Keith Whitelam
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Total reviews: 22
Average rating: 3.5 of 5
A modern, western pro-Palestinian Arab Christian-Islamic anti-Jewish nationalist anti-Bible 2 out of 5 stars.
25 of 55 people found this review helpful.
It is hard to know quite what Whitelam means by 'The silencing of Palestinian history'.
He appears to be suggesting that the use of the Hebrew, Jewish bible to reconstruct the history of ancient Palestine was a colonial, western enterprise that has dispossessed modern Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians of their history.
But the latter have regarded their Islamic or Christian traditions as history, historically, which are derived from the Hebrew-Jewish, 2nd or 3rd hand.
Only Western, European Christians or Israeli Jews were first motivated to dig for their spiritual or ethnic origins since only they had the sources to motivate them.
Palestinian Arab Christians have traditionally seen themselves as descended from the Arabs mentioned in the Book of Acts who heard the disciples' speaking in tongues, Muslims from the Arab conqueror colonists who arrived from the 7th century onwards.
Only the Jews believed that they were substantially descended from the Jews or Israelites of old, only they had the desire to seek their ancestral remains in the deepest layers of Palestine.
The current notion that Palestinian Arabs are descended from the ancient Canaanites is very recent, and has arrisen only after the encounter between Palestinian Arab Christian or Muslim nationalists with western historiography of ancient Palestine.
The Bible may have many flaws, from the standpoint of 21st century historiography, but it is authentically Palestinian.
Whitelam's thesis, however, is authentically Western, as is the modern ancient Palestinian Arab Christian or Islamic narrative he either constructs or implies.
Western Christians, Zionist or Israeli Jews have not dispossessed Palestinian Arab Muslims or Christians of a narrative history they have never had.
On the contrary, it is the contradictions with, or lacunae in the Biblical account, almost exclusively discovered by western Christians or post-Christians, Zionist or Israeli Jews that modern Palestinian Arab Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Christians, have latched onto to create a modern ancient narrative for themselves.
To what extent this constitutes an exercise in the kind of objective, scientific historiography that Whitelam advocates, is a moot point. It could be argued that it is primarily an exercise in modern nationalist ancient mythmaking and certainly more western inspired or influenced than the Hebrew bible, since it is primarily the fruit of Palestinian Arab nationalist need and the discipline of modern, revisionist western ancient Palestinian studies.
The Bible is the oldest indigenous Palestinian tradition that has survived and is thus a unique witness. It is also the only such, with the possible exception of the Talmud. Not only have the Jews uniquely preserved these, these have formed their identity to the extent of no other group. No one has disputed this for the majority of Christian or Islamic history, including Palestinian Arab history.
Whitelam's argument is, I think, very clumsy. Trying to create a modern Palestinian Arab Muslim or Christian ancient history based on, say, the Tel Amarna tablets, or Canaanite artefacts and remains is a highly dubious affair. Until Western Christians or Zionist or Israeli Jews began such excavations, the Bible, and a Greek source, was almost the entirety of knowledge about ancient Canaan.
The Bible is still the largest Canaanite (for that is what Hebrew is), and certainly the only Palestinian text tradition that has survived. This, not Tel Amarna, Ras Shamra or Ugarit, has been the source, direct or indirect, of most Palestinian Arabs' information, and narrative, about The Land in antiquity. And the former have almost entirely been recovered by westerners in modern times.
Constructing, for modern Palestinian Arab nationalist, anti-Zionist-Israeli purposes, a pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist Jewish anti-Bible does not constitute historiography -except in the sense that Whitelam himself decries.
Moreover, Whitelam also overlooks the fact that the traditional Christian and Islamic narrative, including the Palestinian Arabic, has been that the Jews are a people whom g-d has dispossessed of temple, city and land as a punishment for their sins, specifically the rejection of Jesus and the prophets, by Rome, the original western European empire.
These are the Christian and Islamic meta-narratives that have shaped Jewish experience. You cannot castigate Zionist or any other Jews for acting on the basis that the Jews are, essentially, a nation dispossessed, when that is what most Palestinians have believed for most of Palestinian history.
It is surprising that Whitelam, a lecturer in Biblical Studies should, apparently, be so ignorant of this. The only one genuinely silencing authentic Palestinian history is he, for he mentions not once what most Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians have, in fact, believed for most of their history.
In fact, the origin of Syria Palaestina, as a province, dates from the suppression of the second Jewish revolt, in 135 CE, when, according to Cassius Dio, 580 000 Jews were slain. Of course, the name `Palestine', as that of `Syria', has been largely unknown to most `Palestinians' until recently, until largely reintroduced into the region by the British or French.
'Palestine' has, historically, been almost the exclusive preserve of western or European history or travel writing.
Before 1947, those who most commonly designated themselves `Palestinian', were Zionist Jews.
The criteria by which Whitelam makes his thesis are most muddled and confused.
It is indisputable that archaeology has greatly nuanced the Biblical picture and, in places, apparently contradicted it (but give the sparseness of remains, that is also a dubious assertion). But it was the Bible that it inspired such an undertaking in the first place. It still remains the only source written by ancient Palestinians that tells us who they thought they were and where they came from. It is incomplete as a source, and, in the end, only excavation can tell us how it arose in the first place. But arise, in Palestine, by Palestinians, it did.
No modern, thoroughly western pro-Palestinian Arab Christian or Islamic anti-Jewish nationalist anti-Bible will ever change that.
Editorial Review:
The Invention of Ancient Israel shows how the true history of ancient Palestine has been obscured. Keith W. Whitelam reveals how ancient Israel has been invented by scholars in the image of a European nation state, and effected by the realization of the state of Israel in 1948. Exploring the theological and political assumptions which have shaped research into this area, this study concentrates on two crucial periods from the end of the late Bronze Age to the Iron Age--a so-called period of the emergence of ancient Israel--and the rise of an Israelite state under David. It explores the prospects for developing the study of Palestinian history as a subject in its own right, divorced from the history of the Bible, and argues that Biblical scholars, through their traditional view of this area, have contributed to dispossession both of a Palestinian land a misrepresentation of the true state of Israel.
