Bethel as the New Babylon

Neil "Vridar" Godfrey last Friday quoted Israel Finkelstein at length on the literacy-culture of Judah/Samaria. There was one... and then there was not. Literacy had to return to the place. We're just arguing when and how, and to Vridar that's looking Hellenistic.

Our Bible has come to us in recensions drastic enough, between the Samaritans and the Masoretes, that we know that glosses happen. The Samaritans' deviations amount to a radically different text. Modern scholars can, also, "restore" radical texts and don't need to change nearly as much so to do. Here we're looking into Ernst Axel Knauf (2006), on the rôle of the site Bethel in postexilic protoJudaism.

Bethel was excavated and published; its various rubble was catalogued and stored in Pittsburgh. Finkelstein in 2009 returned to Pittsburgh, and found lacunae, scotching the Bethel publication.

Nadav Na’aman (2010a), 180-2 critiqued that "post-mortem" to note that Bethel's famous Temple was not among the initial excavations. Although he'll allow Finkelstein for Bethel's loss of a papyrus/ostracon class, that is what we'd call an educated middle class; we remain wanting for direct evidence of the parchment class. Knauf had suggested to take Nehemiah 7 seriously, that up to a sixth of the population overall was unproductive Temple personnel therefore subsidised from abroad. The locals would have been shut out of the libraries. Especially Bethel heathens from the Jerusalem library.

DOI bros should look up Na’aman (2014) - 10.1179/0334435514z.00000000032. Here he argues for Jacob's Stairway, or Ladder, as a ziggurat. This is a Babylonian import like Ezekiel's Temple (although of course Ezekiel wanted that for Zion). Such suggests - to Na’aman - that postExilic Jews seriously considered Bethel as the new Temple-City, what with Mizpah being inadequate and Zion being accursed. I mean: it's even in the name, "Beth-El" (in Aramaic construct).

Another Na’aman point is that he pronounces the Documentary Hypothesis' funeral, with Schmid as of 2010 hammering the final nails in its coffin. I dunno; I do sometimes see "J", "D", and "P" noted out-an'about, still. I concede, postKnohl/postCarmichael - "P" tends to split into "Holiness" and "P" sections with a lot of redactional futzing. Suffering worst is the "E" source, which is exactly associated with Bethel.

Na’aman in the stead of "E" would see northern tradition contributing to our "Deuteronomic" history. Some of this comes into the Jacob cycle (which is Bethel); some of it into the vignettes in Judges (which is not). Exodus is the most-important northern story, Moses being a northern hero unknown to - say - Isaiah. Isaiah 9:1-6 is aware of the Gideon/Midian story, also in a northern cycle; but Na’aman cites others that this be a hymn to Josiah therefore later than the northern kingdom's existence, and brought to Isaiah's work posthumously.