How did we get here? 1. Israel and the Palestinians

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1:12Simon Sebag Montefiore:Welcome to the documentary podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Johnny Diamond and this is How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians. In this series, I'm exploring how two peoples ended up locked in a seemingly endless conflict over a land whose every story is disputed and argued over and whose past is enlisted over and over again to justify the present. On the shores of the Mediterranean there is a land of sparkling beauty, bathed in sunshine, bounded by a shimmering sea. Here are lush fields, the gentle hills and plunging valleys of the Bible, the place names of antiquity. Here is Jerusalem, what remains of the Jewish temple, the place where Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven, the last resting place of Jesus.

2:08Simon Sebag Montefiore:Here is the old city, living still, its stone steps worn smooth by millennia of pilgrims and sightseers, conquerors and clerics. Here, three great faiths turn their gaze in wonder and in hope. And here blood is spilt and hearts are broken, arms raised up and homes destroyed. Here two peoples are locked in seemingly endless conflict over a land whose every story is disputed and argued over and whose past is enlisted over and over again to justify the present. I'm Johnny Diamond and from the BBC World Service this is How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians. Not a blow-by-blow, battle-by-battle history of the region but an attempt to draw out some of the events and people that brought the inhabitants of that sparkling land to where they are now.

3:14Simon Sebag Montefiore:In this series, some of the leading experts share their interpretations. There are, of course, other ones.

3:26Simon Sebag Montefiore:In a conflict that seems to be without end, you might think that at least there is agreement over when it all starts. But that would be too easy. For many Jews and many supporters of a Jewish state, the Old Testament of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, is a natural starting point, with references to the land of Israel, what's called in Hebrew Eretz Israel, the promise that God made to the Jews about a place called Canaan, and the history of King David, sling-wielding slayer of Goliath, who would, the story goes, go on to rule an independent Jewish kingdom in the Holy Land. To those that deny or doubt the historical claim of Jews to what is now Israel, the Bible is a religious storybook masquerading as a history, something that now serves a purpose it was never really intended for, and critically, something with perilously little in the way of corroborating evidence.

4:27Simon Sebag Montefiore:Joining me on this first episode are two experts in the field, Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian and author. Forthcoming is The Cauldron, The Making of the Modern Middle East. And Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff University. Simon, welcome. Thank you. Lloyd, welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you both. Before we get to arguments or discussion over the Bible and its role, can we just talk time and place? There are in the first five books of the Bible, what's known as the Torah to the Jews, references to the land. What time period is this thought to refer to, Lloyd?

5:13Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:Well, it's set in the early Bronze Age. So we're talking here about 3000 BCE, something like that. The stories of Abraham settling into this promised land. He comes from Mesopotamia, from the city of Ur. He goes to Haran in Syria and then settles in the Levant. So if we were to date him on a chronological basis, then I would say early Bronze Age. Simon?

5:39Jonny Dymond:That's right. But one can't look at the Bible purely as a history, of course. It's a work of theology. I mean, I like to look at it as a historical library put together at different times, written by different people, and many events in it take place in different versions, at least twice within the Bible itself.

5:59Simon Sebag Montefiore:Simon, can I ask you about this phrase, the promised land, and how it reverberates to today?

6:05Jonny Dymond:Well, in the Bible, there are several places where it's written that God promises the promised land. Moses is looking over what is Canaan as he brings the Jewish people from Egypt, the story that became Passover, and he's promised that they will have this land. And that has played a big role for religious Jewish people in a claim to possess the Holy Land. It links faith to land. It links faith to land. But again, the Jewish story and its link to the Holy Land is also based on history.

6:43Simon Sebag Montefiore:We talked about time. I want to talk about place as well, because we talk about the land. There is reference to the land in the Bible. What land? Lloyd, you made a reference to the Levant, which is this sort of Mediterranean scoop.

7:01Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:That's right. And another kind of not a very satisfactory word in itself, of course.

7:06Simon Sebag Montefiore:If we talk about the modern nations of this region, and there we're talking, what, about Syria, about Lebanon, about Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.

7:16Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:And up to the borders of Egypt. Fine. That's the... That's the essential. And it tends to be on the western side of the River Jordan. But of course, others who are now within Jordan, like Moab and so forth, come into play as well. So there were multiple peoples living in this rather small stretch of land. They get named in the Hebrew Bible, but the naming is much, much later than any evidence we have for them naming themselves.

7:42Jonny Dymond:It's not contemporary. Yeah, it's not contemporary at all. Sorry, I was just going to say there's quite a lot of anachronism.

7:47Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:Oh, completely, Natalie. So, for instance, a Canaanite, you've already mentioned the word Canaan. A Canaanite would never have called himself a Canaanite. It's a much later word that is used. There are some words that we find in contemporary ancient Egyptian sources, which are interesting, which kind of suggest that they were recognizing certain peoples of the Levant. And at one point, you know, we even get the word Israel, which perhaps is Israel.

8:17Jonny Dymond:But these are peoples. I think it's interesting that the word Canaan is useful because the Phoenicians did call themselves Canaanites much later. and so we just need to have a picture that Lloyd is drawing of many people speaking languages that we would later call Semitic but including languages that became Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and those sort of things and many kingdoms because the Bible is so concentrated on the story of the Jewish people one does forget that there are all these other Semitic peoples like Aram, Damascus, Ammon, Moab, Eden, that are all fighting together. And they're all crushed between the big empires that we will mention soon, Egypt to the south, Babylon, Assyria.

9:06Simon Sebag Montefiore:Okay, we've established to some degree, biblical time and biblical place. Lloyd, How useful do you think the Bible is when it comes to the start of the conversation about this region and its original inhabitants?

9:30Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:Okay, so there is history in the Bible, but it is a history that has been repurposed, deliberately so. It serves an agenda, and it's a theological agenda. The whole story of the Bible is the relationship of the Jewish people to their God. And that's what the thrust is right the way through. And when we read it with another set of eyes, it doesn't hold together particularly well as a historical book. But when we read it as the story of God's love for his people and his people's disobeyance and then their refinding of the way, then it makes a lot of sense.

10:09Jonny Dymond:Simon? But its importance lies in the future and the importance that it assumes, first of all because of Christianity and further books that are added to this Bible, the New Testament, and then of course hundreds of years later the Koran and the rise of another religion, Islam, that builds on the legitimacy and the stories that came before it. And so in the history of European and Middle Eastern civilisations, this Bible assumes immense importance. And that's why we're discussing it today.

10:49Simon Sebag Montefiore:You're listening to The Documentary on the BBC World Service.

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12:50Simon Sebag Montefiore:This is How Did We Get Here? I'm Johnny Diamond. Some people believe we should not start with the Bible. Why do they believe that? And where do they think we should start instead? I would imagine that they see through the pretense or the construction that the Bible is written as a history.

13:15Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:Because when you look at it, you know, Genesis to Revelation, it looks like it's all very orderly, you know, century by century. But of course, it's not constructed that way. It had its editing, it had its redaction at a much, much later time. So it is not a chronological book by any means. And while we can find pockets of history in it, we can't find history throughout it. My starting point would always be with the archaeology and let the archaeology speak first. Marry the archaeology to things that perhaps we find in the biblical texts, but don't go with the biblical text looking for the archaeology, which has often been done.

13:55Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:and certainly in Israel today there is a tendency for Israeli archaeologists to do exactly that. A stone is unearthed and behold this is the place of covenant where Jacob was named Israel. This is the proof we have been looking for. This is the proof that we've been looking for. And of course it's a very dangerous thing to do.

14:17Jonny Dymond:The fact is today both Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists and historians who are nationalists are trying to distort, prove and disprove each other's claims to the Holy Land. But there are many, many reputable archaeologists. We should start with the archaeology. And there are many cases that the archaeology does prove the Bible, but the Bible is a religious text.

14:44Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:I think as we push deeper into history, so now we're going into the Iron Age, so we're thinking about 900 BC onwards, OK, then I think we can begin to marry archaeology and biblical text together.

15:01Simon Sebag Montefiore:What of what of the Jewish kingdom under King David? This is around 1200 BC? Around 1000. It's around 1000. Forgive me.

15:11Jonny Dymond:It's around 1000 BC. It assumes a massive importance because David took Jerusalem and formed what the Bible says is a large united kingdom. Jewish kingdom of the 12 tribes of Israel. There's then the story of his son Solomon, who builds the temple on the Temple Mount in Zion, in Jerusalem. Hugely important, hugely resonant during the centuries. Which has enormous importance. Both of them are sort of model kings for monarchs and rulers for the rest of time. They are also some of the basis for Jewish claims to the Holy Land. But I have to say, I think we're much too hung up on David and Solomon, because whenever they were around 1000 BC, as Lloyd has said, within 100 years of that time, less, within 70 years of that time, 930 BC, we have evidence that there was a Jewish kingdom, there was a Jewish temple, and we have evidence from elsewhere.

16:15Jonny Dymond:And so within 70 years, we're in the realms of history. Now, it's based on inscriptions and steels and ostraca and bullae, which are clay-baked seals found in Jerusalem, for example. But then we're in history, and there are two Jewish kingdoms, and there is a Jewish temple in Jerusalem on what is now the Temple Mount.

16:36Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:But trying to match the archaeology against the biblical accounts of the reigns of David and Solomon has proved to be completely futile. So we find, you know, if you look at 1 Kings and the description of the temple, I mean, this is a magnificent building, you know, the size of Karnak in Egypt, and we find nothing of this. I mean, not only do we not find it in Jerusalem, we find nothing of that kind of proportion or scale of building anywhere in the Levant at this period. In my opinion, David and Solomon probably existed, but in a much reduced form. Essentially, they were tribal war leaders more than anything else, you know, leading this group that we can call the Hebrews or the Israelites.

17:14Jonny Dymond:I totally agree with Lloyd that there's very little evidence of David or Solomon. David, it's interesting, there is evidence. There's the Tel Dan steel found relatively recently in the 90s, which mentions the house of David. And this is a carving on a piece of rock, forgive me. Yes, steel is a carving on a piece of rock. So there is evidence that David existed.

17:37Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones:But again, several hundred years later.

17:39Jonny Dymond:Well, the steel is from about 200 years later or 150 years later. But as soon as you get on to Solomon, there is absolutely no mention of Solomon anywhere. But then when Solomon dies, the Bible says that the kingdom, if it existed, splits into two of these kingdoms. In the north is the kingdom of Israel, based in Samaria. And in the south, ruled by the house of David, the dynasty, the family of David, which we know of from the Tell Dan Steele just mentioned, rules Jerusalem and Judah or Judea. Judah and Judea are very important. The word Jew is a derivation of Judean Judah. And so even in the name Jew, Jewish, is the link to the land Judah.

18:32Simon Sebag Montefiore:We've talked a lot about the Jews. There were a lot of other people in the region at the time. Absolutely. Who were they? And are their ancestors still around? And critically, I suppose, why do we talk so much about the Jews and so little about them?