Tom Segev summarised it:
There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened -- hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua.
Here is an article from Professor
2 comments:
This thesis is more and more elaborated by Isralelian “new historians” from the late 1980s. "Le Monde Diplomatique" published an important article on january 2009, page 3bis, confirming that the Bible is a historical text and that “national” vision of the Bible has no foundation. More and more sociologists, orientalists, linguists, geographers, political scientists, literary academics and archaeologists are developing new perspectives on the Jewish and Zionist past.
29 jan 09
Well, you are talking about another myth now. The one you are talking about is before the so called exodus. Books like this The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel deals with this matter. The myth we are talking about is after it and it talks about negating the myth of a single people that was scattered in the world.
Israel is based on the following myths:
The truth in the Biblical narration, which are in fact symbolic stories and no truth
The myth of a scattered one people that has to come back to a homeland
That that homeland was always empty waiting for them, a land without people for people without a land. This is also combined with the constant suggestion that the lives of the Jewish people living in Europe was always very miserable, what is not the true and then that the Palestine was empty does not have a history before the foundation of Israel. These are 2 fatal manipulation of the collective memory.
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