of spatial representation within the discourse of biblical studies./8/

This is a problem which is not confined to the monuments of nineteenth and early twentieth century biblical studies, or to particular opponents within the increasingly combative debates, but encompasses the whole spectrum of debate on the history of ancient Palestine/Israel from 'maximalist' to 'minimalist' perspectives./9/ It is possible to illustrate this with reference to the failure, until relatively recently, to recognise the ideological implications of terminology for the area. Anson Rainey and Philip Davies, invariably seen as paradigms of the opposing maximalist and minimalist camps, offer striking confirmation of the power of the discourse of biblical studies to mask the ideological importance of spatial representation. Rainey (1982: xiii) could claim 'Eretz-Israel' as a 'the only nonpolitical' term for the area, while Davies (1992: 23, n. 2) could deny that his use of the term 'Palestine' identified any interest in political arguments./10/ Similarly, the recent collection of essays by Silberman and Small (1994) on The Archaeology of Ancient Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present , despite the fact that the opening essays discuss the political implications of biblical scholarship and archaeology, does not reflect on the use of spatial terminology such as the 'land of Israel' or its applicability to the region throughout its history. However, such concerns only scratch the surface of the problem of 'deep space' and its representation within the discourse of biblical studies.

The problem of spatial representation, particularly the notion of 'deep space' has been elucidated by Smith: 'The twentieth century has ushered in the discovery of deep space, or at least its social construction, and yet it is only as the century draws to a close that this fundamental discovery is becoming apparent…Deep space is quintessentially social space; it is physical extent infused with social intent' (Smith 1990; cited in Gregory 1994: 3). While textual reconstructions of the history of ancient Israel, based primarily on the biblical traditions, have come under increasing scrutiny with appeal to the growing body of archaeological data, particularly within the so-called minimalist approaches, the question of the social construction of space has barely surfaced./11/ Space has been seen to be largely objective, the landscape on which the events of the past were played out. But as Hebdige (1990: vi-vii) points out 'it has become less and less common in social and cultural theory for space to be represented as neutral, continuous, transparent or for critics to oppose "dead... fixed...undialectical "immobile" space against the "richness, fecundity of life, dialectics" of time, conceived as the privileged medium for the transmission of the "messages" of history.' As Soja (1998: 169) notes, in his discussion of Foucault, 'History was socially produced. Geography was naively given.' While the debates within biblical studies have encompassed the range of intellectual movements within literary and historical studies, debates on a critical human geography and within cartography have been largely ignored./12/ The way in which space has masked consequences in the representation of the past has passed unnoticed even though many of our text books, specialist monographs, particularly on archaeology and historical studies, and specialist journals employ the image as an essential element of the presentation./13/ The image, map, diagram, or photograph are deeply embedded in many reconstructions of Israelite and Palestinian history, lending factuality, objectivity, and authority to the narrative descriptions.

The silence is strange given that history and geography emerged as disciplines at the end of the nineteenth century in the same social and political circumstances and appealed to the same legitimizing devices of objectivity, scientific rational enquiry, and the rhetoric of reasonableness./14/ The alliance of the two in the form of 'Historical Geography' was heralded as an objective discipline with precise rules designed to produce the 'exact knowledge' which was the life blood of Elton's professional historian. Space as fixed or given, which could be measured, plotted, and known, provided the background or stage for the intensely human drama that was to be played out on it. It is important therefore to try to uncover the power of spatial conceptions within the discourse of biblical studies to see how they continue to infuse our representations of the past and so the present. The representation of Jerusalem provides an interesting case study in the search for the syntax and grammar of the discourse of biblical studies or as a pointer towards further research into spatial representation within the discipline.

Garbini's (1988) radical critiques of the historiographic perceptions of biblical studies are well known and therefore provide a striking example of the power of the discourse of biblical studies to mask the consequences of historical representation.

The ancient Near East, with its civilization and its history, has been rescued from the oblivion of time by just over a century of European science. With it have appeared the remotest roots of Western civilization: before Paris, Rome, Athens and Jerusalem there were Babylon and Uruk. (Garbini 1988: 1)

Kathleen Kenyon's appeal for funding for the BSAJ excavations in Jerusalem (1960) opens with the claim that 'as a holy place in three of the world's greatest faiths, Jerusalem has a place in the cultural heritage of a greater part of the world's population than even Rome or Athens.' It is revealing that the urban trinity of Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens once again appear as the physical manifestation of civilization. For Kenyon, Jerusalem is on a par as the representative and root of European civilization: 'It can vie with Athens and Rome in the beauty of its site and of its existing buildings, and the Old City retains the charm of its medieval character'. It consists of buildings, physical manifestations which provide an objective record of the city and its past. This last point is critical since the spatiality of Jerusalem is only grasped in terms of its history. Time has priority, while space provides the objective manifestation of time. Thus she continues: 'The excavation of Jerusalem by modern technique is essential if the problems of its history are to be elucidated, from a first occupation at least as early as the fourth millennium, through stages as an important Canaanite town, as the capital of the Jewish state before and after the Exile, as the magnificent capital of Herod the Great, as the site of a Roman fortress, as the Hadrianic city of Aelia Capitolina, through its long Christian and Moslem life.' Notice the progression here from Canaanite town to Jewish capital./15/ Such a seemingly innocent formulation is much more significant once we begin to discover that this is not an isolated formulation but one which recurs, in different guises, throughout a wide-range of literature in biblical studies and archaeology as well as popular handbooks, tourist guides, and political statements.

The problem is that it is almost impossible to separate Jerusalem from the burden of religious and cultural significance that has attached to it over many centuries. Jerusalem as symbol and reality are inextricably intertwined, although reality is often subsumed by symbol or image./16/ Karen Armstrong (1996: xiii) opens her popular study of the history of the city with the personal reflection that 'in Jerusalem, more than any other place I have visited, history is a dimension of the present.' Similar formulations can be found in a variety of handbooks, academic studies, or guide books, which illustrate how the past is continued in the present so that the construction of Jerusalem is not a disinterested project which can be divorced from the present. The fact that the Madrid talks and the Oslo Accord relegated the issue of Jerusalem's status to the final phase of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians confirms the intractable nature of the symbolic and mundane Jerusalems.

Mapping Jerusalem

The images of Jerusalem are well known and oft-repeated: Jerusalem, city of peace, the Holy, Zion, city of David, etc. The view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives looking over the golden Dome of the Rock glinting in the sun, the wall of the Haram es-Sharif, surrounded by houses and hills is one of the best known and most loved images of the city decorating the covers of numerous books from the academic to the popular. The vantage point of the observer, of course, is hidden from view providing a viewing platform, an Archimedian point, from which to view the mimetic reality of the world. Just as the vantage point of the historian is masked so the vantage point of the observer is hidden from view suggesting disinterested distance. Reflection on the relationship between observer and observed raises questions about the stability of the vantage point and the image. Here is Clifford's 'predicament of ethnographic modernity' in which 'there is no longer any place of overview (mountain top) from which to map human ways of life, no Archimedian point from which to represent the world. Mountains are in constant motion. So are islands: for one cannot occupy, unambiguously, a bounded cultural world from which to journey out and analyze other cultures' (Clifford 1986: 22; cited in Gregory 1994: 9)./17/

An examination of the image of Jerusalem as 'the city of David' as 'capital', ideas which are closely interrelated within the discourse of biblical studies, offers an instructive example in the stability of image, the act of representation, and the relationship of the observer./18/ It is a phrase, an idea, which is found in a wide spectrum of literature, from the serious academic to the popular, to the extremes of the political debate. That very range of use says something about the power and range of the discourse of biblical studies. The phrase 'the city of David', of course, comes from the biblical text and the description of David's capture and renaming of the Jebusite city in 2 Sam 5: 4-10./19/ However, it is noteworthy that there is no Hebrew term which corresponds to the city of David as 'capital'. It has become part of that complex network of phrases and ideas which make up the discourse of biblical studies infused throughout popular and political culture. Aharoni's (1982: 192) description is illustrative:

One of David's first and most decisive steps was the conquest of Jebusite Jerusalem and its conversion into the royal capital (Photo 55). It was a choice of genius. This foreign city, which stood between Israel and Judah, was elevated above the two main segments of the nation, and the city of Zion became the city of David. The new capital was located in the heart of the tribal areas, and the small, ancient city whose influence had not exceeded the limits of the southern hill country and its adjacent slopes henceforth became a metropolis, the first and only capital of the entire Eretz-Israel. (Emphasis added.)

The various examples could be multiplied to show that invariably the phrase 'the city of David' is accompanied by the idea that at the point of its conquest it becomes 'the capital of Israel'. As such, it represents a significant break with the previous history of the city as noted in Kenyon's view of the development from Canaanite town to Jewish capital. It is a common formulation which still has important currency as Mazar (1993: 698) illustrates: 'The archaeological facts and epigraphic and biblical evidence do not provide a well-founded basis for reconstructing the development and history of Jerusalem from its founding until its establishment as the capital of the Israelite kingdom.' He goes on in the same article to refer to 'the new capital' (Mazar 1993: 699)./20/ Similarly, Fritz (1995: 121) in a chapter on 'Capital Cities and Residences' refers to David's acquisition and building of his 'new capital of the kingdom'./21/ Ofer (1994: 92-3) refers to the transition from the pastoral society of the Late Bronze Age, through the more sedentary society of Iron I 'to the consolidation of national identity and the rise of the Israelite state',/22/ adding that the government and religious centre shifted to the 'new capital' and following the setting up of the monarchy 'the concept of Israelite nationality assumed concrete meaning' (Ofer 1994: 114, 120-1).

The interrelated phrases have common currency in a wide range of scholarly literature whose very repetition provides an important substance. However, this is enhanced and reinforced by their association with a series of maps and diagrams which provide even more explicit substance and support. The map of Jerusalem which accompanies Fritz's (1995: 126) discussion of the monarchic period shows a walled enclosure, constructed on the basis of a few exposures of wall, with a number of named areas, the 'City of David', 'Temple/Palace', and 'Misnaeh'./23/ The map needs only a minimal key: it provides concrete evidence of walls, which are not named but symbolised, which are 'archaeologically confirmed' (bold, and black), 'suggested' (less substantial but depicted by two black parallel lines which suggest confidence and objective reality), or represent 'the wall today' (which is a faint dotted line which suggests, ironically, less substance). The image is flat and one-dimensional, there are no complicating topographical lines, and it is accompanied by the caption 'Jerusalem. The city at the end of the monarchy'. The map suggests a sense of order and neatness. Only those things of importance are named. It inscribes important silences just as it is a statement of political and religious order with its royal and divine spaces clearly marked.

Just as the phrases recur constantly, so the map of monarchic Jerusalem with the city of David as central reappears in various forms alongside the textual discussion of David's capture of Jerusalem, its renaming, and transformation to Israelite capital. Armstrong (1996: 42), in representing standard scholarship to a wider audience, presents a similar image to accompany her discussion. Here it is labelled 'Jerusalem under David and Solomon'. The 'City of David' is distinguished by a thick black line with 'Solomon's extension' similarly outlined in black with a slightly thinner, though still substantial line. The present city is outlined in a fainter dotted line. Once again the important spaces which are represented are the 'City of David' itself which appears to be totally closed off but also contains the 'Citadel' (outlined in thick black line and shaded). 'The Temple Mount' is named and within it the 'Temple' and 'Royal Palace' are shaded rectangles. A few geographical features are named (Valley of Hinnom, Kidron Valley, and Mount of Olives) along with the 'Gihon Spring' and 'En Rogel'. Again the map suggests a sense of order, neatness, and substance. The important spaces are named while others remain empty and silent.

An interesting comparison of the two maps ensues if we introduce Avigad's (1980) maps and discussion of the archaeological investigation of the city. He presents two maps side by side (Avigad 1980: 28) showing 'the city of David', 'Ophel', and 'Temple Mount', imposed over an outline of the 'Present-Day Old City'. The outline of the Old City intimates in this case more substance than on the previous maps. However, once again the important named areas suggest substantive reality, allied to religious and political order. The second map has a much larger area outlined--corresponding to Fritz's map--in a thick black line; an outline which now substantially masks large areas of the modern Old City. The same areas are named but the extended wall outline is given further substance by the addition of the descriptor 'The old wall'. The two maps are accompanied by the legends 'the minimalist view of early Jerusalem' and 'the maximalist view of early Jerusalem'. It is only apparent by comparison that a single map such as that which illustrates Fritz's text is a 'maximalist' interpretation of the extent of the city at the end of the monarchic period. These maps are not representations of reality but deeply embedded images which are themselves intertextual constructions.

Avigad's presentation of the maps alongside one another draws attention to this intertextuality by attributing it to historical questions. He ascribes the maximalist view to a reading of Josephus's description of the extent of David's city which although at the time there was no archaeological evidence to support it, was based on the view that 'only such a large city [covering 150 acres] could have suited the capital of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah' (Avigad 1980:28). As he notes 'in the final analysis, the dispute revolved on the prestige ascribed to Jerusalem as a capital.' Although Avigad then argues for a maximalist interpretation on the basis of his own work within the Jewish Quarter, what the comparison reveals is the question of the vantage point of the viewer and the assumption that the seeming distance between observer and the observed, a distance magnified and enhanced in the bird's eye view plans of the city, which seemingly guarantees disinterested 'exact knowledge'.

The map of Jerusalem by Fritz (and others), like all such maps, is socially produced and embedded, it is part of the discursive tools to persuade, it does not correspond directly or unproblematically to the real world. Rather than representing the advancement of the cartographer's art in the late twentieth century through the employment of modern scientific methods, these maps form part of a long continuum in the representation and construction of the city. The maps which accompany attempts to reconstruct the history of Israel in the Davidic period, like Medieval and earlier maps of Jerusalem, convey a wealth of connotation and implication, of symbolic, metaphorical meaning that is attached to the visual image (see Harvey 1987:473). Harvey (1987: 473) notes how one of the earliest plans of the city, dating from the 1140s, shows the city walls in rhomboid outline, naming the gates and some of the towers, other features, and a few of the main streets with the principle buildings and churches, 'so that much of the area is simply left blank.'/24/ Most Medieval maps of Jerusalem show a circular form with a stylized representation of its walls and some of its chief monuments. Interestingly, the 1486 map of the city drawn by Erhard Remweil of Utrecht, while accompanying Bernard von Breydenbach, shows Jerusalem from a bird's eye view. The emphasis, once again, in these maps is on order, principal monuments, and fortifications (walls with gates and towers).

The Sly Rhetoric of Neutrality

It is important to understand the reading conventions which govern such maps in order to appreciate how they become an intricate part of the discourse of biblical studies. Pickles (1992: 194) shows that present-day cartography is the product of a Cartesian world in which the map is the scaled representation of the real. But in the case of the city of David, as represented in these maps, it is highly questionable that they correspond to or represent the real at all. Therefore, they are the products of a complex intertextuallity, derived from the brief biblical description in Samuel, and inscribed with a set of assumptions which are external to the text or artifact. The material remains discovered by archaeologists are meagre, to say the least, extremely difficult to date and interpret, but the reader is presented with a graphic image which overcomes these problems through the nature of the graphical representation (the thickness and boldness of line, the captions which refer to 'the city of David', etc.)./25/ It is part of an assumption that maps and graphical images convey information in an unproblematic manner on the basis of a direct one-to-one correspondence, or as Harley (1992: 231) notes provide a 'mode of access to reality'./26/ These maps, when viewed in isolation, appear to represent stable and indisputable facts./27/ This is reinforced by the orthodox terms in the vocabulary of cartographers, such as 'impartial, 'objective', 'scientific', and 'true', whereas 'the resonances of class, gender, race, ideology, power and knowledge, or myth and ritual' are seldom heard (Harley 1992: 231). Harley has been instrumental in demonstrating 'how cartography also belongs to the terrain of the social world in which it is produced' (1992: 232; 1988a; 1988b; 1989). It is important, therefore, to challenge their assumed autonomy as a mode of representation so that the task becomes a 'search for the social forces that have structured cartography' and which 'locate the presence of power--and its effects--in all map knowledge' (1992: 232)./28/ The map is situated, embodied, partial--just as much as our view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

Harley (1992: 235) makes the point that 'this mimetic bondage has led to a tendency not only to look down on the maps of the past (with a dismissive scientific chauvenism) but also to regard the maps of other, non-Western or early cultures (where the rules of map making were different) as inferior to European maps (Harley 1987-8)'. The maps of Jerusalem as the city of David presented in our standard handbooks draw on the 'scientific rules' of cartography which create a 'standard' based on the central bastions of measurement and standardization. They draw upon what Harley (1992: 235) terms the 'ethic of accuracy' and are read as though they convey 'an authoritative image of self-evident factuality' (Lupton 1986: 53). It assumes that such maps are value free--unlike the ancient maps of Jerusalem represented as the navel of the earth on theological and political grounds. Yet they employ a kind of 'subliminal geometry' (Harley 1988a; Harley 1992: 236) to add geopolitical force and meaning to representation. They also act as a commentary on the rules of social order which are reinforced by the rules of measurement and representation (see Harley 1992: 237):

Cartography deploys its vocabulary accordingly so that it embodies a systematic social inequality. The map discriminates: the distinctions of class and power are engineered, reified and legitimated by means of cartographic signs. The rule seems to be 'the more powerful, the more prominent'.

City of David as 'Capital'

The notion of 'the city of David' as 'capital' is not something which emerges naturally from the biblical text or the archeological remains, nor is confirmed by the various maps and images which accompany scholarly and popular narratives. The understanding of Jerusalem as the capital of David's kindgom forms part of this complex intertextuality of which these maps are an integral part rather than some objective confirmation. Instead of revealing the city to the observer, they enshrine and mask the assumptions on which the narrative has been constructed. Avigad's (1980: 28) remark that the dispute over the extent of the city in the monarchic period concerned 'the prestige ascribed to Jerusalem as a capital' helps to expose some of the assumptions built into reconstructions of this period. As we have seen, although Jerusalem is referred to in the biblical text as 'the city of David', it is not explicitly stated to be a 'capital' city: David is said to 'reign' (ølm) there./29/ We might adapt Miller's (1997: 20) test here: 'to pose the question another way, is the emerging archaeological picture such that, even if there were no Hebrew Bible and archaeologists had no prior knowledge of Solomon, would they likely have hypothesised by now something of the order of a Solomonic empire and golden age to explain the findings?' We might ask the same question about the whether or not the archaeological remains from the 10th century would lead to the natural conclusion that Jerusalem was the 'capital' of a nation-state?/30/

The nature of this complex intertextuality in the construction of Jerusalem is conveyed by Friedland and Hecht's (1996: 7-8) discussion of the power of the different understandings of Jerusalem in contemporary struggles over the city:

At the center of all great nations stands a city, a nucleus of power. From its ramparts, rulers ride out to pacify the periphery, commands are given and laws passed, revenues flow in and expenditures out. From this spot, elites attempt to orchestrate the life of their people, to bind them as a nation, and to protect those boundaries from others who would claim their loyalties. A nation's frontiers are at once physical and cultural.

They relate this to the competing claims to Jerusalem as contemporary capital, not reduced to a simple binary opposition between Israeli and Palestinian claims but a complex unraveling of the inner tensions within both societies revealing a struggle for control between secular nationalists and anti-statist, religious groups in a series of shifting factions and alliances. However, their statement on the nature of the capital as defining centre is applicable to the notion of capital cities in general./31/ It is inherent in the urban triumvirate and evolutionary progression from Jerusalem to Athens and Rome and thence to the capitals of Western Europe evident in the presentations of Garbini and Kenyon. It is part of an assumption within the discourse of biblical studies which has informed the construction of ancient Jerusalem as 'David's capital'. The various maps give expression to this notion, but far from representing a mirror on reality, they are part of the intertextual construction of Jerusalem as the Davidic capital of monarchic Israel reflecting the image of modern European states and their capitals./32/

The idea of a major state, let alone an empire, centred on Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE has been increasingly disputed in recent years as each element of this once interlocking network has been re-examined. Growing numbers of 'biblical' historians and archaeologists have added weight to the call for a complete reappraisal of the Davidic and Solomonic 'United Monarchy': or as Knauf (1997: 81) puts it, 'the regicides are among us.'/33/ The dating and interpretation of the so-called 'Solomonic' gates at Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer has become perhaps the most spectacular area of disagreement between archaeologists over the identification and understanding of tenth century remains./34/ The search for the tenth century is now one of the most critical areas of debate among archaeologists. The Negev sites, previously thought to represent part of a network of royal fortifications, have been reinterpreted by Finkelstein and Perevolotsky (1980) as resulting from the 'sedentarization' of nomads during a period of economic prosperity. The interpretation of Shishaq's campaign, central to the tenth century dating of destruction layers, has also been challenged by Thompson (1992: 306-7), Davies (1992: 42-73), and Gelinas (1995: 230-33)./35/ The extent of the switch is illustrated by Barkay's survey of the archaeology of Iron II in which he concludes that 'the precise dating of the settlement strata and find assemblages of the tenth and ninth centuries is fraught with difficulties' (1992: 306), noting that it has not been proven that any sites were destroyed by Shishak in 925 BCE and that 'the attribution of destruction levels to the end of the tenth century at many sites is mere conjecture' (1992: 307). In highlighting the differences in the construction of the gates at Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, inconsistencies in the size, construction, and the type of wall to which they are bonded, he denies that they were 'built according to a single blueprint designed by a central authority' (1992: 307)./36/ He is forced to conclude that the 'glorified picture' emerging from the biblical traditions does not correspond to 'the reality reflected in the archaeological findings' (1992: 307). Similarly, Hopkins (1997: 303) has recently remarked that many archaeologists now contest the dating and the purported constructional unity of the four-entry gateways at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. They do not, in his opinion, exhibit the uniformity implied by centralized planning and bureaucracy. In fact, 'for the Solomonic period, there is precious little indication of regional integration in the archaeological record.'

This means that what has conventionally been represented as the pinnacle of political evolution in the region, the nation-state of David, virtually disappears. The biblically-based accounts appear as little more than a mirage, suffering a similar fate to that of Noth's amphictyonic hypothesis which had seemed so assured, but which collapsed so suddenly. Miller (1997) makes the striking point that 'in fact, it is perhaps fair to say that the Solomon legend has grown as much during the twentieth century at the hands of critical biblical scholars and Palestinian archaeologists as it grew between the 1 Kings account and the Chronicler's account!' Even attempts to retain some element of historicity, such as the idea that the kingdoms of David and Solomon could have been chiefdoms or early states in the process of territorial expansion, lacking monumental architecture or a developed bureaucracy (e.g. Finkelstein 1996), represent a significant departure from the earlier consensus position./37/ The current debate is illustrative of the continuing fight for an alternative understanding of history, focusing on long-term trends in a wider regional history and the ways in which ancient Palestinian society responded to the complex factors which it faced. The search for a tenth century state which dominated the region, the 'United Monarchy', with Jerusalem as its capital has failed to deliver the object of its search. Knauf (1997: 81-2) concludes that the archaeological record for the 10th century has 'no room for a Solomonic empire, not even a state of Judah of (sic: or) Israel'./38/ Yet, the hierarchical organization of space within maps of monarchic Jerusalem or continuing references to the 'city of David' as 'capital' masks this debate.

The vantage point from which the observer views the narrative constructions and particularly the maps of Jerusalem is removed. Along with Clifford, the observer/reader is no longer afforded 'any place of overview': the bird's eye view does not guarantee detached objectivity but represents a place of privilege. The lack of roads or gates on many of these maps, when viewed from the privileged vantage point, suggests, unwittingly I suspect, the isolation of 'the city of David' rather than its position as 'capital' within a centralized bureaucratic state. Hopkins (1997: 301), for instance, refers to an ancient Palestinian economic multiplicity founded upon Palestine's fragmented landscape. He makes the important point that ancient Israel and Judah were not a society 'so much as a constellation of "plural societies"' and that its nature and structure was inherited from the Bronze Age urban centres ('city-states') with a small elite sustained by an agricultural and pastoral hinterland (Hopkins 1997: 304). Lemche points out that scholarship has been beguiled by the word 'city' with all its implications of western culture, stratification, differentiation of occupation, etc. He prefers to speak of 'traditional towns' or 'townships' which were composed of extremely small elite as illustrated in the Amarna letters which show that there was not an extensive bureaucratic or military apparatus./39/ Such towns, even if containing up to 2000 inhabitants, were primarily agricultural with the majority of the population involved in food production or the refining of agricultural products of various kinds. Only a tiny minority were engaged in the production of artifacts, including pottery, and even fewer handled the production of luxury goods: 'In short, the townships were mostly agricultural strongholds which probably housed the population which tilled the fields around the town themselves (i.e., the towns were primarily a place of residence and acted as protective fortresses in periods of unsafety)' (Lemche 1997: 329-330). We might say, adopting Braudel (1990: 419), that Jerusalem of this period had barely emerged from the countryside./40/ In fact, it was a site that was remote rather than at the intersection of major crossroads (see Niemann 1997; Mazar 1994; Ofer 1994). The idea of Jerusalem as 'capital' is undermined by the contradiction highlighted by Hopkins (1997: 307): 'In other words, there is a fundamental contradiction in portraying vast wealth gained through control of transit trade as Solomon takes advantage of an interlude in which the traditional coercive forces of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia are quiescent. The severe paucity of imported items in the archaeological record of Palestine's 10th century (what was the cumulative value of trade?) puts teeth into the caution'./41/ As Hopkins (1997: 309) notes it is difficult to see how Jerusalem of the 10th century could have been the centre of a bureaucratic centralized state or empire when its was 'barely the center of its contiguous domain'. Even when he argues for the existence of Judahite and Israelite states 'with a degree of homogenous material culture' (1997: 304), he notes that these 'replicated the city-states of the Bronze Age to a far greater extent than they anticipated the nations of the European industrial Age. The nationalist ideology of the biblical literature projects a unity that simply did not exist economically or sociologically.'/42/

Exploring 'the Zones of Silence'

Furthermore, the many empty spaces within these maps inscribe important silences which are revealing of the assumptions behind the representation. It is primarily a gendered gaze with royal and divine spaces highlighted as the only spaces worth naming./43/ But it also silences the other realities of ancient society which have not formed part of traditional historical scholarship. The previous reluctance to pursue alternative forms of history was brought about by the privileging of the memory of particular social groups who produced the biblical traditions--the literate elite, whose reading of the Israelite past excluded those groups who were peripheral to the power structures they sought to control. The alternative has been to examine the 'zones of silence', to adapt Michel de Certeau's phrase (cited in Le Goff 1992: 27). The injunction to use all available evidence, which has become a rallying cry in the reassertion of the primacy of Hebrew Bible in the construction of the history of Israel in the early Iron Age, also requires the questioning of the 'historical documentation itself concerning its lacunae, and to ask ourselves about the holes and blank spots in history, the things it has forgotten. We have to inventory the archives of silence, and write history on the basis of documents and the absence of documents' (Le Goff 1992: 182). It is the attempts to inventory the archives of silence which represent the most significant advances in the study of the history of the region and a radical reappraisal of the foundations of Israelite history.

The new horizon which has emerged offers a greater understanding of the multifarious aspects of the history of ancient Palestine in this period, the lacunae and zones of silence, which were lacking in standard biblical histories concerned solely with the event or personality. An increasing body of literature has addressed the regional aspects of ancient Palestinian society and economy focusing upon the processes involved in socio-political change (Coote and Whitelam 1987; H. Weippert 1988; T. Dothan 1989; Thompson 1992a; Finkelstein 1994; 1995a; Bunimowitz 1994; 1995; Dever 1992, 1995, 1996; and many others). It is this revolution in understanding and approach which has laid the basis for alternative conceptions of the history of the region allowing for the investigation of long-term trends in Palestinian history, the recurrent and regular, and the processes which shape such trends. It represents a continuing struggle to break free from the power of the Hebrew Bible to organize memory and shape the history of the region. Similarly, the understanding of 'lived realities' of Jerusalem as a highland 'urban' centre in the 10th century BCE onwards requires an exploration of the silences inscribed within the maps of our standard handbooks. The maps function in many ways 'as an agent of blindness' that focuses the reader's attention on a limited range of landscape features, thereby 'overpowering' or even 'masking' the 'real' spectacle of human life and history and simultaneously providing an illusion of cultural stability and continuity (Duncan and Duncan 1992: 20)./44/ Rather than presenting an objective representation of the city, they embody the whole array of assumptions which have dominated the construction of ancient Israelite history within western scholarship, in particular the focus upon 'the great men of history' to the exclusion of the majority of the population of the past. The construction of Jerusalem in narrative and image illustrate Lefebvre's (1976: 31--see Soja 1989) contention that space is 'a product literally filled with ideologies'. The spatial representation of the history of the region is, therefore, a critical area of study which has been ignored in recent debates. It is critical if we are to understand the syntax, grammar, rhetoric, and implications of the discourse of biblical studies in the construction of the history of ancient Palestine.
 

Notes

* I am, as ever, indebted to Robert Coote for his help in supplying information and materials, his advice on earlier drafts, and his valiant attempts to protect me from ever greater failures of expression and argument.

1. See, for example, the essays in Grabbe (1997), Handy (1997), Silberman and Small (1994) with bibliography, while Carroll (1997) offers a valuable introduction to New Historicism within biblical studies. The depth of the crisis is evidenced in the increasingly personal nature of the debate which helps unwittingly to illustrate, rather than deny, the political nature of all historical constructions.

2. The works of James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin, among others, have left a legacy of the concept of time in geological terms which is so immense as to be almost incomprehensible and, for many, threatening.

3. See Young (1990) for a powerful account of this process and its implications.

4. See Fabian (1983) for a seminal study of the way in which European anthropology has defined time as part of the representation of the Other. It is revealing to note that many archaeological periodizations within biblical studies are determined by a prior understanding of the biblical traditions and their representation of political events rather than necessarily changes in material culture.

5. See Shanks (1996) . The review by Levine and Malamat (196) makes a similar point.

6. She also makes the point that historical enquiry is made meaningful by trying to problematize the historian's distance and analyze the way streams of the past still infuse the present (Bal 1991: 34).

7. I do not acquaint 'deep time' with Braudel's concept of la longue durée though the two are interconnected. It is the Braudellian insight into the different levels of time and particularly la longue durée which has allowed the move from the 'biblical histories' of surface events which dominated the field until recently to the exploration of long-term processes, particularly demography and settlement patterns, in alternative understandings of the history of ancient Palestine. See Coote and Whitelam (1987) and the orientation of essays in Levy (1995) and Finkelstein and Naaman (1994), among others.

8. The attempt to explore the power of the discourse of biblical studies is one of the most important aspects of Whitelam (1996). However, this has largely been ignored by critics and reviewers . It is an interlocking and reinforcing network of ideas that informs the work of biblical specialists, archaeologists, historians, philologians, historical geographers, and many outside these boundaries including most importantly of all the popular and political imaginations. It the attempt to understand this network of ideas and how it continues to inform our attempts to construct the history of the region, its syntax and grammar, which I believe is part of the critical reflection which is at the heart of the objectivity/subjectivity debate.

9. The terms have become current to mark the debate. Both terms have been used pejoratively, though 'minimalist', 'nihilist', 'revisionist' have become strident rejections of attempts to offer alternative constructions of the history of ancient Palestine. Although I use the terms here to mark the debate, I do not find them particularly useful since the debate is much more complex with much greater agreement among those placed in opposing camps than the bald use of the terms allow (see Whitelam forthcoming).

10. The choice of spatial terminology, however unthinking or unwitting, is never an innocent matter. Whitelam (1996: 37-70) offers further examples of attempts to deny the political implications spatial terminology and its problematic. Consider, for example, the statement that: 'There still remains, however, the problem of names, for as anyone who has dealt with Middle Eastern geography knows to his cost, names tend constantly to take on political significance, and to be the cause of much recrimination. Therefore, it must be said clearly that no name at all, whether "Israel" or "Palestine" or any other, will be used in its modern political sense, unless this is expressly stated. The name "Palestine" will be used to mean "the country of the Bible," on both sides of the Jordan, in the sense in which it is used in many biblical commentaries. "Israel" will be kept for the ancient kingdom of Israel, lying to the north of the kingdom of Judah. In speaking of the two regions on either side of the great Central Valley of the Jordan and the Arabah we shall speak of "Cis-jordan" and "Trans-jordan." The whole coastland, stretching from the borders of modern Turkey to Egypt, may be described as the "Levant Coast."' (Baly 1974: 5)

11. It is difficult to understand the complaint that minimalists do not appreciate the significance of archaeology for Palestinian/Israelite history. One might complain about the competence of the dreaded 'minimalists' in matters archaeological (Dever 1994; 1998) but it is difficult to see how one could claim that they ignore archaeology.

12. See Soja (1989; 1996) and Gregory (1994) with bibliography for developments in postmodern geography which have important implications for biblical studies.

13. The idea of space masking consequences from the observer is adapted by Soja (1996) and Gregory (1994) from the art critic John Berger

14. See Godlewska and Smith (1994) for discussions of the history of Geography within an imperial context. Edney's (1997) Mapping an Empire: the Geographical Construction of British India 1765-1843 is an instructive and insightful study which has important implications for the study of the history of spatiality within biblical studies.

15. The temporal progression is also important since the so-called biblical periods occupy the focal point of attention while the preceding and following centuries--the bulk of the history are telescoped. For the problems of temporal characterization and its effects on shaping the history of ancient Palestine see Whitelam (1996: 58-70). But as Canaanite town, according to most authorities, it was a 'city-state' (not a term used here explicitly). 'Town' has much less significance in the evolutionary march of deep time than 'capital' of the 'nation-state'.

16. As Friedland and Hecht (1996: xii) note in the introduction of their powerful study of contemporary struggles, within and across communities, for Jerusalem: 'In Jerusalem, the real is always subject to contest.'

17. The same problem faces the historian, despite protestations to the contrary, and despite the strenuous attempts to strive for 'objectivity' (contra Dever 1998). See the instructive discussion of 'the noble dream' of objectivity in historical studies in Novick 1988. Southgate (1996) provides a useful introduction to the postmodern debates within the discipline of history.

18. There are, of course, a multitude of phrases and images which could have been chosen, in particular notions of Jerusalem as 'holy' or 'the Holy' require careful examination from this perspective. However, the idea of 'the city of David' as the capital of Israel is one which is thoroughly embedded in the discourse of biblical studies and has a profound resonance in contemporary political debates.

19. See the various commentaries, particularly McCarter (1984), for discussion of the difficulties of many of the Hebrew terms.

20. Although Mazar (1994: 73) is puzzled by the lack of Iron I remains in 'the city of David', he still designates it a 'capital'.

21. The common currency of this image of Jerusalem as 'the city of David' and 'capital of Israel' can be found in a range of popular histories or guides to Jerusalem which often draw on standard scholarly presentations of the history of Israel: eg. Armstong (1996: 38) in describing David's capture of the city and how it became his new 'capital' adds 'But his conquest of the city proved to be a watershed, and its effects still reverberate today. A city which had hitherto been only of secondary importance in Canaan had been drawn into the ambit of the tradition that would eventually become historical monotheism. This would make it one of the most sacred--and hence one of the most disputed--places in the world.' The interconnections between the mundane and the symbolic Jerusalem are clearly evident in such a representation. Gilbert (1996: ix) claims that 'In 1995 and 1966, as Jerusalem celebrated the three-thousandth anniversary of the establishment of King David's capital on one of its many hills, its status as the capital of the Jewish State was not recognized by any of the world's leading powers.'

Benvenisti (1996: 1-2) notes that during the official Jerusalem 3000 celebrations on 4 September 1995, the programme informed guests that "No other people designated Jerusalem as its capital in such an absolute and binding manner--Jerusalem is the concrete historical expression of the Jewish religion and its heritage on the one hand and of the independence and sovereignty of the Jewish people on the other. Jerusalem's identity as a spiritual and national symbol at one and the same time has forged the unique and eternal bond between this city and the Jewish people, a bond that has no parallel in the annals of nations. Israel's rule over the united city has allowed her to bloom and prosper, and despite the problems between the communities within her, she has not enjoyed such centrality and importance since her days as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel." In contrast, an Arab resident of Silwan, when interviewed by journalists claimed that 'Jerusalem has been the capital of our Palestinian Arab homeland ever since it was built by our ancestors, the Jebusites and the Arab Canaanites in the heart of Falastin.' The important point here is that such conflicting claims to the city are based on a notion of Jerusalem as 'capital' of a nation state. Such claims are reinforced on various sites on the Internet.

22. See Dever (1997) for continual references to Israelite 'national identity'.

23. But as Fritz (1995: 125) acknowledges, the sources are silent about the location of the 'Misneh' (2 Kgs 22:14; Zeph 1:10; 2 Chron 34:22): he argues that on topographical evidence, it 'could only have been situated on the south-western hill.'

24. He also refers to a similar map from c. 1244 CE. Noticeably, the regular sequence of such maps date from the Crusader period and the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 CE.

25. See Kenyon 1974; Shiloh 1984, 1993; Avigad 1983; Mazar 1990: 347-80. Cahill and Tarler (1994) redate the stone structures which Shiloh assigned to the 10th century to the 13th to 11th centuries; but compare Steiner 1994. Auld and Steiner (1996) provide a convenient summary of research with basic bibliography.

26. Harley (1992: 231) points out that this has been extended further by technological changes, such as digital cartography and GIS, in that its has strengthened positivist assumptions and 'bred a new arrogance in geography about its supposed value as a mode of access to reality.' He refers to Hayden White's phrase of 'new fictions of factuality' (White 1978).

27. As Boggs (1974: 469) notes: 'In part maps appear to represent facts pertaining to mother earth herself, veracity and authority are frequently attributed to them, beyond their deserts. In what may be called 'cartohypnosis', or hypnotism by cartography', the map user or audience exhibits a high degree of suggestibility in respect to stimuli aroused by the map and its explanatory text.'

28. Felix Driver (1992: 36) notes that 'Representing geography's past is inevitably an act of the present, however much we attempt to commune with the past. Indeed, the idea of mapping the historical landscape depends on the construction of perspective, a view from the present, around which the panoramas are made to revolve.'

29. It is not the notion of 'capital' per se which is at stake here but what is invested in the notion of 'capital' as it is often applied to 'the city of David' in historical reconstructions of this period.

30. Dever (1997: 251) answers this in the affirmative: 'We have an Israelite state in the Iron IIA period. If we had never heard of a "Solomon" in the biblical texts we should have to invent a 10th century Israelite king by another name.' This echoes, of course, Bright's (1972: 124 famous statement, from earlier debates on the historicity of the biblical traditions, that to deny the role of Moses would 'force us to posit another person of the same name!'

31. See Bradbury's (1976) study of 'cities of modernism' in which 'the city has become culture'.

32. What is presented on the surface are the buildings and artifacts of an Israelite city but what is beneath is a European capital which becomes the capital of a new nation-state in the mid-twentieth century(cf. Duncan1990). See Hobsbawm (1992) on the problem of the nation state in history. Lemche (1997: 333) notes the importance of the European nation-state in shaping th e study of the history of the region.

33. See the collection of essays in Handy (1997) and Fritz andDavies (1996) for opposing views on existence of a centralized state in the 10th century BCE . Finkelstein's (1996) review of the main planks of the argument, along with his redating of Philistine pottery (1995b), removes many of the most important structures, such as the gate complexes at Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer, from the time of David and Solomon. He emphasises the circular reasoning, based on assumptions drawn from the biblical texts, which removes any firm archaeological anchors in this period. Mazar (1997) has challenged Finkelstein's analysis, although he admits that there are few, 'if any', chronological anchors for this period.

34. See Ussishkin (1980), Mazar (1990: 382, 399-400 n. 15), and Knoppers (1997: 27-9). Knoppers (1997: 29) concludes that 'hence, the early Iron II date for all relevant levels of fortifications at Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo can no longer be assumed to be secure.' See BASOR 277-278 (1990) for the early exchanges in the debate and now Dever (1997), with bibliography, for continuing disagreements.

35. Knoppers (1997: 33) believes that the Shishaq material remains crucial for the construction of the history of this period, although it is interpreted completely differently by opposing sides. Dever (1997: 239-42) argues strongly for absolute dating on the basis of the list. Interestingly, although the list of conquered cities has played a crucial role in arguments about dating of destruction levels at particular sites, its testimony on the organisation of the cities which are mentioned is largely ignored. It tends to suggest the relative independence of cities in the region rather than that they form part of some centralized state (see Edelman 1997: xix).

36. This is in contrast to Yadin's (1958) influential view that Megiddo and Hazor were built by Solomon and that they probably had the same architect. For a reiteration of this view see Dever (1997).

37. Mazar (1997: 163-5) disputes Finkelstein's claim and suggests that his view has profound implications for the historicity of the 'United Monarchy'. He states that Finkelstein's analysis will 'encourage historians who tend to the minimalistic or even the nihilistic approach in evaluating this period' (1997: 164).

38. See also Jamieson-Drake 1991; Niemann 1993, 1997.

39. Dever (1997: 285) in constructing a case for a 'centralized' state in the 10th century BCE argues that a system of writing was essential for 'the functioning of the requisite urban bureaucracy' necessary for maintaining control over an increasingly diversified and resistant society. He acknowledges that the archaeological data is limited. However, the size of Jerusalem for this period also militates against the argument for an extensive bureaucracy. The evidence of the Amarna materials shows how small the military organization was, and is of a completely different order to that necessary for the organization of a centralized state. One puzzling element in the claims for a centralized state is the lack of comparison with the MBII period. Dever (1997: 250), in rejecting the notion that the 'state' presumes the prior existence of urbanism, he says: since Palestine in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages was highly urbanized, yet no one supposes that a true 'state' had yet come into existence, only the characteristic pattern of Southern Levantine city-states.' Yet many of the elements which are thought to be conditions for centralization and statehood in the Iron II period such as increasing urbanism and development of fortifications and gate structures are all present in the MBII period. It is not clear what differentiates the two periods except for an appeal to the biblical traditions.

40. He says (1990: 419), in reference to France, that 'Medieval cities were nevertheless, with some exceptions, very modest towns. They were only just emerging from the surrounding countryside, and did not really dominate it.'

41. Dever (1997) has recently highlighted the failure of historians and archaeologists, of all shades of opinion, to address explicitly the problem of the definition of 'urban', 'city', or 'state' in ancient Palestine. However, see Braudel (1989: 179-264) for a discussion of what constitutes a 'town'. Dever (1997: 221), like others, appeals to central place theory to add seeming objectivity to the discussion in imposing order and understanding on the e data. However, see Gregory (1994: 58-60) for a critique of the theory as derived from physics--particular models of spatial interaction an spatial diffusion--exhibit a world enframed by the logic of highly constructed physical metaphors--conceptually estranged from the social.

42. As Hobsbawm (1990: 12) also points out, 'national consciousness develops slowly among social groups and regions of a country; this regional diversity and its reasons have in the past been noticeably neglected.' The popular masses--workers, servants, and peasants--are usually the last to be affected by it. Hobsbawm (1990: 14) makes the fundamental point, which is invariably overlooked in discussions within biblical studies, that 'the basic characteristic of the modern nation and everything connected with it is its modernity. This is now well understood, but the opposite assumption, that national identification is somehow so natural, primary and permanent as to precede history, is so widely held that it may be useful to illustrate the modernity of the vocabulary of the subject itself.' Gellner and local relations.

43. For the construction of a feminist geography see Domosh (1991) and Rose (1993). Rose (1993:160) raises the more general issue by stating that "I want to end by asking for a geography that acknowledges that the grounds of its knowledge are unstable, shifting, uncertain, and above all, contested.'

44. This is Barthes' (1986) description of travel guides.