Keith W. Whitelam

اختلاق إسرائيل القديمة

This study shows how the true history of ancient Palestine has been obscured by the search for Israel. It explores the theological and political assumptions which have shaped research into ancient Israel by Biblical scholars, and the prospects for the study of Palestinian history.

The Silencing of Palestinian History

The Invention of Ancient Israel

This volume is part of the Changing Perspectives sub-series, which is constituted by anthologies of articles by world-renowned biblical scholars and historians that have made an impact on the field and changed its course during the last decades. This volume offers a collection of seminal essays by Keith Whitelam on the early history of ancient Palestine and the origins and emergence of Israel. Collected together in one volume for the first time, and featuring one unpublished article, this volume will be of interest to biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars interested in the politics of historical representation but also on critical ways of constructing the history of ancient Palestine.

Changing Perspectives 8

Revealing the History of Ancient Palestine

Emanuel Pfoh

It is not uncommon that historical images-presented as simply given, self-evident and even indisputable-are employed in political readings of the past and used as a legitimizing tool. For that reason, the authors of this volume, biblical scholars, archaeologists, anthropologists and historians, undertake a deconstruction of modern biblical discourses on the Bible's production and the history of ancient Israel, enabling the exploration of critical approaches to ancient Palestine's past, to the history of the peoples of the region, to the history of the biblical text(s) and, last but not least, to the modern political uses of biblical narratives as legitimizing land ownership and nationalisms. Among the topics treated are the appearance of Judaism and its connection to the production of biblical literature, the politics of archaeological practice in Israel, the role of archaeology in the production of nationalist narratives of the past, the relationship between genetic studies and Jewish nationalism, and the prospects for writing critical histories of ancient Palestine beyond biblical images and religious and political aspirations. Each article illustrates the close relationship between the Bible, archaeology and processes of nation-building in the State of Israel. The Politics of Israel's Past concerns itself both with the ways in which contemporary politics affects the knowledge of the past and with the processes by which constructions of an ancient past legitimate modern political situations.

The Bible, Archaeology and Nation-building

The Politics of Israel's Past

This volume offers a collection of seminal essays by Keith Whitelam on the early history of ancient Palestine and the origins and emergence of Israel.

This book shows how the true history of ancient Palestine has been obscured by the search for Israel. It concentrates on two crucial periods from the end of the late Bronze Age to the Iron Age, a so-called period of the emergance of ancient Israel.

Keith W. Whitelam

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