Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

126 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
we do not adopt every one of its assumptions and conclusions. It says, in effect,
that the Bible is not a book but a grand library that was written, revised and
adapted in the course of three centuries, from the late sixth to the early second
BCE. It should be read as a multilayered literary construction of a religious and
philosophical nature or as theological parables that sometimes employ quasihistorical
descriptions for educational purposes, aimed especially at future
generations (as the system of divine punishment often punishes the descendants
for their forebears' transgressions). 123
The various ancient authors and editors sought to create a coherent religious
community, and drew lavishly on the glorious politics of the past to
prepare a stable, durable future for a cult center in Jerusalem. Concerned to
isolate it from the idolatrous population, they invented the category of Israel
as a sacred, chosen people whose origins lay elsewhere, in contrast to Canaan,
a local anti-people of hewers of wood and drawers of water. This text-group's
appropriation of the name Israel was perhaps due to its rivalry with the
Samaritans, who saw themselves as heirs to the kingdom of Israel. 124 This selfisolating
literary politics, which began to develop between the little "province
of Yahud" and the centers of high culture in Babylonia, accorded well with
the global identity policies of the Persian empire, whose rulers took pains to
separate communities, classes and linguistic groups in order to retain control
over their vast possessions.
Some of the leaders, judges, heroes, kings, priests and prophets (mainly
the later ones) who populate the Bible may have been historical figures. But
their time, their relationships, their motives, their real power, the boundaries
of their rule, their influence and manner of worship—that is to say, what really
matters in history—were the product of a later imagination. Likewise, the
intellectual and religious consumers of the biblical story cycles—namely, the
early Jewish faith communities—took shape much later.
Knowing that Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar tells us little about ancient
Rome but a good deal about England in the late sixteenth century does not
detract from its power and helps us to view its historical testimony in a
different light. Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin, which is set
during the revolution of 1905, tells us little about that uprising but much about
123 "For I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Ex. 20:5. See
also Deut. 5:9.
124 On Jewish tradition's later attempts to deny the Samaritans their Israelite origin,
see Gedaliah Alon, Studies in Jewish History, vol. 2, Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1958 (in
Hebrew), 1-14.