Old Testament A Manufactured Myth

By James Donahue

Thanks to the work of Israel Finkelstein, the head of the Archaeology Department, Tel Aviv University, the true origins of the Jewish state are beginning to be understood.

Finkelstein is one of a group of "radical archaeologists" who are digging up the true history of Palestine, formerly known as Judea. Their findings have been slowly unraveling the carefully plotted story of how the Jews thought they could lay claim to a land that belonged to all of the people now living there, not just the Jews.

In his book, The Bible Unearthed, co-authored with writer Neil Asher Silberman, Finkelstein concludes that the Bible is a work of propaganda written under the reign of King Josiah in about the Seventh or Eighth Centuries BC, that uses historical fragments to develop a myth of various Canaanite tribes as a justification for Josiah's rule and expansionist policies.

In other words, the books of the Old Testament were a political document designed to glorify the nation under Josiah and connect him falsely with a "golden era" when the state of Israel rose up as a powerful and advanced civilization.

It was an old trick, commonly committed by rulers for centuries, and its effect has mislead historians for some 2,000 years. What is worse, two world religious systems are rooted within the stories.

Careful archaeological research has failed to prove the Old Testament stories as historical truth. Researchers have excavated and dated significant archaeological sites in modern Israel and parts of Palestine and found that Israel, Judah and Samaria were all Canaanite States that arose from indigenous Canaanite culture and never from the invasion of a mythical people called the Hebrews.

The book claims that Israel was a small Canaanite State and briefly achieved a "golden age" and reached its height of power under the reign of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. The House of David never ruled in Israel, and may never have existed. If it did exist, Finkelstein thinks it may have ruled over the Canaanite State of Judah.

He suggests that David and Solomon may have been tribal chiefs in the old Kingdom of Judah, and that Jerusalem, then a small and unimportant town, existed in Judah. It never had a golden temple built by Solomon. The archaeologists have discovered that the major cult centers were located farther to the north.

Larry Saltzman, a writer for the Paestine Chronicle, in a review of Finkelstein's book, once wrote that the work helped him resolve "contradictions and problems of Zionism and the unjust policies of the State of Israel toward Palestinians."

He said for those willing to consider this information with an open mind, "there is a solution in it for the problems of the Middle East. Simply stated, European Jews, Middle Eastern Jews, and Palestinians are brothers and sisters and share a common Canaanite ancestry."

Saltzman noted that in the days when David Ben-Gurion was leading the European Jews back to what they claimed was their God-given homeland in the heart of Palestine, there were voices among the early Zionists who opposed the creation of a separate Jewish state in the region. As it has turned out, they were correct. Ben-Gurion and his followers believed the old testament fabrication, moved in among the Palestinians, occupied the land and created the State of Israel.

The Moslem Palestinians were caught off guard, and when they rose to defend themselves, found themselves divided and unable to drive the Jewish invaders out of their territory. The warfare has continued to this day, however, and was never necessary, Saltzman argues.

"I believe Jews around the world need to take pride not in Israel as a modern colonialist state, but in the entire region Palestine as the homeland of Canaanite and Israelite culture that we are descended from," Saltzman wrote.

"European Jews are simply Europeanized Canaanites, Palestinians, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish were simple Arabacized Canaanites. Even modern genetic research is proving that we came from the same ancestry."