BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

A Story to Build a
Nation
An Analysis of Archaeology and
Nationalistic Tendencies in Israel
Meagan Roche

A Story to Build a Nation 1

Abstract
In this paper, I will discuss the implications archaeology has played in
bolstering the modern ethnogenesis of Israel. To a new state founded by the
reunion of an ancient diaspora community, a focus on the past has been a
crucial tool in solidifying a national narrative tied together with a concise
retelling of an ancient history. Archaeology has played an intricate role in
forming the legitimacy of modern day Israel. I will explain how this dissection
of the regions past has affected the interpretation of legitimacy for the state
of Israel.

A Story to Build a Nation 2

A Story to Build a Nation: An Analysis of Archaeology and Nationalistic

Tendencies in Israel
The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here its
spiritual, religious, political identity was shaped. Here it first attained
statehood, created cultural values of national and universal
significance After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people
kept faith with it throughout their diaspora and never ceased to pray
and hope for their return By virtue of our natural and historic right
we hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of
Israel.
-Israels Declaration of Independence, May 15, 1948
Palestine is where the Palestinian Arab people was born, on which it
grew, developed and exceled [Its] willed dispossession and
expulsion was achieved by organized terror. In Palestine and in exile,
the Palestinian Arab people never faltered and never abandoned its
conviction in its rights of return and independence and the right of
sovereignty over territory and homeland The Palestinian National
Council hereby declares the establishment of the State of Palestine
on our Palestinian territory.
-Palestinian Declaration of Independence, November 15, 1988
(Yiftachel, 2006, p.51)

The fight for land, the fight for claim, the fight for identity, they all
dominate the conversation of rightfulness. The question for whose story is
true in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not one thats simply answered in an
argument polarized between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and
legitimacy is not easily granted.

A Story to Build a Nation 3

The story runs centuries and every moment displayed holds a key to
understanding and building this remembered history. Written, seen, felt, and
shown, the pieces are brought together to create an identity and claim
added to the delicate argument between Israeli and Palestinian nations.
In the fight for rightful ownership of the land, as the Israeli Declaration
of Independence states, it is a claim not only to a central identity, but the
document itself lays claim to the land. Home to the birth of the nation with
its values, culture, and faith, the land itself ties intricately with the nations
history. These stories have culminated into a lengthy narrative that scholars
have labored to string together. Archaeological research significantly
contributes to these efforts to recite an echoing retelling of an ancient story
pulled into modern times.
Even scholarly work cannot escape from human manipulation and
interpretation, and this is what this paper will present. The Land of Israel
spans a long history between the original ethnogenesis of the Israelites and
their reemergence in the modern State of Israel. Many voices resonate in the
lines of time that have elapsed. The interpretations of ancient descriptions
and identities have been significant in deciding what it means to be an
Israeli, the legitimacy of the state, and consequently, the placement left for
those who arent included. Archaeology has shaped the modern conflict in
contributions to the meaning of Israel. An understanding of the relatively
recent history of Israel/Palestine draws the path toward the Israeli
ethnogenesis that has warranted the use of archaeology.

A Story to Build a Nation 4

In the early 1900s, the concept of a nation-state in Palestine and Israel
was still in its infancy. Under Ottoman rule at the fading of the empire in the
latter half of the nineteenth century, the region was scattered with almost
950 villages as well as several urban centers and a trend toward further
urbanization (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 55). It was a small development with a
budding growth and culture.
Palestine was a multi-ethnic land with Jerusalem being a hub for
populations from a multitude of backgrounds. At the changing of the century,
Jerusalem was home to Arabs, Jews, Russians, and Turks (Dockser, 2007, p.
41). In Jerusalem, at the time, there were about 8,750 Christians, 8,560
Muslims, and an estimated 28,110 Jews (Dockser, 2007, p. 41). While
Muslims dominated much of the politics of the city, Jews were the large
demographic majority in Jerusalem, and by 1914, Jews composed about eight
percent of the entire Palestinian population (Dockser, 2007, p. 41; Yiftachel,
2006, p. 54).
While Muslims had a political lead for much of the 1800s, throughout
the century in a period called the Tanzimat, there were growing reforms to
grant more egalitarian practices across religions (Dockser, 2007, p. 42).
Christian vocally preached and practiced, all citizens, foreigners, and Jews
could now purchase land freely; ethnic groups across the Ottoman Empire
gained an increasing amount of autonomy (Dockser, 2007, p. 42). The
diverse religious composition interacted relatively peacefully in the time
period.

A Story to Build a Nation 5

Occasional disagreements still did develop, especially around holidays
where people flooded to the city from the surrounding areas and certain
restrictions inhibited Jews from complete equality in Palestine (Dockser,
2007, p. 43). Despite these difficulties, though, Jerusalem and Palestine were
the home to a shared consciousness of a shared home. Everyone lived
together, did business together, and celebrated together (Dockser, 2007, p.
45). Beliefs ranged, but largely, these neighbors were respected with
religious leaders across faiths were welcomed to any shop, believed to be a
blessing to the stores and people (Dockser, 2007, p. 45). Jewish families
would congratulate their Muslim neighbors upon their return from hajj and
Muslims helped Jews prepare for their own religious practices like washing
Jewish, copper pans for Passover (Dockser, 2007, p. 46). Important Muslim
families were even trusted with the keys to the Christian Holy Sepulchre in
order to prevent arguing among the Christian sects (Dockser, 2007, p. 43).
The boundaries of territory and the beginning solidification of a state
identity began with the Balfour Declaration. It did not claim the land as a
Jewish state, but it drew the lines for a conceptualized territory, calling it
Palestine and claimed this land, inhabited also by Palestinians, as a new
Jewish national home (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 55). It once again made an
abstract icon of an ancient Jewish land so prevalent in Jewish myth a
concrete entity (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 55). In the following decades, Israeli
identity burgeoned, broadcasts translating the word Palestine to Eretz

A Story to Build a Nation 6

Yisrael, Hebrew for the Land of Israel, a divinely promised land to the Jews
(Dockser, 2007, p. 1913).
With these newfound boundaries demarcated, Palestinian identity
began to develop as well. In addition to the Balfour Declaration, interactions
such the Hussein-McMahon correspondence (1916) assisted in the growth of
new Arab state in the region (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 55). This new
conceptualization was defined through territorial residence; the claim was
inclusive and incorporated even the pre-Zionist Jews residing in Palestine
at the time (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 55). There was an increasing animosity
between Jews and Palestinians, though, and the hope for an inclusive identity
to be maintained in Israel/Palestine became a progressively unlikely
suggestion (Dockser, 2007, p. 163). With growing violence, the nationalistic
trends became more pronounced.
Zionistic trends in Palestine/Israel began developing in the early
twentieth century. Zionism, a nationalistic Jewish movement for the
edification and maintenance of a Jewish nation-state, had been a direct
response to growing anti-Semitism in Europe during the late nineteenth
century (Brenner, 2003; Yiftachel, 2006, p. 54). Violence against Jews in
Russia grew and anti-Semitism began to ravage across Europe, and the
search became desperate for a new Jewish homeland; Palestine, despite
considerations of other regions, became the vision of the Jewish promise land
(Dockser, 2007, p. 49).

A Story to Build a Nation 7

Immigration had been subtle at first, with slight concerns by local
Palestinian political powers that the growth would become too significant.
Their fears had been attempted to be assuaged by Zionist leaders like
Theodor Herzl with assuring words that these immigrants were peaceful and
would only offer gains to the enlarging Palestinian population (Dockser,
2007, p. 47). Given this increasing pressure, the population influx
mushroomed. Jewish settlement of Israel became a colonial movement
between the two world wars (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 54). By 1934, nearly fifty
thousand Jewish immigrants had settled in Palestine (Dockser, 2007, p. 165).
Zionists believed that the land of Israel was an ancestral claim. They
called the land a divine promise granted to them in ancient times,
documented through Jewish texts, at a time where there was a Hebrew
kingdom before the Jews were tragically expelled from their homeland
(Yiftachel, 2006, p. 55). Zionism was now a revival and reclaiming of these
ancient promises.
History became a key to building legitimacy for the fledgling state,
tracing ethnic claims back to these times of these ancient Hebrew kings and
beyond (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 53). Despite a wide diaspora, Jews had
maintained a spiritual and religious connection of land and a unified ethnic
identity throughout the centuries through an inheritance of memories, texts,
and myths (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 53). This is the memory that early Israel called
upon to prove its rightful inhabitance of the land. As the threatening antiSemitism grew, the justifications became increasingly mythical in nature,

A Story to Build a Nation 8

basing significant arguments on the complete denial of other claims to the
land. Palestine/Israel was often referred to by a common Zionistic slogan, a
people without a land to a land without a people (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 54;
Dockser, 2007).
An interest in history and archaeology of the Holy Land did not begin
with Zionism, though. In the late 1800s, a religious revival across Europe
drew many of these European powers into Palestine, setting up
archaeological sites and sponsored digs to search for the home of these
biblical stories so crucial to their faith (Dockser, 2007, p. 42).Looking to
increase their political power with their growing interest in the land, Western
powers even began establishing little post offices in Palestine, asserting a
little claim to the foreign land (Dockser, 2007, p. 42). The beginnings of
biblical archaeology were highly biased. Instead of empirically presenting
history, oftentimes, early biblical scholars would search for proof in order to
legitimize the stories of the bible (Scham, 2010, p. 95). Modern-day Christian
sponsored research provides examples. The Jesus Boat has been found in
Galilee, but there is no evidence connecting it to Jesus or other characters
from the New Testament (Scham, 2010, p. 95); the Tel Dan Stela, affirming
the existence of the Davidic monarchy, seems to actually be from 200 years
after the suspected time (Scham, 2010, p. 95).
Early Israeli archaeology followed similar logic. In Israels first fifty
years, it has been widely recognized that Israeli archaeology produced a
nationalistic, monolithic narrative (Ilan and Gadot, 2010, p. 105). Needing to

A Story to Build a Nation 9

argue Israels position on the land, archaeology became a useful tool in
searching for and proving an ancestral claim tied to the stories dictated in
the bible. The constructions of cohesive historical narratives bolstered
central cultural and ideological ties (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 19). With the
immense number of Jewish immigrants coming from regions across a
multitude of cultural backgrounds, a source of unity was needed to reaffirm a
shared ethnic and national identity. Archaeology provided the means to
attaining this unification (Ilan and Gadot, 2010, p. 106).
When such powerful influences dominate the search for justification of
rightfulness, the quest can and has led to the simplification of a highly multifaceted history, proving ones own history at the expense of other narratives
(Yiftachel, 2006, p. 19). Israel/Palestine is land of incredible historical
diversity. Its history has been touched by Greek, Assyrian, Roman, Persian,
Arab, Crusader, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 53).
Even as the empires changed demographic compositions, evidence points to
a continued inhabitance of Hebrew people. Modern-day Palestinians likely
possess a mixed heritage from the Hebrew tribes, the Philistines, Canaanites,
and other communities, that stayed on the land, converting to Christianity
and Islam (Yiftachel, 2006, p. 53).
Across Israel, an underlying concern for creating a stronger Jewish
presence in Israel has motivated a development of a series of new Jewish
religious sites. Some sites were previously recognized as religious land,
particularly Muslim pilgrimage sites. Nabi Rubin had been a site of pilgrimage

A Story to Build a Nation 10

for Muslims for hundreds of years since the Mamluk period. Although Jewish
tradition had always believed the tomb of the Prophet Reuben was further
south in Lower Galilee, the site was reconsecrated in 1948 as a Jewish site,
a time of deep political turmoil in Israel/Palestine (Scham, 2010, p. 96).
Similar interpretations were made with Josephs tomb in Nablus and Sitt
Sakina in Tiberias (Scham, 2010, p. 97).
A newer trend has developed, adopting sites with no previous religious
importance as holy sites (Scham, 2010, p. 97). This is particularly concerning
in cases of commandeered land much is the case with residences and
farmland across the country. In East Jerusalem for example, a tomb was
claimed to be located on land which had been owned by a Palestinian family
for generations (Scham, 2010, p. 97). It was conveniently found that the site
was the previous location of the tomb of Nachmanides, an important
medieval Jewish scholar. Despite previous historical evidence indicating the
actual tomb to be in Akko, a new tomb was constructed at the expense of
the Palestinian home (Scham, 2010, p. 97).
Land is commandeered for religious purposes, yet sites have been
demolished due to a denial of their religious importance to other faiths. From
lack of recognition and misinterpretation of archaeology and history, many
places have been destroyed, even entire villages (Scham, 2010, p. 98). Other
sites are simply misrepresented. Sites like Qasrin in the Golan Heights, a site
spanning from a small Jewish village in the Byzantine period through the
invasion of the Mamluks and later Ottoman and Syrian periods (Killebrew,

A Story to Build a Nation 11

2010, p. 130). After the site was reconstructed and opened to the public, the
later Islamic periods of the Mamluks and modern Syria were notably missing
from the presentation (Killebrew, 2010, p. 131). There have been cases of
defilement of such sites as well. In Nablus at Josephs Tomb, settlers have
been said to use the site as a place to have fun [and] to drink whisky,
deeply disrespectful to an otherwise recognized religious site to Muslims
(Scham, 2010, p. 98). Considerable harm can come from misinformed
assertions of history.
Starry portraits of an ancient Jewish past have been painted across the
timeline of the young state. Archaeological work is deeply tinted by a heroic
portrayal of the past (Ilan and Gadot, 2010, p. 103). Masada perhaps depicts
this reality the most clearly in Israeli history. Excavations in Masada revealed
a fortress-palace of King Herod the Great of Judea (Silberman, 1989, p. 87).
The beginnings of history at the state tell the story of Jewish rebels taking
over the site at Herods death in 66 AD and holding it through the Great
Revolt, a movement of dissent throughout ancient Israel against the Romans
(Silberman, 1989, p. 90). The narrative continued, portraying the eventual
fall of the little fortress as a clever resistance to inevitable victory of the
Roman attackers (Silberman, 1989, p. 91). With its excavation conducted
from 1963 to 1965, particularly close to the outbreak of the 1967 war, its
deeply nationalistic findings have become hotly debated (Killebrew, 2010, p.
125). Evidence of the mass suicide undertaken to spite the Roman victory is
scarce. Among other flaws in evidence, the story reports that there had been

A Story to Build a Nation 12

960 defenders, less than thirty were found outside of the cave with
questionable Jewish identity for reasons such as having been found amongst
pig bones (Silberman, 1989, p. 95).
Still, though, swelling nationalism was supported by the Masada
excavations. The site became the scene for an annual swearing-in for the
Israeli tank-corps, each new recruit vowing that Masada shall not fall again
(Silberman, 1989, p. 99; Killebrew, 2010, p. 125). In the years following the
excavation, the Israeli government reburied the twenty-eight skeletons found
at the site with full military honors (Silberman, 1989, p. 99). Since the 1960s,
Masada has lessened its nationalistic message, but still it is a national gem
and World Heritage site attracting about 1.25 million visitors every year
(Killebrew, 2010, p. 126).
Pride in Israeli history has also occurred with immense
commercialization of relevant archaeological sites. This commercialization
has often been known to lead to extremely biased portrayals of the past. Iron
Age and Herodian sites have been extensively built up across Jerusalem,
overwriting a rich history of Ottoman control (Scham, 2010, p. 95).
Government-trained tour guides direct attention to these sites making it less
clear that historic Jerusalem is actually a largely Arab-built city (Scham,
2010, p. 95). Masada, considered a historical site by the Israeli National Parks
Authority, has been extensively built into a large tourist attraction; set at the
foot of a mountain, it has a youth hostel, a museum, a cafeteria, a mall of

A Story to Build a Nation 13

souvenir shops, and now even a cable-car to reach the top of the fortress
(Silberman, 1989, p. 88; Killebrew, 2010, pp. 126-127).
These interpretations were then pushed into the public audience
through various means. As was portrayed earlier with Masada and then also
with the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran (Killebrew, 2010), tourism has been an
important method to developing these narratives. Stamps, coins, posters,
books, sweatshirts, and coffee mugs have been issued to commemorate
excavations such as Masada and their importance to modern Israel
(Silberman, 1989, p. 99). These stories are constructed into simple, linear
narratives with clear beginnings, middles and ends, and then presented to
the public audience through media such as schoolbook texts, guided tours
through national parks, museum displays, and popular literature (Silberman,
1995, p. 250). Archaeological displays of ancient culture have fueled a
modern ethnogenesis powered by a renewed national pride.
Archaeology is not an unbiased science. It is highly malleable and its
results are largely affected by outside pressures in how its interpreted and
then presented outside of the field. These arguments are not intended to
belittle Israels right to the land or accuse the state of malicious attempts of
manipulation of the archaeology. Every interpretation simply possesses at
least a slight bias just as every person is unable to completely extricate
themselves from their past experiences and opinions (Scham, 2010). These
sites offer a window to cherished episodes of national history and so Israeli
archaeologists have a vested personal interest in findings even

A Story to Build a Nation 14

subconsciously (Silberman, 1989). It is arguably natural for one to search for
these stories that lie so intricately with ones identity. Palestinian
archaeology has begun to do the same. Awareness of these biases, though,
and reflexive research can lead to more accurate, holistic understandings of
the past and prevent extensively skewed realities. Understanding personal,
religious, or political motivations in the undertones of research through
analysis of past interpretations will lay the opportunity for progressive
movement in the field of archaeology and academia at large.

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A Story to Build a Nation 15

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