Nadav Na’aman, «The Israelite-Judahite Struggle for the Patrimony of Ancient Israel», Vol. 91 (2010) 1-23
The article addresses the controversial issue of the formation of "biblical Israel" in biblical historiography. It begins by presenting the political-cultural struggle between Assyria and Babylonia in the second and first millennia BCE, in part over
the question of ownership of the cultural patrimony of ancient Mesopotamia. It goes on to examine relations between Judah and Israel and compares them to those between Assyria and Babylonia. It then suggests that the adoption of the Israelite
identity by Judah, which took place during the reign of Josiah as part in his cultic reform, was motivated by the desire to take possession of the highly prestigious heritage of Israel, which had remained vacant since that kingdom’s annexation by
Assyria in 720 BCE.
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THE ISRAELITE-JUDAHITE STRUGGLE
stark contrast to political reality — the two prophets would begin to
regard the inhabitants of the two rival kingdoms as one nation is, to
my mind, highly unlikely.
Jesper Høgenhaven 6 and Hugh Williamson 7 have suggested that
the divine title “The Holy One of Israel†had been part of the
Jerusalem liturgy well before the time of Isaiah. However, Kratz
recently demonstrated that this title does not, in fact, belong to the
older layer of the prophecies of Isaiah, but was inserted by a
redactor at a later stage of the composition 8.
An inscription discovered in a cave at Khirbet Beit Lei — about
8 km. east of Lachish — reads as follows: “YHWH is the God of the
whole ? earth. The mountains of Judah belong to the God of
Jerusalem †μlçry yhlal hdwhy yrh .≈rah ?lk yhla hwhy) 9. Another
inscription from this place reads: “Attend, YH, gracious God!
Acquit, YH, YHWH!†hwhy hy hqn –nj ,la hy dqp 10. The inscriptions are
dated to about 700 BCE — the time of Sennacherib’s campaign
against Judah, and coincide with the later years of Isaiah’s
prophecy. Although the list of divine titles used in the cult of
Jerusalem was certainly longer, the two texts illustrate the kind of
divine titles common in Judah and Jerusalem at that time. The title
time of Jeroboam and Uzziah, see N. NA’AMAN, “Azariah of Judah and
Jeroboam II of Israelâ€, VT 43 (1993) 230-232.
HØGENHAVEN, Gott und Volk, 57.
6
H.G.M. WILLIAMSON, “Isaiah and the Holy One of Israelâ€, Biblical
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Hebrews, Biblical Texts. Essays in Memory of Michael P. Weitzman (eds.
A. RAPOPORT-ALBERT – G. GREEBERG) (JSOTSup 333; Sheffield 2001) 33-35.
KRATZ, “Israel in Isaiahâ€, 122-127.
8
J. NAVEH, “Old Hebrew Inscriptions in a Burial Caveâ€, IEJ 13 (1963)
9
81-85 ; idem, “Hebrew Graffiti from the First Temple Periodâ€, IEJ 51 (2001)
197 ; A. LEMAIRE, “Prières en temps de crise: Les inscriptions de Khirbet Beit
Lei â€, RB 83 (1976) 558-560; J. RENZ, Handbuch der althebräischen
Epigraphik I. Die althebräischen Inschriften. Part 1: Text und Kommentar (eds.
J. RENZ – W. RÖLLIG) (Darmstadt 1995) 245-246. For different readings, see
F.M. CROSS, “The Cave Inscriptions from Khirbet Beit Leiâ€, Near Eastern
Archaeology in the Twentieth Century. Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck (ed.
J.A. SANDERS) (Garden City, NY 1970) 299-302; F.W. DOBBS-ALLSOPP –
J.J.M. ROBERTS – C.J. SEOW – R.E. WHITAKER, Hebrew Inscriptions. Texts
from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven –
London 2005) 128-130.
DOBBS-ALLSOPP et al., Hebrew Inscriptions, 130-131, with earlier
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literature.
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