Rethinking the Historiographical Impulse: The History of Ancient Israel as a Problem

The first part of this paper provides some insights into the problematic nature of the genre “history of ancient Israel”, both in terms of historiography and of historical epistemology. It is argued that the concept “history of ancient Israel” is essentially valid within a particular modern theological or biblical historiographical context. As such, this history of ancient Israel may indeed progress and generate new understandings but is nonetheless seriously limited by its main concern with “biblical Israel”. It is also proposed that in order to overcome these thematic and epistemological historical limitations, a wider history of ancient Palestine or the Southern Levant should be envisioned, into which to understand the epigraphic and archaeological realia of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, together with other contemporary polities in the region, and the later development of biblical traditions and texts. The second part of the paper addresses questions of ethnogenesis, socio-political organization and identity in the light of the previous discussion, setting the stage for an alternative history of Israel and other historical realities in ancient Palestine.     

Dealing with Tribes and States in Ancient Palestine

This paper offers a critique on state formation theories used in the explanation of the rise of the biblical United Monarchy. The last three decades of archaeological and biblical research have shown that there is no firm evidence for speaking of a kingdom or empire of David and Solomon in ancient Palestine. Thus what is proposed here is to evaluate the archaeological record through the data provided by the ethnological record of the Middle East, keeping the biblical stories apart from this interpretation. The analysis of the dynamics and structure of Middle Eastern “tribal states” and “chiefdom societies”, including here the practice of patronage bonds, gives us important keys for understanding Palestine's societies. The historical perspective that appears then is one different from the Bible's stories and from modern ideas such as “states” and “nations”, offering us instead a better methodology for reconstructing ancient Palestine's historical past.     

Francophone Theater of Western Canada: Dramatic Tales of Disappearing Francophones

One recent innovation in the Francophone theater of western Canada is the use of narrativized dramatic monologues. The monologue form has a long history in Quebec, so it should come as no surprise that western Canadian playwrights have also been drawn to it. What I argue in this article is that the monologue form may signify differently in minority Francophone theater, which has previously been a site for collective expressions of memory and identity. I focus on two works written by playwrights with Saskatchewan roots, but first performed in Alberta – Il était une fois Delmas, Sask … mais pas deux fois! by André Roy and Claude Binet (2006) and Elephant Wake by Jonathan Christenson and Joey Tremblay (1999). I chose these two because they both recount stories of Francophone villages founded, built, and then gradually abandoned or overwhelmed by Anglophones. They are both tales of the missionary zeal of settlement, community cohesion based on church and French heritage, and the slow disintegration of once vibrant rural villages. While the first was written in French with occasional use of English, the second was written in English with occasional use of French.