The Nineteenth Century
Major developments in the nineteenth century that form the background for Israelite historiography may simply be noted since they have been so frequently discussed. In the first place, more liberal stances in theology came to characterize many segments of the religious communities. This liberalism was less dogmatic in its theological orientation, more progressive in its relationship to contemporary culture and thought, and more humanistic in its perspectives than previous generations. This gradual shift can be seen, for example, in the rise of the so-called Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, which sought “to see in Jewish history the gradual progression of Jewish religious or national spirit in its various vicissitudes and adjustments to the changing environments.”139 This liberal spirit, which was now located within the life of the religious communities themselves, was willing to break with traditional beliefs and approaches and to take a more critical attitude towards the biblical materials.
Secondly, major advances were made in general historiography. The nineteenth was the century of history. Of special importance was the development of what has been called a positivistic approach to history, which not only attempted but also believed it possible to reconstruct past history “as it had actually happened” (wie es eigentlich gewesen). The most prominent of these outstanding positivistic historians were Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831), Leopold Ranke (1795–1885), and Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903). Practically every aspect of human life was subjected to historical exploration in the nineteenth century.140
Thirdly, the decipherment of ancient Near Eastern languages—opened the long-closed literary remains of Israel’s neighbors to study and interpretation.141 The full impact of these new fields of learning was not to be felt fully until the last years of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, for the first time scholars could examine the literary products of these cultures at first hand and thus were no longer dependent upon the ancient, secondary sources.
Fourthly, the exploration of the Near East and Palestine raised historical geography to a level of real competence. Explorers like the Swiss Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817) and the American Edward Robinson (1794–1863) whose three-volume work, Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea (1841), based on his travels in 1838, reported on sites, place-names, and customs and used modern names to identify many places mentioned in the Bible. In 1865, the Palestine Exploration Fund was established and, in 1872–78, it sponsored a geographical survey of western Palestine (the Conder–Kitchener expedition). Other national societies were begun to encourage and finance exploration. Archaeological excavations at several sites in Palestine were undertaken.142
Fifthly, the isolation and dating of the ‘documents’ that went to make up the Pentateuch continued apace. The so-called four-source hypothesis that argued that four major documents (J, E, P, D) were redactionally combined to produce the Pentateuch gradually came to dominate discussions after mid-century. The character, content, and date of the individual documents were considered of great significance in understanding the religious development of Israelite and Judean life and in evaluating the historical reliability of the documentary materials.143
A survey of Israelite and Judean history in the nineteenth century can best be made by examining some innovative works from the period. The first work to be noted, and perhaps the first really critical history of Israel ever written, is that by Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868). Milman, a graduate of Oxford University, was ordained in 1816. During his early days, he wrote poetry and plays and from 1821 to 1831 held a professorship of poetry at Oxford. In 1849, he was appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Most of Milman’s rather extensive literary output were works in church history. His History of the Jews was first published in 1829 and met with significant opposition. The work, however, was issued in a number of editions by various publishers until the first decade of the present century. Of the twenty-eight books in his three-volume history, the final ten are concerned with the history of the Jews following the Bar Kochba Revolt.
Milman’s history was addressed to the general reading public and tends to be rather sketchy and to avoid any detailed discussion of controversial points or of methodology. The extent of his familiarity with Old Testament studies cannot be really determined. Only a few isolated references are made to significant figures, although Milman was acquainted with travel reports on the Near East and Palestine and makes rather frequent reference to these. Milman adopted a developmental approach to Jewish history: “Nothing is more curious, or more calculated to confirm the veracity of the Old Testament history, than the remarkable picture which it presents of the gradual development of human society: the ancestors of the Jews, and the Jews themselves, pass through every stage of comparative civilization.”144 Excepting only their knowledge of God and their custodianship of the promises, “the chosen people appear to have been left to themselves to pass through the ordinary stages of the social state.”145 Milman approached the Bible with a very limited view of inspiration and noted that “much allowance must . . . be made for the essentially poetic spirit, and for the Oriental forms of speech, which pervade so large a portion of the Old Testament”146 and that God “addressed a more carnal and superstitious people chiefly through their imagination and senses.”147 He warned his readers that miracle would play little role in his interpretation of history, noting that those who have criticized the belief in revelation are “embarrassing to those who take up a narrow system of interpreting the Hebrew writings; to those who adopt a more rational latitude of exposition, none.”148 Whereas Prideaux and Shuckford were unwilling to accommodate their historical discussions to the views of the biblical critics, for Milman, there was no other option.
Milman began his history with the patriarchs and made no reference to the materials in Genesis 1–10. Abraham is described as an “independent Sheik or Emir”149 or “the stranger sheik” who is allowed “to pitch his tent, and pasture his flocks and herds” in Canaan.150 Milman considered the different stories of the endangering of the wife to be “traditional variations of the same transaction”;151 “Abraham is the Emir of a pastoral tribe, migrating from place to place . . . He is in no respect superior to his age or country, excepting in the sublime purity of his religion.”152 In describing patriarchal society, Milman wrote:
Mankind appears in its infancy, gradually extending its occupancy over regions, either entirely unappropriated, or as yet so recently and thinly peopled, as to admit, without resistance, the new swarms of settlers which seem to spread from the birthplace of the human race, the plains of central Asia. They are peaceful pastoral nomads, travelling on their camels, the ass the only other beast of burden . . . The unenterprising shepherds, from whom the Hebrews descended, move onward as their convenience or necessity requires, or as richer pastures attract their notice.153
The description of the patriarchs as “the hunter, the migratory herdsman, and the incipient husbandman,” suggests that the record draws upon “contemporary traditions.”154 The Israelite ancestors are thus a Volk who differ from their contemporaries only in their theological view of God.
In discussing the stay in Egypt, Milman argued against identifying the period with the Hyksos era but dated it later, refusing however to hypothesize a specific time.155 He noted that biblical tradition assigns either 430 (MT) or 215 (LXX) years to the stay, but that both of these are irreconcilable with the mere two generations that separated Moses from Levi, a factor that also raised uncertainty about the number of Israelites leaving Egypt.156 Milman described the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea, but spoke of the “plain leading facts of the Mosaic narrative, the residence of the Hebrews in Egypt, their departure under the guidance of Moses, and the connexion of that departure with some signal calamity, at least for a time, fatal to the power and humiliating to the pride of Egypt.”157 In describing the crossing of the sea, he refers to a report by Diodorus Siculus concerning the erratic behavior of the water in the area.158 The quails and manna in the desert are explained in naturalistic terms and the changing of bitter water to sweet is explained chemically. In footnotes in the second edition, Milman reports on the chemical analysis of water especially secured from a Palestinian spring called Marah that suggested high concentrations of “selenite or sulphate of lime,” which could be precipitated