Resisting the past

Abstract

The cutting edge of debate on the history of ancient Israel has moved on, of course, to the monarchy and later periods; scholarly attention has become preoccupied with the historicity of David and Solomon, or the question of when state-structures can be said to have appeared in ancient Palestine and the priority of Judah or Israel in the rise to statehood. The way in which the ideology of separateness and superiority is embedded in such maps, including the map of Palestine, is also important in tracing the roots of a conception of ethnicity that has informed many of our histories of Israel. For the mnemonic community that sponsored and consumed these products, the monarchy of David and Solomon was a forgotten memory. Keywords: ancient Israel; David; mnemonic community; Palestine; Solomon