Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, Political Theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible (1967 to Gaza 2009)
In modern times, a whole range of colonial enterprises have used the Bible. The book of Joshua and other biblical texts evoking the exploits of ancient Israelites have been deployed in support of secular Zionism and settler colonisation in Palestine. The mega narratives of the Bible, however, appeared to mandate the ethnic cleansing and even genocide of the indigenous population of Canaan. This article argues that, with the rise of messianic Zionism since 1967, a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the land traditions of the Bible, has emerged in Israel – a political theology that demanded the destruction of the so-called modern Canaanites; since 1967 fundamentalist rabbis have routinely compared the Palestinian people to the ancient Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites, whose annihilation or expulsion by the ancient Israelites was predestined by a divine design. This article focuses on the politics of reading the Bible by neo-Zionists and examines the theology of the messianic current which embraces the paradigm of Jews as a divinely ‘chosen people’ and sees the indigenous Palestinians as no more than illegitimate squatters, and a threat to the process of messianic redemption; their human and civil rights are no match for the biblically-ordained holy war of conquering and settling the ‘Promised Land’.
The old testament ‐a Hellenistic book?∗
Abstract New trends and discoveries have made a general reorientation of Old Testament scholarship necessary. Thus the old notion of an Israelite immigration into Palestine at the beginning of its history has now been substituted by a hew explanation according to which Israel originated among the local population of Palestine. Another change, forced upon the historian is the demise of the kingdom of David and Solomon, which nowadays may be considered a fairy kingdom rather than a historical fact. In fact, the state of Judah may only have arisen c. 850 BCE. As a consequence of these and other discoveries, the OT cannot be dated to the pre‐exilic period; it is more likely a post‐exilic and to a large extent a hellenistic book written by Jews for Jews. The consequence for theological studies are conspicuous as they move the OT nearer to the New Testament world and thus make it a precarious subject on a Christian foundation to pursue with OT theology without acknowledging its being part of the Christian canon...
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.