Sheba

2
SHEBA, ZIONISM, AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
fulfilment of divine will but more as an embattled colonial settlement
comparable with French Algeria or apartheid South Africa.
The Zionist movement, which has seen the establishment in 1948 of
the State of Israel and the consequent regional and global crises thereafter,
takes its theological and political inspiration from twenty references in the
Old Testament books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy concerning divine assurances to the Hebrew patriarchs
Abraham and Moses that their followers would inherit a Promised Land
“flowing with milk and honey.”
The Old Testament is a theological and historical account that begins
with the wanderings of the Hebrew people. They appear originally to have
been a group of several tribes, but in the Old Testament they are only
mentioned seventeen times by name (`bry/`brym/`bryym/`bryt), which
comes from the name of their common ancestor, `brm h-`bry, or Abraham
the Hebrew, who lived ca. 1800 - 1400 B.C.E. The original language of the
Hebrew is unknown because they adopted Canaanite after they conquered
the Promised Land ca.1200 B.C.E. Canaanite/Hebrew was written without
vowels, so the word “Hebrew” would appear as ‘br, which in general
Semitic can mean “those who crossed over.”
The Hebrew were a nomadic people seeking permanent settlement. It is
generally accepted that they were a technologically skilled people who
quickly adopted ironworking. The exact date of the true Iron Age, when
Middle Eastern peoples began forging iron rather than merely smelting and
hammering it, is unknown, but it was probably around 1500 B.C.E. The
Hittites appear to have attempted to guard the secret of forging, but after
the downfall of their empire ca. 1200 B.C.E. many other peoples
developed the technique. Iron tools made it easier to establish permanent
agricultural settlements. Forests could more easily be cleared and iron
ploughs used to cultivate heavier soils. Increased food production fostered
larger families, and more children survived infancy. Population explosions
followed, and large groups of Iron Age peoples began to migrate. For the
first time in history ordinary people had access to powerful weapons, and
they used them to overrun Bronze Age peoples. This led to the formation of
strong centralized states, as the ruling elites developed organizational skills
to control the new situation and thus preserve their privileges. It was not
until ca. A.D. 1000 that societies in Asia and Europe stabilized after 2000
years of dislocation resulting from the Iron Age migrations.
The Hebrew were unusual among these migrating peoples in that they
kept an oral record of their experiences which they eventually committed to